Fall Home Tour: Pumpkins, Palms & Pushpins

TODAY IS THE DAY!  I’m so excited to finally reveal all of the fun fall home tour projects that I’ve been working on for the last few weeks!  It’s been a while since I’ve really gotten into decorating for a season, and I’d forgotten how much I love it.  It really is like therapy for me.  98.9% of the time my brain is in overdrive…  Mommy thoughts, work stuff, bills, blah blah blah.  When I got into decorating for this fall home tour I completely zoned out.  Finding the perfect combination of textures, color, and scale, and then arranging all of it is like my ultimate anti-anxiety prescription.  In fact, when I finished all of this stuff, I think I was buzzed.  So without further ado…

The Front Porch

It’s only natural to start at the front door, so come on in!

The sweet white pitcher was my Grandmother’s and she used it every year for her annual Christmas Soup and Sandwich party.  I have the rest of the white dishes that she used, including about 74 white coffee cups.  I don’t think I’ve ever used any of them, but I won’t get rid of them and every time Lane sees them hiding on the top shelf he asks when I’m going to have my coffee party.  SOON, Smarty Pants, soon.

When I saw that giant branch on the golf course during our nightly ride two weeks ago it started screaming my name.  Despite being in PJ pants, I made Lane turn the golf cart around so that I could scamper into the woods and grab it.  (Don’t mind me, golfers!)  The ride back to the house with this giant tree antenna flying above our golf cart I’m sure humiliated Lane to no end, but he never said a word.  He even shouted out to some of the dudes standing in our cul-de-sac that we were “crafting” when they gave us a weird look.  #bestillmyheart

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The Foyer

You may remember my heinous art makeover that is this chalkboard… I love the way it turned out! It took about 4 hours to write all of that in chalk, and I still do not have feeling in my arm, but it was worth it.

I had this grapevine wreath laying around (but you can buy them at Hobby Lobby for like $4-ish, get their 40% off coupon if they’re not on sale!) and I just added those little pumpkin sprig thingies that were about $1.50 each at WalMart.  I know it seems crazy that so much of this décor came from Wally World…  It is the closest store to my office and when I ran in at lunch time a few weeks ago for diapers I went a little cray cray.  I had one box of diapers, and eighty-five white pumpkins.  Whoops.

This dresser is a Craigslist find that is considered “Hollywood Regency” style. It’s a 1966 Thomasville piece that weighs one million pounds. I painted it white (from a yellow-ish color) and painted the hardware black. I heart it.

 

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The Living Room

Since I hung him up a few months ago, my gold-tipped horn bull guy has been ridiculed by many. I like him. Sometimes design choices don’t have to make sense to others. If you love it, roll with it.

When I inquired on social media about what to write on this bunting I got some really great suggestions that included “helpme”, “spiced”, and “wasted”.  I went with “AUTUMN”. It’s just such a pretty word.  “Wasted” was the runner up.

These pumpkins stayed beautifully displayed on the coffee table for not one second longer than it took me to take this picture before Lila was yelling “APPLE!” and throwing them across the room. Good photo though, right?

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The Kitchen

In the breakfast nook I just made a few simple changes with things that we already had in the house. If you haven’t noticed already, I did lots of “shopping the house” (and woods) for this Fall Home Tour. I try to watch the duckets where I can and I love a good budget challenge! So in this space, I flipped the large pillows around to the more brown side, hung a simple succulent wreath in the middle of the windows, added some pumpkins to our little breadbasket, and switched out the Magnolia Leaf Wreath for my little dachshund silhouette pic. Perfection.

 

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The Dining Room

This is it folks…  my FAVORITE room on the Fall Home Tour.  I spent half of the day last Saturday decorating this room, only to decide on Sunday that I hated it all.  Every time I looked at it I thought of my favorite teacher in college (#mamapeek) who used to tell me all the time, “Katie, it’s good, but MORE.”  It was a visual presentation class and she was always saying that I needed to take it further…  make the darks darker, the lights lighter, add MORE.  She was always right.  She also told me to stop drawing ferns like dreadlocks, and she was definitely right about that too.  Anyway, every time I looked at what I’d done I thought, “No.  More.”  So I started over and this is where we landed!

Word to the wise…  if you’re going to cut palm leaves in the middle of the woods while it’s sprinkling, be advised that there will be plenty of mosquitos.  Also, bring clippers, not kitchen shears.  Kitchen shears will not cut them and you will end up breaking them with your bare hands, which will end up cutting you, because these suckers are sharp.  Who knew?  Anyway, this tablescape is brought to you by Zika virus.

These are dollar store pumpkins spray painted white with thumbtacks stuck in them.  My aunt also did this project after I posted about it on Facebook and hers turned out much better than mine, but I LOVED that she did it and sent me a pic.  Is there anything better than inspiring someone to try something?  No way.

I definitely texted my neighbor who has a newborn (hey girl!) at 10 p.m. to ask if I could have this sod pallet out of their yard.  She said yes.  She is also a great sport.

That little sign in the distance says “TREAT YO SELF”… I made this little printable and thought it was hilarious as well as perfect inspiration for above a Thanksgiving dinner table!

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That concludes our Fall Home Tour!  What did you think?  Any ideas you’ll try in your home?  If so, I’d love to hear about it!  And if you liked any of this, it would be the honor of my lifetime if you’d Pin, share, or subscribe.  In the meantime, don’t forget your bug spray and I hope you all TREAT YO SELF this fall!

WHEW!  Now you know what time it is…  Happy Tini Friday!