It's (Technically) Fall, Y'all

      The sun is high, the cicadas are singing the song of their people, and it will be almost 90 degrees this afternoon. Everything about that just screams fall, right? Okay, so despite the fact that everything about the weather screams summer, the calendar says fall, and I'm ready for it. Plus, this is the deep South- I've decorated my Christmas tree in shorts with the AC blasting. If I waited for true fall weather to decorate, it would be mid-December. And hey, I've seen at least three trees with a few golden leaves, so it's time for fall, y'all!!

     I love the gorgeous, rustic colors of autumn- the stuff that makes you want to curl up in a cable-knit sweater and drink apple cider (screw that pumpkin spice latte' garbage. I'm sorry, but it's gross.) Nevermind the fact that if you actually try to do either of those things, you'll die of heat stroke. Imagining them is fun!! So I dragged my boxes of festive fall finery out of the attic, set the air to 65* and got started!

In the past, I've spread out decor around the kitchen and living room, but I decided to minimize a bit (because 80 pounds of fake leaves are definitely minimalist) and just to the mantel and the etagere in the living room. Luckily I've been adding to my collection of crap for years, so I only had to buy this large gold frame from Goodwill. It originally held a print of some flowers, and when the lady behind me in line admired it, she seemed slightly scandalized that I planned to toss the print and just use the gaudy frame. Oh well!

Okay, the frame was almost the only thing I had to buy. There were also two sparkly pumpkins and two bottles of craft paint from Walmart, and a styrofoam pumpkin from the dollar tree. I love the Dollar Tree for basic starter decorations. This pumpkin was really ugly, but after a couple of coats of metallic copper paint, and some dark copper glitter that I already had, it's lovely!

Glitzy!

 I've been saving these old light globes for a while. I just knew I could do something with them. I coated the inside of one with the aforementioned copper paint, and the other with metallic dark gold paint, and voila'- fancy acorn-looking thingies!

Upcycled light globe and my best Bob Ross!

I traded our usual family pictures and tchotchkes on the etagere for a fall feel. At first, I had added leaves and pumpkins, but it all felt like a little much.I have several things that I love and definitely wanted to put out- the little scarecrow embroidery I did a few years ago, the tiny painting I did after watching a bunch of old Bob Ross shows, the fingerprint trees on burlap canvases that my twins did when they were tiny, but it was just a lot going on. So I nixed the leaves and scaled back the pumpkins, and let the small art pieces speak for themselves. Much better!

It's kind of silly to put all this up now- especially since I'll be taking it down in three weeks to put up Halloween, and putting it back up after the spooking is over, but it makes me happy. And I'm glad we're ready for fall- if it ever actually arrives!