Fall Home Tour

I am welcoming fall with wide open arms this year and am so excited to prepare my home for it’s first fall home tour!  I LOVE this season in Colorado when the leaves start changing and the evenings and mornings are already getting pretty cold.  I have a variety of maple and aspen trees in my yard that turn beautiful shades of yellow, gold, orange, and red when the leaves are announcing that fall has arrived!  This is when I pull out the autumn scented candles and frequent starbucks for pumpkin spiced lattes almost daily.  There’s something about cool fall days that draw out my creativity. I love fall decorating and browsing through my favorite blogs and pinterest for fall decorating ideas. My pumpkin candle is lit and I’m inviting you into my home on this cool fall day for a little fall home tour.

Since Halloween is right around the corner, I start setting the tone for fall in our family room with simple white pumpkins.  I found these large white pumpkins at Michaels a few years ago.  I have my fair share of the typical orange pumpkins but I have this funny aversion to orange lately.  I see it in the store, in other homes, and then I put it in my home and blah!!  I even bought an orange wreath because it was absolutely gorgeous in the store, but when I tried to style it in my home, I felt a bit nauseous.  I actually do get physical symptoms over color and even had my whole house repainted on the interior just one year after we moved in.  I had made the worse paint decision ever!  That paint story can be read HERE.

Warm, cozy throws for those cold Autumn nights

I keep throw blankets and quilts in all of our rooms for a warm snuggle on cold fall days.  I like to use platters for festive displays.  I’ve gathered quite a collection of white platters and serving trays from Homegoods over the years.  The eucalyptus and clementines came from Costco and the glitter pumpkin I found at Pottery Barn.

Meet Gucci, my 5 lb yorkie who believes he’s a human and quite often let’s me dress him in bows and onesies {I think he’s pretty excited about wearing his Halloween tutu in the coming weeks!!}  He follows me everywhere, especially when he hears me pull out the camera!  You’ll see him popping in photos here and there.  Now that he’s had his formal introduction, let’s move on with the rest of the home.

Every year when I begin decorating for the holidays, I strive for a different approach. Honestly, this year I have been the least motivated to dig out all the fall decor storage bins since my basement was in complete disarray a good portion of this year due to a big renovation we did.  If you’ve been following me on Instagram, then you’ve seen the progress of this basement for months.  I’ll be posting more on that later, but you can see that the hardwood floors here are a part of that renovation.  We had carpet before and I am so happy to now have the easy maintenance of hardwood.

Pillow covers allow easy transition into the Autumn season

Halloween decorating takes precedence over fall decorating in my home but I try to transition the two.  Hints of fall begin with a few white pumpkins and changing out some of my pillows.  Lately I’ve been hunting for pillow covers instead of buying a new pillow.  They take up so much space when storing them off season.  I absolutely adore this handmade linen pillow cover from So Vintage Chic.  Etsy is a great resource for finding beautiful pillow covers for great prices.  It’s far easier to store a folded pillow cover than it is to store a poofy pillow, right?

Fall decorating can be as simple as adding some eucalyptus to what you already have on display.  A subtle hint that we are transitioning into fall.  I made this DIY coffee filter wreath and paired it with a feather wreath I found at Homegoods.  I stacked the two in an old urn and I LOVE the combination of the white feathers against the brown coffee filters.

I painted an orange pumpkin white with craft paint and tucked some feathers in for interest. When decorating I often just throw unexpected pieces together and sometimes I love the outcome!  This is definitely a time that I love the look.  There’s also those times where I say, “what was I thinking??” and start over.  Don’t be afraid to play around with what you have in your home, you may surprise yourself!  Coffee filters never looked so good!  There are so many DIY coffee filter wreath “how to’s” on pinterest.

Not only do I decorate with coffee filters, but I also love book pages.  Old torn out, tattered edges, crumpled up book pages.  They make the best fillers for any arrangement that needs that sense of texture.  Yes, I do believe I made a centerpiece out of old book pages. Not because I had nothing else to fill that old metal urn with, but because I like the unexpected, the piece that makes you turn your head to the side and say, “huh.”

Just tear out those pages in your old books, crumple, crinkle, and shove in to place. Works for me!

I even crumpled paper into my apothecary jar to hold my fall tree branch in place. Remember, I’m setting the scene for upcoming Halloween so bare tree branches are also that easy fall transition to halloween.  You can read about my tree branch cutting excursion here.

My favorite part of fall is the candles!  I love scrumptious fall scents!!  This tortoise shell candle from Pottery Barn makes my whole house smell like baked apples.  I could fool my guests that I actually baked an apple pie!  Those who know me well could never be fooled of my baking skills or should I say lack of baking skills.  I don’t bake. period.  Costco makes great pies and thank goodness!

The “Hello Fall” wood sign is a recent purchase from Hobby Lobby.  The black, white and gold are perfect for my fall color scheme.  I also found this cute mini deer at Hobby Lobby in the Christmas decor section.  I love shopping the Christmas aisles for decor that I can use for different seasons or even year round…as long as it isn’t santa or rudolph of course.

Isn’t he cute?  He’ll be hanging out through Christmas!

My fall tablescape was so much fun to create this year.  I took a very simple approach for big impact and you can read the full blog post and tons of photos on that here.

My Pottery Barn foliage always gives the most stunning impact in my large living room. They seriously look so real!

I’ve been busy working on my fall patio, which is really a simple foundation to all the Halloween skeletons and jack o lanterns that are about to to be pulled out this wknd!  It is officially October!  yay!!  And that means I’m also pulling out the boots, jeans, and scarfs! Did I mention how much I love this time of year!!  See ya’ll soon for some hot spice cider on the porch!