Colorful Fall Entry

Although I planted my mums in the urns outside our front door a few weeks ago, I procrastinated and didn’t finish off the entry until this week.  I had spotted some corn stalks at a roadside fruit farm while running errands on Monday, so I stopped to buy a bundle for $7.  The pumpkins and gourds at this place weren’t selling their pumpkins and gourds at a bargain price, so I made my way to another fruit farm just down the road from me. Sure enough- they had colorful fall bounty for good prices.

 

I always like to incorporate some green and white into the fall décor, so the patty pan squash and the striped gourd fit the bill perfectly. The small traditional orange pumpkin is the perfect foil for them and the bright yellow mums. The mums are a little spindly- they were $3 bargains from one of the big box stores. If I water them with a Miracle Grow mixture, maybe they’ll fill out quickly. If not…. Well, that will be okay, too.  I tend to forget to water my front door plants and they dry up really fast in the hot eastern exposure. 

 

Flanking the front door on the opposite side are some more cornstalks, my candle urns and some more pumpkins. I added an ornamental kale from a nursery down the road.  Too bad my “Welcome” sign is slightly obscured by the stalks, but maybe people won’t notice.

 

I love the variegated colors in this kale and the knobby goodness of the gourd beside it. Nature certainly is interesting. I was glad to find a gray pumpkin to add into the mix. They are hard to find around here and the prices are usually pretty steep, as well.

 

 

This basket of faux fall pretties is the same one that I used last year. I like its fullness and the variety of flowers in it, but it’s so large that it’s difficult to get past it to enter the foyer! I’ll be getting into the attic this afternoon to hunt for a smaller basket that I can fill with some sunflowers. Then this basket can get moved to one of the back patios.

 

I think everything here makes a nice presentation to welcome guests into our home.  I put together one other planter which I placed between the garage doors. It needs a little more tweaking, though. And my intention is to buy some more gourds and pumpkins to make the planter look more “fall-ified.” 

By the way, did anyone notice that the mums in my urns are a different color than the ones I showed a few weeks ago? Well, the red ones that were planted in there died. When I planted them, I tried to offset the amount of  soil in my urns with some balled up plastic bags. This method has always worked for me in the past; but, apparently, I didn’t ball up the bags well enough and they flattened out. Every time that the flowers got watered, the plastic prevented the excess water from draining through the holes at the bottom of the urns. Those gorgeous red mums died a slow drowning death and I had to replace them. This time I just left the plants in their own containers. I removed the flattened plastic bags and replaced them with plastic peanuts- so much easier for the draining process! Good thing I save those suckers whenever I receive a shipped package. They’re not fun to store- they take up so much room- but they sure come in handy for filling pots and saving topsoil.  Too bad I didn’t remember to use them the first time I planted my mums!

 

 

 

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There’s been a change in the weather and also in the kitchen hutch…..

There has been a dramatic change in the weather and I do believe fall has finally come to southwestern Ohio. The days are sunny and bright- with no humidity- and the nights have been cool and crisp. It’s definitely my favorite time of the year! Although I’ve been a busy bee, I finally made some time to change out a few things in the house and “fall-ify” it.  Yes, my word….  Fall-ify.  Definition~ make things look more comfy, cozy, and warm for the season.

I began my fall transformation by removing all of the white dishes from the summer decorated hutch and replacing them with the typical greens and rusts of autumn.




Before:






After:

 
I left the existing accessories on the top of the hutch until I can find something to replace the white platter in the center. I figure that the white rooster tureen can stay and co-exist just fine with the remaining items. The first shelf isn’t very deep and doesn’t allow me to do anything but rest a few plates behind the plate rail. In fact, the bowls in front of them just barely fit.  Of course, they are chunky soup bowls!




The green bowls and plates were an inexpensive find during Kroger’s fall clearance last year. I paid 75¢ apiece for eight green plates and bowls, as well as the same number in rust. These rust leaf plates and bowls came from Wal Mart a few years back.  Not certain where the rooster pitcher came from, but it matches very well with the other dinnerware.






The hutch’s second shelf area isn’t very wide, but it is taller than the first shelf. I propped a framed picture against the back wall and used a tarnished trophy cup and a rust colored bottle to accent it.







When I bought this bottle for 10¢ at a yard sale, I was intrigued with its odd color. I think I’ve only used it one other time in a display- it’s not something that readily goes with a lot of things!





The silver is worn off this cup so badly in places that I simply can’t get it to shine the way I’d like it to. Oh well, I guess it shows more character this way. See the tiny cloches? I still need to put some putka pods under them. Putka pods are simply what most people call those orange “mini-pumpkins.”






I placed the remaining green and rust plates on one end of the buffet top and finished off the top by adding a pumpkin tureen, a thriving plant from outdoors, and a few found objects. Simple, but it does say Fall.






















This old sewing machine drawer was the perfect spot for adding in a cut glass creamer filled with silver knives from an old hotel in Santa Fe. The wicker wrapped bottle was a find from a barn sale two years ago, and the silver baby cup came from a yard sale.
















So there we have it- one “fall-ified” hutch. Now that this is done, I’m anxious to get the rest of the fall décor out. The floor in one of the guest rooms is littered with boxes of “stuff” that needs to be placed in vignettes. My next chore is to dust, first! I admit to being very lax in my house cleaning duties. lately. You can’t put “pretties” onto tabletops that have a thick coating of dust on them…. Lately, I’ve spent most of my free time outside. I don’t profess to be a gardener, but I sure have been tending the landscape beds this summer!  In fact, I’d like to pot some mums, pansies, and cabbages in the front yard.
Fall-ification is in the air!



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