Decorating for Fall-Indoors

We are on Day 6 of The Nester's 31 Day Challenge.  I'm still motivated!

It's been forever and a year since I've been able to decorate for a season around here.  I promised myself if we made the final decision to take the house off the market (would you think we were nuts if I told you we had full price offers) and stay put that I would get back in the groove of things and bring this place back to life season to season.  

 

Adam spent some time organizing the attic recently and I made sure he moved all of our Fall/Halloween stuff to the front so it would be easily accessible for me when the time came.

 

Part of the excitement in decorating our house for me comes from the children.  Adam and I have a saying "it's for the kids".  I have convinced myself that decorating our home for the seasons with be a sweet memory our children cherish as the grow up.   Aidan loves to help out.  I think he loves it anyways.  He could be indulging me because he knows how much I love it.

 

After I lugged our Rubbermaid's down from the attic I made the realization that this year "less is more" would be a good theme for us because Kellan is in to everything.  I skipped decorating the dining room table, the mantle and putting anything in our bedrooms because we spend so much time in them.  I was having  visions of the baby pulling my runner off the table and everything crashing to the floor. 

 

So I put a few artificial pumpkins out here and there and put a Fall quote on our chalkboard and honestly, I'm loving it.  We all love it.  It's just enough for this year and it has definitely brought back the excitement about us being here in this house.

Next up is outdoors!

(Back of the toilet in our bathroom.  Missing our pumpkin candle.  Guess who grabbed that?)

Apple Orchard

I get so much inspiration for my home during this season from the outdoors.  And I feel like I appreciate my home more by getting out of it with my boys on a regular basis.  I'm constantly excited to come home.  I think that says a lot about this house of ours.  The last weekend in September we headed up to the mountains to engage in a family tradition of ours....apple picking.  It's been unseasonably hot here in the Carolina's the past few weeks but we lucked out and caught a cool day and really enjoyed our afternoon.  Last year when we were there I was pregnant and this year we had Kellan.  What a difference a year makes and how happy we are to be a family of four!  

 

 

 

Fall Decorating Inspiration

 

I absolutely love decorating during the Fall. 

I have slowly started a collection of decoration for the season over the years.  The best thing about the Fall though, is that you can pull so many things from nature.  Leaves, sticks, acorns and grasses.

I pulled these inspiration photos from Pinterest.

A Few Updates

Day 3 of 31 Days

Sometimes adding the littlest touches can change a room so much.  I love to change out the pillows on our sofa with the seasons.  It's an easy, inexpensive update and can make the room feel new. I have a chalkboard behind the sofa I change the wording on every once in a while and something that small makes a big difference!

I promised Adam I would keep this project on a serious budget and I've been pretty good!

While I'm at it, I figured I would point out a few things I've done on a super budget that may inspire you to do some little updates for yourself around your home!

Before a Few New Pillows

 

I have a collection of down pillow inserts in my attic so I didn't have to spend money there which is nice.  Little tip...I used to buy the worlds ugliest clearance pillows at TJ Maxx or Home Goods just for the inserts. 

We Interrupt...

Today's regularly scheduled programming (also known as 31 Days Post) ...

To Wish a Happy Happy Birthday to my best friend, my baby daddy, my partner in crime, the cheese to my macaroni...Mr. Adam Harvey. 

Baby,

Your birthday is my Christmas.  I love the day you were born. 

You get so much better with age. 

I can't imagine anyone more fun to grow old with.

Love you.

Moving Furniture

It's only day two of The Nester's 31 Days (maybe day three for those of you that started ahead of me) and I am already so excited about what this 31 Days of "Fall"ing back in love with our house is doing for me.

Our living room furniture has changed a lot over the years but the lay out has stayed relatively the same.  It always seems just when the time is right my husband starts speaking my language.  The language of furniture re arranging that is. 

No one is claiming this is the best use of space.  But it works for us.  If there was a word I would use to describe the feel I am going for in our home it would be "COZY" and I think that's just what we've achieved here. 

BEFORE

 

 

 

AFTER

 

 

 

 

 

I really love the way we moved everything around.  The chair and a half was my parents and they were trying to get rid of it and these days comfort/function trumps space saving.  It's a Mitchell Gold piece and so comfortable!  On Friday nights we push the coffee table up against the wall and make a giant pallet on the floor and have movie night. 

 

I have my eye on a pair of new lamps for the buffet table so I'll do a re post if I buy them!

 

 

31 Days...

I honestly went back and forth for days on whether or not I was going to link up with The Nester and her 31 Days Posts this year.  I've always wanted to do it but wondered what I would ever write about for 31 days.  It's a commitment y'all.  Then I was sitting around the other day and it came to me. 

A little back story first.  Our house has been on the market twice in a year.  We really felt like we were ready to move somewhere new.  We didn't know if it was to a new city or just to a new house but we were having an urge to just get out of this house.  Maybe it was the one bathroom? I don't know.

So, if your house has ever been for sale, you may very well know, the first thing your real estate agent asks you to do is "de personalize" your home.  Family photos have to go, your nick knacks go straight in to boxes and you can forget about spending time to do any extra decorating because what's the point? You're moving!

Until you aren't.  Just like we felt like it was time to go, the more weekends we spent in the car looking for a new place to call home, the more we were drawn right back to where we started.  Here. Except we had emotionally disconnected from this house and it was a mere shell of the home I had worked so hard on for the past seven years of us living here.

There's something about the fall that draws me in back in to this house.  Maybe it's because it's my favorite season to decorate.  I always beef up on my DIY projects this time of year.  It's almost like I set us up to hibernate here for the winter.  It may be the feeling that I need to be in love with this house again for my boys to feel comfortable here.  It's part of my mom guilt.  Whatever it is, I figured this 31 days will be the perfect opportunity to bring this place back from the dead and back to our home.  I'm dusting off all those old family photos, I'm getting my groove back in the house wares department and I'm falling back in love with this house this fall.  HAPPY 31 DAYS!