2010 Fall Decor!

So this year I wanted to keep our fall decor relatively simple being that I am over 30 weeks pregnant & I'll be having this little one during the mid to later part of the fall. If you remember from my inspiration post, most of the things I wanted to do are pretty simple DIY-wise & low maintenance. I showed you my DIY wreath from last year, which is up again, but now I want to show off everything else I did to decorate for my favorite season of the year!

Here's our living room:

From front entry door:

From powder room:

 

For this room, I just switched out the throw pillows with the burnt orange ones I already owned & the brown button pillows were already there. Then, I added my new PB Essential Throw (which is quite comfy ;o) & a new shag area rug ($75 from Walmart..I LOVE this rug, it's so soft on my toes). I am lovin' how simple, but pretty it is! I forgot to take a photo of the wall with the entertainment center, but it's decorate with fall colored candles, which I'll switch out for Christmas colors in the winter.

And for the entryway table:

Please excuse the dog bowls, lol...this is the entry between the LR & DR/kitchen area since we don't have a formal front entryway.

Some close ups...

family name sign

...and my little pumpkins inspired by this PBK treat basket.

We already owned all of the candles & the faux fall leaves, I just arranged them around our family name sign. I got the large glass vase from HomeGoods & added some more of the faux leaves & my DIY ribbon pumpkins. They were so easy to make that I didn't even do a tutorial! Just grab some small faux pumpkins form your local craft store & some fall colored ribbon. Then, just hot glue the ribbon on to the pumpkins & wha-lah...pretty fall pumpkins! These are, by far, my favorite fall decor for this year - thanks to Pottery Barn for the inspiration!

And the final area I decorated, the dining room table, which was also kept very simple:

Close ups...

I got all the supplies for the centerpiece from Save On Crafts, which I discovered during my wedding planning...they have really cool, unique stuff & great prices. The little guys I used as filling for the vintage wood box are called dried puka pods - they are so cute, they look just like mini pumpkins, don't they?! So perfect.

And that's my fall decor! I wanted to do some mums out on the font porch & I still may, but I just haven't found a nice enough planter to put them in. We'll also carve a couple pumpkins closer to Halloween & that'll be it for this year. Simple & low maintenance - just how I wanted it. :)

Sorry this took so long to get up - I have been so busy lately - either that or tired, so I have been slacking on cleaning up my house & taking these pics. How are all of you doing on your fall decor this year? Did you do something simple like me or did you go all out?! Please share your links, I'd love to check it out. 'Till next time!

2010 fall decor inspiration

Finally right?! I really do apologize for being so late on this, but I figure that fall just "officially" started last week, right? So I'm not that late posting my fall decor inspiration, right? Right. ;o)

I get a lot of my decor inspiration from other bloggers, in the pages home decor catalogs or magazines & on home decor websites. This year I didn't want to overdo it or do anything too difficult or DIY-complex. Being 30+ weeks pregnant, having a new baby while all this stuff is out & having to keep it dusted & all means it MUST be simple & low maintenance. So most of this year's fall decor inspiration came from good 'ol Pottery Barn & Pottery Barn Kids. Ahhh PB, why are you so expensive? I can only convince the hubbs to buy stuff from PB/PBK every blue moon...and I think I used up my annual PB budget on the baby's room, which is just fine with me because her room is fab (hoping to share some final reveal pics sometime late next week - just waiting on window hardware from JCP, woot).

I decided to use the same front door wreath I made last fall (which held up pretty well packed away), inspired partially by this PB beaut:

 

And here's my DIY version:

I'm only planning on decorating the main level, except for maybe a few small touches in our master bedroom/bath, using some of the leftover items from last fall's decor. I love PB's textured linen button pillows:

I scored a couple chocolate brown knock offs of these last year at Burlington, so I plan to use those along with a few of my solid color burnt orange toss pillows from Target & my PB Essential Throw on the living room couches.

For our entryway table, I want to keep our family name sign out & somehow incorporate this idea from PBK:

I just love the look of those pumpkins decorated with the ribbon - so simple, yet very beautiful! I first saw this idea in the fall PBK catalog, then I found it on their site. I don't want mine to be too Halloween'ish since I plan to keep this decor up thru Thanksgiving & not removing it until I put up Christmas stuff. They also have the absolute CUTEST baby & kids costumes. I am going to have to try so hard not to buy Baby J's costume from there next year. I know it's ridiculously expensive, but it's just so stinkin' cute!

Then for our dining room, I plan to use my pretty deep, burnt almost orange World Market place mats, seen in this post last year. And the centerpiece I'm making was also inspired by this photo I happened across while browsing the PB site:

I love the look of the candles in that antique-looking wood basket/crate & think something similar will look great on my DR table.

So, how about all of you?! Have you already started decorating for the fall? Where did/do you get your inspiration? I'd love to see your fall decor, please post a link in the comments if you'd like to share!

And that's about it for my fall decor inspiration this year - all simple & low maintenance. Next week I'll show you what I came up with based on all this inspiration, lol. But stick around because I will be posting my 33-34 weeks pregnancy update, my pre-Baby J to do list update & 5QF this week! And now I must go get some food in my tummy because Baby J is kicking me HARD, which normally means she wants food, hahaha. ::wink:: 'Till next time!

Pumpkin Carving!!

I don't know about you, but I LOVE the fall! The look, smell, food, everything about it is great...especially anything related to pumpkins! Ever since I was a kid, we used to carve pumpkins for Halloween & I so looked forward to it! And even though I am far from being a kid anymore, I still love carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns! This year the hubbs & I decided to do two jack-o-lanterns:

The spooky ghost...I named him Harry!

And a J - for our last initial!

Here are some others of us carving the pumpkins, which btw, we got for $4.99 each at our local grocery store:

Please note my husband's critical pumpkin carving tools: 1) design template, 2) pumpkin carving tools, 3) BEER - a must have when performing domestic duties requested by your wife (according to him anyways, lol). ;o)

And the last with Dizz greeting at the door:

I would love to see your jack-o-lanterns, please share in the comments section of this post if you have links! Also, in other World of Dennifer news - a VERY exciting development coming soon (& no, I'm not pregnant...yet, lol). Now I'm off to go make some yummy pumpkin spice cheesecake - try the recipe, it's divine! Happy Halloween!

My DIY Fall Wreath!

A few posts ago I blogged about a fall foliage wreath I wanted to do for my front door. It was super easy to do - I just went to Michaels & bought the plain wreath form, 2 strands of fall leaf garland, and some of the fall embellishments that had berries, pine cones, mini pumpkins, etc. Then I took gold floral wire & wrapped the leaf garland around the form securing it with the wire. Finally, I stuck the little embellishment picks in where I thought they'd fit. What do you think?

I love how it turned out! We had a fight party this past weekend & everyone gave me such nice comments on it...they thought it was store bought! It makes the outside of the house so much more fall ready! I also changed out the centerpieces (Michaels) & place mats (World Market) on my DR table for the fall:

Now my home is officially ready for fall & just in time - fall officially starts tomorrow! Happy Fall everyone!

Faux Mercury Glass Pumpkins Re-make!!

In my last post I talked about a few of the fall D&R DIY projects I would be doing & I finished the first major one - Roeshel's faux mercury glass pumpkins. I removed the faux summery white orchid plant I had on the LR/DR entryway table (we don't have enough space for one at our main entry so I put it between those two rooms) and put my pumpkins there. I embellished mine with a pretty jeweled fall garland & faux fall leaves, then added some silver taper candle stick bases & ivory candles. All of which I think added the little extra punch my pumpkins needed. What do you think?! (Click on any photo to make it larger)

I basically followed her instructions to the "T" except for the brown splatter part - that was a doozy! I didn't have a nearly empty bottle of brown metallic spray paint, so I picked up some very pretty brown metallic acrylic paint at Michales & gave it a whirl attempting to spatter with a normal paint brush. Well that didn't work out so well, it created big globs of brown metallic paint, which looked...well, weird! Next I tried it with a toothbrush & it didn't really splatter at all - just globs again. So, the last thing I tried was wetting the tooth brush a bit (not soaking wet, but enough so that the paint is a little less thick when I scooped it onto the toothbrush) & that worked, but it was messy....still not the same effect as the spray paint canister that Roeshel used with hers, but looked good enough for me. After I got the spattering effect I wanted (or at least as good as I could get it), I sprayed another light coat of the silver/metallic spray paint to give it a more authentic look. I am pretty happy with the results; although, I wish I had a nearly empty (sputtering) bottle of the brown spray paint & I could have made the brown spotting look a little better. Let me know if you end up trying this - I'd like to see how other's turned out!

In other decor news, I added some fall colored flowers to the large decorative Pier One pitcher over top of my kitchen cabinets & a candy dish to the LR table with yummy chocolates!

*fall flowers in decorative pitcher*

*candy dish*

My house is nearly ready for fall, but I have a few more things I want to do outside & in to make it completely ready! Oh...and coming soon (maybe tomorrow!) the decorative touches I added to my MB including some DIY birdie wall art! It looks fab!! Thanks for stopping in. :o)

When BAD dogs strike...

This is what happens:

:o(

I definitely spent over an hour & a half @ Michaels & Walmart picking out the perfect tools, bases, embellishments, paint, etc. to re-create these 2 wonderful fall decor projects from two of my very talented Nestie friends:

1. Faux Mercury Pumpkins from Roeshel @ The DIY Show Off:

2. Fall Foliage Door Wreath from fellow Nestie friend xoxoll:

Unfortunately for Dizz the hubbs came home first & saw what he had done & this is what I came home to:

Hahahaha, poor dog. But in this case I think his banishment was warranted! So you know where I'll be today - at Michaels replacing the items he destroyed. Hopefully I'll make these look as good as the two talented ladies who were my inspiration for these projects! I can't wait to finish them & put them out - I heart the Fall! It's my favorite season. Oh, I also finished my DIY wall art for my MB...if I can pull my husband away from his 'effing PS 3 (NCAA Football 2010 - he's playing as I type this!) long enough to hang up the new drapes I bought for our bedroom & my DIY wall art, then I will be posting those pics & a tutorial for the art. Until then...Happy Fall Everyone!!