My Favorite Time of Year

The smell of apples cooking in my kitchen, leaves changing colors, brisk mornings, hot cider, football, jumping into piles of fallen leaves, pumpkins, festivals and fairs, hayrides, haunted houses, sweaters and vests, our wedding anniversary, oh the list goes on....

I decided that I really need to start decorating our home...This use to be a fun task for me when we lived in the same house year after year.  But over the past few years, I've come to enjoy it less and less because not every decoration looks good in each house, or I can't find them, or don't want to spend more money on decorations that may not fit in the next house, well, you know...

But this year I decided to start small and get myself geared up for Christmas.  Here's my mantel for fall:

I made the banner out of burlap and created stencils to paint the letters and the leaves.  I hot glued it onto some thick twine and hung it from the mantel.  I got the idea for the bows around my candle holders from a shop nearby...why I never thought of that before is beyond me!

Now I've got the bug to start decorating the house.  It's just a matter of finding (or making) the extra things for this house that I didn't already have in my stash of decorations!