It's Finally Fall

I don't know about you, but for me it's just now starting to feel like fall. Its probably taken so long because I live in Texas and it's the hottest year on record. Seriously, today is a high of 84 and I'm considering that a nice cool fall day. Anyways, fall means people start decorating their houses with pumpkins and wreaths and all sorts of fall-ish things. Decorating for the season was one of the things I really looked forward to doing once I was a homeowner. Last weekend I was at a friend's lake house and though it wasn't my style, I love how much fall decor they had out:

I love decorating for the season, I think it makes it feel special. So I got all motivated to decorate and then when I return home I was reminded how much there still is to do in our house. You probably shouldn't work on decorating for fall when your walls still need paint and your floors aren't done (still have one more bedroom to go). My other issue is that I'm not sure what I want to do for decorating. Most of what is sold isn't quite modern enough for my taste. I'm just more minimalist than most people I think. My goal is to have decorations for each season that I can use year after year and just pack away in a tub in the garage when not in use. Since I want to start collecting permanent decor items I feel like I have to figure out now what I want the house to look like. What I mean is I need to figure out the general color scheme I'm going for. I don't want to just buy a bunch of stuff and throw it together and hope it matches. I feel like others are great at that, but my taste must vary wildly because every time I try I end up with pieces that look horrible together.  Anyways... even though I don't plan on buying much this year, I've started trying to plan out what general colors I want. My problem is I hate the color orange and I don't use a lot of brown when decorating...kind of a problem for fall decor. My house is going to be all whites, grays, blues and greens and I don't want decor that completely clashes. I think the only solution is to get over my hate for orange and start collecting fall decor in orange and white. Those two colors together are a little more modern than your traditional fall items but they will still look like Autumn. And orange looks good with blue, so the decor will pop in our house. But I'm not 100% sold yet, so I'm going to write this year off as too late and wait to figure this out until next year. For now I was thinking I"ll just get a pumpkin and a wreath for our front door...until I saw how much they were charging for wreaths at Hobby Lobby. This is Hobby Lobby, not some high end store. This wreath is not worth the price to me:

Especially since it may or may not fit my long term fall decor.  (See how much stress I put into decorating by insisting everything match?)

So I decided that this year's fall is a wash, but I am not letting Christmas go by without decorations. So I'm going to start figuring out now what I want to do for Christmas. I know, it's early, but if I start now I'll actually do something. :) While at Hobby Lobby I saw this display and really liked how just red and white look together:

But then I thought about all the blue in my home and it made me worried that if I decorate in all white and red for Christmas it will end up just looking patriotic. Hmmm... I'm going to have to put some serious thought into this. Maybe do some research on Houzz.com 

This has been a long rambling post, but I'll leave you with one more Hobby Lobby picture. This is a mirror that I really like:

I could see this in our dining room on the north facing wall (to the right of the window). I was hoping it would be like $30 but it's $150, so I'm going to have to think on it for a while. Luckily HL does half off on mirrors like every other week (or so it seems) so it would probably only be $75, but that's still a pretty penny when I'm not even sure what the curtains will be in the Dining Room. So many things to think about! hmmmmm.... :)