Lots of Creative (cheap ;) Fall Decorating Ideas!

With the colorful autumn season upon us, most of us get an inner urge to fill our homes with beautiful natural items that will warm our hearts during the cold months ahead.

This year, instead of spending large amounts of money on decorator items from department stores, why not use the very materials that are in huge abundance all around us.

I like to suggest that you grab a basket and take a long walk around your gardens and through the woods, and gather lots of things that remind you of fall. We call these items “Fall Findings.”

Here are just a few ideas that you can use to decorate your home for pennies using these free found items!

1. Bring in some of your terracotta flower pots & remove the spent summer flowers. Level out the top of the soil with an old fork. Then, lay some moss across the top of each pot that you gathered from your walk in the woods. Hollow out some apples, gourds, or small pumpkins & fill with small candles! These decorative displays will light up any fall table!

2. Go out & collect some beautiful leaves with the kids & use them for these great decorating ideas.

– Wrap leaves around a glass canning jar & tie with raffia ribbon. Use them for candles, pencils, kitchen utensils, etc.

– Press leaves between pages of heavy book to dry & make framed prints for Christmas gifts.

– Use a solid color shirt & fabric paint to make beautiful new designs! Take several different shaped leaves & paint one side of the leaf with fabric paint (you can use slightly different colors for shading). Gently press the painted side against your shirt, remove leaf & allow to dry.

– Make your own decorator drapes for under $4! Buy cheap fabric or sheets ($2 – $4.50), and use the leaf painting technique described above. Small grapevine wreaths make wonderful natural tiebacks!

– For an elegant look, spray paint leaves with gold or silver metallic paint. There are so many ways you can use these leaves! Here are a few examples:

– Add them to floral arrangements.

– Use as a placement tag for a dinner party (use a metallic pen to add the person’s name for a personal touch).

– Hot glue onto grapevine wreaths.

– Hot glue onto a grapevine swag to drape over cabinets or curtains.

– Line a glass plate with them & add a candle in the center. The glow of the candle will reflect off the silver or gold paint on the leaves.

– Hang them around pictures with picture hanging putty for a temporary display.

– An elegant fall wreath idea – buy a grapevine or twig wreath ($1.50 – $4), decorate with findings from your walk.

– Decoupage leaves onto natural papers to decorate picture frames, journals, or scrapbook covers!

– Give garden containers, walls, cabinets, etc. a slight appearance of falling leaves! Tape a leaf onto the object you’d like to decorate. Spray paint around the leaf. When you remove the leaf, you only have the outline remaining. You can do this in different patterns to create different effects.

– Give your walls an old cottage look! Use a left over tile, or buy some discontinued tiles natural colors work best). They only cost about .50 for a 12 inch tile! Spread some plaster mix (very cheap mix in the craft section) on the back of a leaf & press it onto the tile. Now you have a leaf imprint. Allow to dry, then rub natural paint colors on the leaf print area. These look wonderful framed in a shadow box frame. I’ve seen these types of frames at my local $1 store. This only takes a few minutes & gives a big decorator look for pennies!

Make several & give them as gifts!

3. Use sticks & twigs and gather them into a swag shape. Tie with floral wire and add fall findings or a nice ribbon bow.

* I used this idea for a breakfast nook in our home & I just love the way it turned out! I gathered some vines from the garden, used some wire to hang them up around the ceiling, then added a few white birds here & there – that looked like they were sitting on the branches.

You could choose, as I do, to leave this up all year round. For each season I add different decorative touches. For example, during the Christmas season, I use paperclips to hang up our Christmas cards. Simply punch a hole in the upper corner, insert the paperclip, and hang from the vines. Little white lights also add a great touch!

4. Make a natural twig candle holder. Put a rubber band around the middle of a glass. Insert twigs under the rubber band until the entire glass is covered. Tie raffia ribbon around the rubber band to cover it up.

I hope you & your family have “piles” of fun!

Family Apple Picking Day – 5 Ideas For Using all Those Apples

Apple Basket
Autumn is the most wonderful, and brilliantly colorful time of year. Evenings are spent in front of the fireplace with a cup of cocoa, fuzzy slippers, grandma’s quilt, and fond recollections of the days events. This Autumn, as in previous years, our family spent a day at the apple orchard. Every year memories are made, not only in the picking itself, but in the wonderful dishes enjoyed by all – for months to come. Here are a few apple ideas for you.

Decorate with apples

Slice the apple in thin slices – across the middle (makes a beautiful star pattern). Hang them on a string & drape over mantle, or other area for decoration.

Arrange dried apples around a wreath for a great natural decoration. You can also bag them in zip locks when completely dry & use them as dried apples in recipes.

Grandma Pearl’s Applesauce

Cut apples into chunks
Put into large pot, with a bit of water in the bottom
Cook until soft, add cinnamon & sugar if desired
You can freeze the sauce in bags or containers, or can it.

Replacement Ingredient in Recipes

Replace the oil & egg in recipes with applesauce – it makes a wonderful moist cake! According to Mott’s applesauce, by replacing 1/3 C oil with 1/3 C of their applesauce, a total of 608 calories & 73 grams of fat will be saved!

Mini Apple Pies

Make pie pastry, cut into rounds (with drinking glass) fill with 2 spoons of sauce. Fold in half, crimp edges, brush top with butter, sprinkle with sugar. Bake until golden brown.

Our Family’s Favorite – Apple Crisp

Peel apples and cut into thin wedges. Sprinkle with sugar, and sprinkle a small amount of water around on the top of the apples. This helps the apples make a nice juice during the cooking process.

Topping: Mix 1 handful flour, 2 handful brown sugar, 1 1/2 handful oatmeal, good sprinkle of both cinnamon & nutmeg Add 1 stick of very soft butter. Mix until small crumbs form. Add to top of apples & Cook at 350% until bubbly.

*Make large batch of this topping & freeze for later use. Use it to top – applesauce, ice cream, hot cereal, pudding etc.

Chicken Salad

chicken salad

Growing up in the south, we never really mixed fruit directly into our recipes, however, over the past year or so, I have started to acquire a taste for these new recipe ideas!

This week I put together a chicken salad something like one that I had at a local restaurant.

Although you can feel free to mix the ingredients in any combination that suits your taste, this is what I decided to do today.

Mix together
– cooked chicken (cubed)
– diced green peppers
– very small sized pasta
– grapes
– mayonnaise
– salt, pepper, garlic salt, and any other seasonings that you fancy

Mix well & enjoy!

Like I said – this recipe may not be something that you might normally have, but I think you’ll come to love the little bit of crisp sweetness that the grapes add to this salad.

You can serve by itself – or in a pita or wrap as a sandwich.

Antique Country Cupboard

antique country pine cupboard I bought this vintage pine cupboard approx. 16 years ago for $2 at a yard sale! I’m getting ready to paint it a deep shade of red – with a cream color on the inside.

I like to use it to display lots of dishes in my dinning room. I think the deep red will bring some needed color to this section of the cottage.

I’ll post a new picture when I finish the painting job.

Don’t you just love pine country cupboards (especially for $2 bucks!) If you’re trying to bring some warmth & history into your home simply add a pine cupboard!

Cottage Style Sofa

cottage sofa, home decorating

No matter what the weather is like outside (it’s been raining here for several days), you can always find comfort in a cozy place to sit, read, and meditate on the issues of the day.

I thought I would show you my favorite place to get comfortable in our home. This sofa was one that I had my eye on for quite some time. I first saw this piece when my friend took me with her to visit an upscale furniture store. They had so many great pieces that I think I fell in love with several 🙂 This cottage style sofa was one of the pieces in the front showroom. When I saw it, I knew that it was just the type of sofa that I would love to have in our new home, but the price was out of reach for what I wanted to spend on one piece.

When we finished building our home and were ready to buy some furniture, my husband & I went back to that store, if nothing else, just to get some new decorating ideas. You can imagine my excitement when I stepped into the clearance section, only to find that “my sofa” was sitting there against the wall – marked “way” down from the original price! It was just sitting there waiting to go home with us 🙂

Needless to say – that week I found myself relaxing in my new cozy sofa, enjoying a good magazine & a hot cup of vanilla tea.

I love the feeling that you get when surrounded by the warmth of the “old world” colors. We use many shades of red, mustard, cream, blue, green, – and of course – always a good dose of black in the different rooms of our home.

The black coffee table is nice and big – wonderful for putting your feet up at the end of a long day.

The wooden bowl is an antique butter bowl that I bought at an auction for $1.

The Forest is in Bloom!

Autumn leaves turning red

Even though the arrival of fall means that the cold winter months are soon to follow, every year I still find myself looking forward to the time of year when everything around us seems to transform into something altogether new. Like a butterfly coming out of it’s cocoon, it seems like an instant when we wake up one morning, only to find that the trees surrounding the cottage have burst forth into what seems like colorful blooms!

Thankfully, our region is surrounded by sugar maple trees, which never fail to give us a beautiful display of fall color each year.

Here a few trees are changing color along the edge of our drive.
fall color

Our area (Northeastern US) is famous for the spectacular autumn colors painted on the trees of its mountains and countryside. Here we enjoy a color pallet of reds, golds, oranges, and bronzes of the mixed deciduous woodlands.

Did you know that the US Forest Service actually planted the 100 plus scenic byways specifically with the autumn color show in mind? There are 31 states that are planted with over 3,000 miles of scenic drive!

You never really know when the color display will begin, but in our area, we’ve come to expect a few leaves to start showing their true colors around the end of August.

Something you may have never heard about!

The USDA Forestry Service actually has a free hotline phone number that you can call to see how the fall color is in any area of the country! This might come in very handy for those who are planning to take a long drive in the country to see the fall foliage.

Fall Color Hotline: 1-800-354-4595

I called today & found out that our area is supposedly at 15% peek color.

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Doing some Fall jobs around the house? Here’s a handy tip
When you have to stop painting & you’re not done with the job – put the roller in a pringles can & put it in the freezer. When you’re ready to start painting again – it will be ready for you!

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“The contented person is never poor; the discontented person is never rich”