Quick 2011 Fall Decorations

Wow...it's been almost three months since my last post. Time flies by so quickly. 'Tis the season again for decorating as the season changes. I've been planning on blogging about Fall decorations, but a quick two weeks had passed and I see homes around me already decorating for the winter holidays.

Some people refer to Fall decorations as forgotten decorations maybe due to the quick switch-over after they take down their summer decorations, they decorate for Halloween, leaving only a couple of weeks for the Fall decorations. Although, some people can easily change their Halloween decorations by leaving the pumpkins and gourds while replacing the ghoulish items with Thanksgiving theme decorations.

My family doesn't celebrate Halloween nor we celebrate Christmas, but we do celebrate Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. So for us, we just decorate for the season-- Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter!

Actually, I've already started transforming our dining room into a Winter theme, which I hope to complete this week. However, since I love Fall so much that I had the Fall decorations up from the first day of Fall, so it's time I change it as the weather is becoming winter-like lately. 

This year, I'm using hand-blown glass pumpkins in my Fall decorations. I got the trio from HomeGoods. If you want to know more about hand-blown glass pumpkins and how you can use to decorate them, read my article "Add Elegance to Your Fall Decorations with Hand-Blown Glass Pumpkins," which I wrote for Yahoo.

In addition to the hand-blown glass pumpkins, I used dessert platters/stands as part of my decorations for Fall. As I blogged in September, in January of this year my daughter and I started a charity-- JessiCakes Project. We bake and sell goodies and donate profits to our favorite charities. Since then, we have been buying cake stands and cupcake stands to hold our baked goodies. Using them to decorate helps in the storage shortage that we're experiencing recently since we started baking. I wrote "How to Decorate with Cake and Cupcake Stands" for tips and sample photos.

Dining Room- artificial flowers in a glass vase, the orange lillies came with a glass, then I added two sprays of orange flowers with beaded buds and at the center a branch with green foliage.

These dessert platters/stands (green and orange) look great and complement the hues found on the hand-blown glass pumpkins.  Both the stands and the pumpkins are from HomeGoods.

Another view of the dessert platters/stands.

The blue and white vase that I use year-round was an item I got from HomeGoods in 2010. I use it with or without flowers. I added three silk flowers from HomeGoods as well.

Year 3 and Counting

Since January, we have been very busy. My daughter and I started our own charity called JessiCakes Project. My daughter came up with the idea of selling our baked goods and donate majority of the proceeds (after expenses) to her favorite charities. Now that we're 9 months into baking for charities, we have decided that we can turn JessiCakes Project into a business, but still continue to donate to charities. There's a mountain of paperwork that we still need to complete, but that's another topic for another blog site.

We have been enjoying our home for more than 3 years now. There are still a lot of work to do. We're hoping to ramp up the backyard improvement again in 2012. By that time, one of the two cars would have been fully paid, so we can spend a little for landscaping. I hate looking at the overgrown weeds every year after the rainy season. I also hate spending $150 to get them cleaned up  year after year. I do hope we can make progress by April of 2012. Wish me luck!!!

Is it Spring Yet?

These trio of vases I bought separately from Ross last year. They were on top of the console table adjacent to the dining table in the dining room. This year, I decided to lessen the amount of flowers on the tallest vase to give that minimalist, clean look. They now proudly sit on top of a glass console table in the hallway adjacent to the kitchen's eating area and dining room.

I decided not to change our color scheme.  The turquoise-and-brown combination is still very appealing. I decided to cover the table with pure brown tablecloth to protect its top from scratches and burn. There are ring marks from hot bowls of soup my nieces and nephew were eating back in our former home. I never got around to removing those. Maybe this year, I would be able to.

The centerpiece is a vase I bought from Home Goods last year that I used on top of our living room's coffee table. I stowed it the past winter. Now it holds silk flowers (2 magnolias and 1 white hydrangea). The soup bowls match the colors well, so I kept them, minus the chargers. Then, I placed the napkin rings on top and inserted turquoise napkins in each ring. I will take photos and upload them soon.

The console top had items from my previous posts, but I added a clear bowl with wooden fruits.