Its FALL!

I love fall!  Did you know that?  I love to decorate for fall.  I love the smells of fall.  I love the weather.  Pretty much, I love everything about the season.  This year, we've had a really nice fall so far.  We've never turned our AC off this early.  In fact, last year, I didn't turn it off till mid-November!  ANNNYWAY...my favorite room to decorate is my dining room!  I inherited my grandma's furniture but the chairs were in bad shape so I also now own my mom's old dining room chairs.  I dig them even if they are hard to move.  They aren't antique like the rest of the stuff in there but they look pretty okay.  I love both the china cabinet and the buffet and I love them most during fall and Christmas.  Here's my fall look:

See?  There are my lovely sunflower topiaries!  Cute!  Steph pointed out that since I didn't glue the balls onto the sticks, I only need 2 new balls and some different flowers to match other decorations!  So true!  I may try red and white roses for Christmas.  I made that other flower arrangement last year.  There is a mirror behind it with gold and red colored beads on it.  The flowers are red and orange daisies and green hydrangeas.  The daisies are in the center, then the hydrangeas on the outside.  I also stuck REAL sticks in the arrangement, right out of the front yard.  That bucket came from the dollar spot at Target last year...LOVE the dollar spot!  And then around the egdes is moss.  The toile dishes were from my grandma.  I love them!  The charger...well, I just like it and needed something to balance out the dishes on the other side.  I also found that great ceramic pumpkin at Target last year on clearance.  The other glass pumpkins came from Ross.  I stumbled across them on a shopping trip a few weeks ago and went a little overboard with the glass pumpkins.  There are 4 more smaller ones on the table.  See, I bought some awesome glass pumkins for my mom and my sister way back when at my favorite shop (in Maine...not in Virginia...boo) and have been searching for my own ever since.  For me, a display like this really needs to be balanced on both sides because there are 2 of the same lamps on each side.  When I worked at Lillian Vernon in college, I was in charge of balancing our shelf displays.  It helps lots of stuff look less cluttered, don't you think?  I'm a little anal about it!  The reason the ceramic pumpkin made it to the buffet was because there is a coffee cup infront of the toile dishes.  See?  Anal, I tell you!

 

 

Don't look too closely at my china cabinet!  It needs some serious windex.  There are all kinds of finger prints at the top of the door from me opening and closing it.  More toile dishes.  More ceramic pumpkins.  The small white ones are from the dollar tree!  Seriously!  Too cute.  Then there's some garland from Michael's thrown in there on the middle shelf.  The cream colored dishes match the charger although I would never use them together (I have brown for that..and black...and red...and black...and maybe gold too).  I don't have china, except the plates hanging in this room but I did want a really nice set of dishes to use in this room that matched the room.  They were a Christmas present from mom and dad a couple of years ago.  I heart them!  I seriously wish that this cabinet lit.  Granted, the shelves are wood so the light wouldn't reach the bottom anyway...but the top shelf sure would look pretty!  I tried putting small tap lights in there tonight but the light was too blue (halogen).  

I'll post more pictures of the dining room soon.  Like I said, this is just a peek!  See, I ran out of storage space in the dining room.  I have vases, candle holders and serving dishes that have no home right now.  I've been looking for a cabinet or dresser to store this stuff and had a spot all picked out for it...in the hallway right by the front door.  Well, I found one last weekend at a yardsale but it needs some work.  I plan on starting tomorrow to getting it look up to par.  I can't wait to see it painted black, housing my stuff, with some more cute pumpkins and fall decor on top.  Stay tuned...you'll see it as soon as its done!

Toni