BrittanyMakes

It's about time I officially welcome fall, into the house and into my wardrobe.  Our heat wave last week was nice, it felt like one last hurrah to summer.  It was so hot we even turned on the AC for the first time this year!  I'm definitely ready for fall, ready to strap on the boots and layer up.

The first thing on my 'welcome fall' to-do list was to spruce up the house with some fall decor.  I'm not ready to go full-on halloween theme, it's a personal rule – I must wait until it's officially October before I do that.  If the BF had a choice, he'd already be decorated for Christmas.  Every August I have to beg him to stop listening to Christmas music! Crazy boy. In the mean time, I'll just take a pumpkin or two!

Let me present my fall candle mantel! I've joined a link party today, over at The Lettered Cottage, the theme was 'fall mantels', which I found helpful to focus and motivate me into decorating one space at a time, beginning with the mantel.

My fall colors this year are crisp white, earthy green and antique gold.  I enjoy adding touches of beige and orange, especially pumpkins, for a true representation the fall season :) Pumpkins also help ground the crisp white from feeling too much like spring.

You can see below, I played around with a couple different sizes, colors and positions of pumpkins.

I bought the owl from Ross for $8, he was ugly and brown before, but I fancied him up in a few coats of white enamel spray paint.

I found the candle holders at the Goodwill by my office, they were sitting there for over a month, marked $9/ea.  I ended up asking for $7 for both, and they said OK.  Score!  They were originally ugly scuffed up brass, but just like the owl, I cured them with a couple coats of spray paint.

The pumpkins are from Trader Joes. I about died when I drove up the other day.  Barrels and barrels of pumpkins, cinderella pumpkins, white pumpkins, weird shaped gourds, regular old orange pumpkins.  I was concerned about where to find pumpkins in early September, TJ's to the rescue!

The antique gold frame was also a thrift store find.  Someone had a picture of Venice in the 70's or 80's professionally framed, apparently got over it and gave it up to Salvation Army.  I got it for $10, including the picture of Venice.  I was pretty excited when I found it, my BF's dad is from Venice so I knew it would be a meaningful purchase.  His dad is awesome, he only speaks Italian so it's a riot trying to communicate with him. 

The lantern is from Crate and Barrel.  It was a Christmas gift from close friends of ours, I absolutely love it.  The candles are from Cost Plus, I bought 2 green candles that smell like spicy pears, and 2 brown ones that smell like a crazy assortment of toasted cinnamon spices.  Absolutely delish!  Lastly, the grape vine pumpkin was from Target in the dollar section.  It was just brown and boring before, it looked like a ball of twigs, so I spray painted it gold.  Now it looks like a ball of gold twigs.

Props to mi madre for letting me borrow her mantel for this post.  Our house lacks a fire place and mantel.  It is very sad.  You definitely don't realize how much you love fireplaces until you don't have one. We have to hang our Christmas stockings on the wall.  So sad!

There are so many amazing fall mantels out there. Check them out by clicking this image.