Favorite Autumn Decor

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I love October

This is a surprise to no one. In Portland, October has some of my favorite weather. We get those chilly but sunny fall days perfect for walks and pumpkin patches, and also those cozy rainy days perfect to stay in and curl up with a good book. Plus, it’s early enough into the rainy season that the rain still feels like a refreshing change from summer. Then there is the seasonal foods, and the fall fashion, and candles, and bath bombs! I mean, you can eat soup, use a bath bomb, and light a candle any time of year, but it’s just better on a crisp fall day. Not to mention the holidays. For me, the “holiday season” feels like it starts with Rosh Hashanah and runs through the New Year. There’s something to look forward to every month from October through the end of December.

This will also come as a shock to no one, but I also enjoy changing up my decor for the season. I think it started when I was a kid. My mom would always decorate the house… not in the over-the-top, pumpkin spice everything that you see on Pinterest these days, but still festive. There’d be fall wreaths, we always did something fun with pumpkins on the front steps, and she’s always let us go a bit crazy with the fake cobweb a few days before Halloween. (Typically this would mostly be outside on the shrubbery, but one year she let my sister and I completely cobweb up our bedroom door frames.)

 
 

Last year, I might have taken the fall decor a bit too far. Admittedly in the Fall of 2020, I had a bit of extra time on my hands, I was a bit extra stressed, and I was really craving the holidays. In my previous house, we had an old fireplace that needed a good sweeping before it could be used, so instead of having a working fireplace, we kept it decorative. Most of the year it was full of birch logs but for Halloween, I would have it overflowing with pumpkins. I used mostly fake pumpkins so I could keep the living room decorated through Thanksgiving without worrying about any pumpkins rotting. Moving into our current apartment, I found myself with an abundant amount of faux pumpkins. September 1st, I put pumpkins and leaf garlands anywhere and everywhere I could. Simon was very nice about the “looks like someone puked pumpkin everywhere” aesthetic in our apartment but it definitely is not his thing. His tolerance of my sometimes excessive holiday decor is one of the many reasons I love him.

This year, I promised I’d scale it way back.

So I’m taking a page from my mother’s book and keeping it more subtle and classy. I gave away most of my pumpkin collection and am sticking with some of my favorite glass and ceramic pieces and bringing in more neutral tones. I also waited until October to put out all the decorations (although some of the coffee table bits and fall throw pillows were pulled out a bit earlier). I’m leaning more into Thanksgiving colors this year (think wheat and pheasant feathers) and pulling back from some of the brighter orange and over-the-top piles of pumpkins. I do have one orange leaf garland that has made its way into the dinning room, but for the most part, the colors are pretty neutral. The real pumpkins I did buy are all in white, creams, tans, and green tones. And parts of my dining room decor are actual fall squashes we eat throughout the week and restock on during our weekly grocery shop. Functional art?

I love how it turned out. It’s going to transition beautifully through the Thanksgiving holiday, it gives me all the cozy fall vibes I love, and it feels more appropriate for our current space. I am still going to do some fun decorating for Halloween, but am waiting a little closer to the holiday. I have a few Halloween pieces that bring me a lot of joy—particularly our doormat—and even though we don’t live in an area with Trick-or-Treaters (and won’t be hosting any parties this year), I still want to do a little something for the holiday. Plus, I’m on Zoom enough it seems worth decorating to add a little festive fun in my meeting backgrounds.

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