Getting Ready For Thanksgiving

Hello friends! I'm super excited for Thanksgiving this year since it will be the first one in our new house and with my new double convection oven! Today I'm going to be going over my store list and checking it twice and maybe I'll even head out to try to get most of it bought to avoid the last minute chaos. I really love Thanksgiving and I don't do Christmas beforehand. I have just a few things out this year and it's all that's really needed to add Thanksgiving beauty to our home. 

I just created a little junk vignette around my chalkboard on the big buffet in the front room. Love it! Easy and quick.

On a small side table I grouped my favorite turkey tureen, a yard sale pheasant my mom just surprised me with, a Jim Shore Scarecrow and some various pumpkins and gourds. I decorated my little ivory tree with leaves and mini-gourds. We recently repainted our living room with a historic 1920's color, (I actually ended up having to make it from several colors to get the color I wanted) it's a dark rusty orange so all of my fall decorations look great.

 

I've messed around with the buffet in my living room several times trying to find the perfect way to display this awesome $5 yard sale turkey I found a couple of weeks ago.

I got rid of tons of fall decorations when we moved, but I couldn't part with these vintage Gurney turkey candles. They always look so sweet grouped with my brown transferware and fall dishes.

I also kept all of my antique turkey platters but they are still packed away. I was missing them and contemplating digging them out but I saw this one at a thrift store and decided it would be enough to satisfy my turkey platter fix for this year, and saved me the hassle of unpacking. 

Outside I've cleaned up all of the summery decorations and packed them away. Pots are being cleaned and the gardens cleared out and leaves raked. I'm still enjoy the last of the herbs and pumpkins through Thanskgiving.

The Rosemary is wonderful and I have been using it in my homemade simmers to keep the house smelling fall wonderful and fresh.

Are you ready for Thanskgiving? I can't wait!

Amber

Bewitching Makeover!

This weekend I purchased this witch at my mother-in-law's yard sale for $10. I have always wanted one of the life size animated witches like the ones in Grandin Road, but I could never bring myself to pay full price for one. I was thrilled to get a hold of this one because I knew with a little creativity she could be awesome.

She looked like she had seen one too many Halloweens, so I decided to give her a makeover.

The first thing I did was give her some false eyelashes. I used a cheap black eyeliner pencil to reshape her eyes, and give her some brows and lipstick. I even gave her a new witch mole, I mean, beauty mark.

The next thing was take her hair out of a ratty old ponytail and let it down. She is rockin' the awesome silver hair like we are seeing all over Pinterest these days. Then I started adding style and bling with a spider scarf and vintage brooch. I also reshaped her hat and glued a black and orange glittery rose on the side. She was looking good at this point, but when I added her blingy reading glasses, Alakaazammm! Makeover magic!

Bewitching! Her eyes light up and she cackles and moves around. So funny! And now she's just too stylish to be creepy. I'm hoping the neighborhood kids will love her and that my niece won't be afraid of her like she was when my in-laws had her on their porch. 

If this isn't a case for proving the power of makeup and bling, I don't know what is! I found the old brooch for .25 at a yard sale earlier in the summer and the scarf, glasses, eyelashes and eyeliner came from the Dollar Tree. The rose was a clearance sale special at Jo-Ann Fabrics so I spent about $6 on her makeover. $16 total-Works for me!

The witch also has a sound effect of a cat meow and screech which gave me the idea to put my vintage blow mold cat at her feet. Now it sounds like it's coming from the cat!

Last night I was going through some more Halloween stuff and found this cute tag...

"She tricked and treated and ate candy all night long" 

Here is what my porch was like last week. 

This was great for earlier in October. The flowers and plants were still vibrant here and the skeleton gave it just a touch of Halloween without going overboard. We have had a frost since this photo and things were starting to wither and die so it was time to clear out anyway. I don't like to do the creepy-creepy stuff until the week of Trick-or-Treat, so this look worked well up until this week. I bought the witch just in time to make the changes.

Today I moved my skeleton to another spot on the porch and cleared out all of the mums and summer flowers that were killed by the first frost and repositioned some pumpkins. Once I had my witch in place, I added some creepy cloth with purple lights over top for Trick-or-Treaters to pass under. Now we are ready, and Halloween is definitely in the air!!!

Have a bewitching Halloween week!

Amber
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Ready For Halloween Porch!

After almost a month I am almost "finished" (yeah right) with my porch and stairs. I really love it! This is our first fall at our new house so I had fun coming up with a brand new look. I didn't spend a lot of money which is the best part.

I've really toned down a lot on my Halloween decor and sold a lot of it when we moved, but this year I did purchase large skeleton since we had such a nice porch for her to sit on and greet Trick-Or-Treaters.

Meet Ms. Beatrice Bones! She loves (d) pumpkins and fall gardening too!

I mixed in a couple of light up jack-o-lanterns for Halloween and we will carve a couple of the larger pumpkins but most of the design will last through Thanksgiving.

If you missed my previous fall porch tour click here to see the rest of the post 

http://www.junkaholicsunanimous.blogspot.com/2015/10/fall-porch.html?m=1

What about you? Is your porch ready? I'm headed to the blog parties to find out!

Amber

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Fall Porch!

Hello on this October 9th? Time flies! And it's actually fall now so time to get this blog rolling with more fall posts. Today I'm showing you around the porch. This is the first time I have shown our porch of our new home!

I'll start with my favorite corner by the front door.

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As I started thinking about fall decorating in late summer I was certain all these urns would be topped with pumpkins, but I loved the classic look of the boxwood and mossy spheres too much to part with them. I just kept them and added some of my faux chalk painted pumpkins around on the ground. 

This was so much less work and looks great!

 I like to evoke a magical, Celtic feeling for fall and the greens, greys, and stone urns work together like, well, magic!

You can't really make it out clearly here, but the little stone that the bird is holding says "healing." It's
one of my favorite reminders that every day I am healing through Jesus' miraculous intervention.

I have shown my small salvaged crown molding planter a few years ago in a previous post. It's one of my favorite pieces but I couldn't find a spot for it inside our new house so I put it on the porch to display my vintage Tom Clark gnomes. 

They add such a whimsical touch! I call them my fall garden helpers.

In keeping with magical fall gardens, I also created a cloche on our porch bistro table.

I already had this display with the faux succulents, garden finials, and fairy in a mossy nest. I simply added some small faux pumpkins and that's it. Fall magic!

I love how the green pumpkin mirrors the colors and patina of the finials, and the darker orange one just pops.

A few of my favorite things!

For my gothic planter I simply added a few floral picks of the same greenish-blue pumpkin and gourds and stuck some white pumpkins on there for pops of color and to compliment the other white pumpkins around my porch and yard. I keep it filled with boxwood year round so it's easy to just add
some little touches for holidays.

Love, love, love our new copper mailbox! We had looked for almost a year with no luck and when we finally gave up we found this one at Home Goods. The pumpkins sign was a cheap yard sale find and the color of the lettering just matches the tones of the copper mailbox and fall picks. I love how these things come together and I only spent about $10 on the fall picks so that's even better!

Here's an updated tweak since started this post.

I added this cute vintage style sign...

It's already October 9th and I'm not finished with my Halloween decorating? Scary!

If the rain ever stops we are going to the pumpkin farm to hopefully find the last few pumpkins for my porch to be "finished." I'll be adding some Hallowwen decor too.  I'm hoping to be able to take you on an outdoor tour next week. 

Thanks for stopping by. See you soon!

Amber
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Thanksgiving Mantel/Dining Room Tour Part 2

Welcome back for part two of my Thanksgiving tour! Today I am showing you my Thanksgiving mantel and buffet. I hope you will check out part one if you haven't already. You can see my farm table and some other little Thanksgiving touches I added around the dining room. Just click the link at the end of this post. Hope you enjoy the tours!

 

 This year I wanted to do something different on the mantel, but I had no clue what, so I started thinking about the junk I hoarded collected over the summer to get inspired. The idea really came together quite quickly once I remembered the old galvanized chick feeder out in my garden. I decided to simply fill it to overflowing with my favorite faux garland, some mini pumpkins and gourds, and some dollar store candles embellished with burlap and little Thanksgiving hang tags. I took a few deer antlers from the table and used them as well. I displayed my favorite prim turkey whose tail feathers are so long they got cropped out of the picture! For visual interest I used an arched mirror-less mirror, and layered an antique oval mirror to reflect the light of the candles. I like the contrast of the dark wood on the mirror against the shabby metal frame, as it adds just enough brown to balance out the mantel design.

At Halloween I created a "Queen of Halloween" vignette on my mantel using this vintage bronze trophy. (See it here: http://junkaholicsunanimous.blogspot.com/2013/11/best-of-halloween-2013.html) Once the Halloween was packed away, I decided to keep the trophy  on the mantel for Thanksgiving and fill it with a gorgeous variety of turkey feathers and a matching spray of florals and berries from the garland in the chick feeder. A winning combination, I think!

Yesterday I added the large acorn ornaments that I found in an old basket while cleaning. I didn't

remember them at all, and just got lucky that I was cleaning out baskets in time for Thanksgiving so I could use them.

 

I am so obsessive I almost went back and retook all of my mantel pictures because my red shirt is reflecting in the mirror and clashes! I should have worn white or ivory! I digress. Easily.

Anyway, I love, love, love this year's mantel! Our farm table may very well be the best $10 ever spent while junkin', and has inspired the use of more natural elements mixed with vintage junk, which I think it's the perfect style for our home.

 

A little blurry but you get a good view of the trophy.

 

Love the glow of the candles at night casting shadows, along with the cozy warm colors. I will miss the warmth of fall. I'm enjoying every last minute of it. 

 

Below is a picture I took with my iphone but I wanted to use it since it shows the most of the mantel from another angle. It's hard to get the full mantel in any shot because our farm table sits where you need to stand to get the whole thing.

 

Now that you've seen the mantel in the daytime and evening, let's move on around the dining room...

 

My buffet is one of my favorite things to decorate, but nearly impossible to photograph due to the large picture window behind it. I hope you can get an idea of how it looks in real life. I have enjoyed creating this chic and elegant display, where all I did was tweak a few of my everyday buffet vignettes for Thanksgiving.  The center features my vintage jewelry bust, "Grace." You may have seen her in my Halloween posts all decked out as the Belle of the Halloween ball. Now she is cozied up in a warm ivory scarf and looking dreamily ahead toward the upcoming Christmas holidays.

 

The buffet is packed with vintage pretties, amber goblets and salad plates, vintage amber glass bottles, loads of tarnished silver plate items, a few vintage turkeys, and my Johnson Brothers

"His Majesty" turkey teacups and saucers.

 

I am so in love with fall that I try to bring as much of it indoors as possible. To the right are some little ironstone leaf dishes filled with acorns my son picked from the yard. He and I went for a little drive to see what gifts nature could spare and we found these lovely orange and blue berries. I believe the orange is bittersweet. So pretty in the amber bottles!

 

 

 

 

Well dear readers, I am going to do my best to get part three of Thanksgiving up tomorrow, depending on whether or not my health cooperates. I still want to show you my corner cabinet, since that is where most of my favorite vintage Thanksgiving treasures are.

 

As for now, this last picture has inspired me to fix myself a cup of green tea and to check out some of your inspirational Thanksgiving and holiday décor. If you would like to see more of my dining room, click here: http://junkaholicsunanimous.blogspot.com/2013/11/thanksgiving-tablescape-and-dining-room.html

 

Have a great weekend!

Amber

 

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