Our Life In Design: A Fall Mantle ... Without the Mantle

So I've had this project done for a couple weeks now.I know I'm way behind with this post. Everyone else in the Blogosphere has done their Fall Mantle posts. But Whatever.

I wanted to decorate a little bit for Fall this year. However, I've never really had any Fall decor and I don't have a mantle to decorate. Luckily, this year my loving Hubby bought me some pumpkins that I had be crushing on at HomeGoods.

I blogged about them in this post. But of course that was a month before my birthday. So when we went back to HomeGoods to pick them up they only had the Oil Rubbed Bronze one. I was kind of sad at first because the white one was my favorite. But my Hubby is a quick thinker and remembered that HomeGoods, Marshalls and TJ Maxx are all owned under the same parent company and tend to carry similar items.

So we hopped over to Marshall's which was in the same shopping plaza. No dice. They didn't have it either. So we ran a few more errands and then swung over to TJ Maxx on the way home. If they didn't have it we had one more TJ Maxx that we could check out. But lucky us they only had 2 left. So we headed home with my two new ceramic pumpkins and then they sat in the dining room wrapped up for a few weeks.

I had originally planned on putting them out on our dining room table in our new house. But that plan fell apart when we ended up not buying said house. So on to plan B. We have a cabinet in our living room. Fondly referred to a the $3 cabinet. That is because we got it for $3 a the ReStore. I love you ReStore. It is one of those cabinets from like the 80's or 90's with the big glass door that people used to put their VCR and other components in. So it had all these cut-outs in the back panel for cords and junk. We pulled that off and had my father cut a piece of wood-grain laminate, that he had in his basement, to size. A bunch of finishing nails latter we had a much better looking piece of furniture. By no means is it beautiful but at lease you can't see right through it anymore. I decided that I'm going to make the top of this $3 cabinet my seasonal decor spot. I used it last year for my Christmas display. Here is the before:

Pretty plain. Just a couple wedding photos, a wax burner, a painted pony (I collect them) and my Husband's Grandfather's flag. I started by taking everything off except the flag and the photo on the wall. Then added in my pumpkin, a Fall themed pony, and an apothecary jar filled with leaves I gathered from our yard. Add a few more leaves to surround the items and a few pine cones and it was good to go.

Here is a little detail shot of the leaf jar and my Apple-oosa pony.

I thought it was great for my first try. I did try one alternative look. Instead of my white pumpkin I tried the ORB'ed one but I think it just looks too dark and almost like a black hole in the display.

So there it is all done, or so I thought. While Andrew and I were out this weekend we found a cute little addition. He adds a little more Halloween to the display.