Fall...er...Florida fall

I am not much of a decorator when it comes to my house.  I know what I like, but I hate the shopping part and the putting it all together part.  I'm not creative enough.  I prefer someone to come and just do it for me while I spend the money.  Several years ago my friend did that for me with my living room and bedroom.  It could use a new make-over, but I have more important things to redo than those so I chug along with the way it looks now.  When it comes to holiday decorating I rely on my sis-in-law.  Since she lives in Indiana and can't just fly down to do it for me I do the next best thing; I steal what she has done to her own home.

This year she posted on her blog some ideas and then pictures of what she did to her front porch.  While I loved it I knew it would be difficult to copy.  First, I didn't have the planters that were used on either side of her front door.  Secondly, we do not have great crafty stores in our area other than Michaels so finding big planters and different colored pumpkins wouldn't be easy.  Third problem; I also have my home decorated for football season so I like to incorporate that into the decorating process.  Lastly, I live in Florida.  Our weather is still in the 90's so we don't buy and carve real pumpkins until three days before Halloween because they will mold and stink.  What to do?  What to do?

Darcy and I set off on Saturday to check out stores.  I explained what the sis-in-law had done and how the Steelers black and gold had to be incorporated as well.  Daughter rolled her eyes, but gamely joined in.  We tried Big Lots and Dollar General, two places I thought might offer up something different.  I was wrong.  The Halloween selection was stark compared to the Christmas selection and any planters there were too small.  I did find two little scarecrows to take the place of the big ones I tossed out last year.  That gave me an idea.  I've had two porcelain tiled planters for several years that use to house palm trees out by my pool.  The trees died (just another reason why I don't belong in the decorating business) and the planters have pretty much been empty since.  I decided I would plant mums, a favorite decoration of my sis-in-law, in the planters and poke in the scarecrows. One problem solved.

Next we went to Walmart, but other than the mums I didn't find anything there either except aisles and aisles of Christmas decorations like the other stores.  We left there and finally hit Michaels.  Should have probably started off there and will remember to do so next year.  They had various sizes of craft pumpkins but only in orange and white.  I was hoping for at least some black pumpkins and then some that I could paint yellow to match my Steelers flags.  The white pumpkins were half off, but they didn't really look like they would hold being painted despite the "craft" name.  I was getting discouraged until we found these:

We bought ten of these babies and Darcy used them around our brick area in the front of the house, putting little pumpkins in between each pair.  We thought it made a nice addition to the whole theme.

Next I took my lone big scarecrow and prettied him up some so that he would fit into the whole theme as well.  He was quite corporative and happy to have some new additions to his wardrobe.

I hung my wreath on the front door, scattered some pumpkins around and called it a day.  Darcy found our flying, hit-the-wall, witch in our tub of decorations and added her to the house to the right.  Each week I'm going to put the opposing team's logo on her back and label it, ".... Fan".  For example this week it will say, "Bengals Fan" on her back.

I think the whole thing turned out well with Darcy's help.  The neighbor was so inspired she got up early the next day and decorated her house.  I spent the next day placing a few things inside my house which I suppose I could blog about or at least show a few photos of my less than stellar decorating techniques.

Thanks to my sis-in-law once again for posting her porch decorating pictures for me to uh...um...borrow.