Fall Round Up

For me fall ends on Thanksgiving day. That's when all the orange, yellow and brown fall decorations get replaced by the red, green and silver Christmas decorations. That color change is enough to make the whole world feel like winter to me.

Before I get hung up on winter I wanted to do a quick fall round up. So here we go:

Fall Favorites

While visiting my in-laws a few weeks back, we were introduced to these Terra brand sweet potato chips. They are chips made from actual sweet potatoes - best of all they are not salted. Just wonderful!

Yummy!

Breakfast has always been my favorite meal of the day. If I'm going out to eat, I want it to be for breakfast food. It doesn't even need to be at breakfast time, just so long as it's breakfast foods. Even though this has always been true, it's even more true since becoming a vegetarian. See, restaurants have very few options on lunch and dinner menus for people who don't eat meat. But a breakfast menu always has lots of tasty, meatless delights.

So why am I talking about breakfast in my fall favorites? Because it's in the fall that Denny's does an incredible pumpkin pancake. I know, I know, everyone does a pumpkin pancake in the fall. But nobody does it like Denny's. The pancakes are great alone but then they add a lovely pumpkin flavored sugary whipped cream like dollop on top - well - we spend a fair amount of time at Denny's in the fall specifically for these pancakes.

Fall Successes

I continued to work on projects around the house this fall. This will probably be the case for the next few years as there is so much to do.

I painted this antique wash stand white to match everything else in the master bedroom. We are using it for storage and to hold our bulky, old-fashioned TV.

I still can't decide how I feel about the ripples in the top drawer.

Hubby and I put up shelves and a storage rack in the garage. It was a good first step in an effort to get the garage organized. A small investment and a couple hours of work made such a difference. Projects like this are so satisfying.

I painted this thing. It was something custom made by hubby's grandfather for his sister's stereo back in the day. Somehow it ended up with hubby and we had been using for various things over the years. I did a lighter shade of green on the inside and darker shade on the outside. It's kinda hard to see the different shades in these pictures but either way it's a fun pop of color for the living room.

Lucky duck - you get a little glimpse of some Christmas decorations

With winter quickly approaching I needed to do something about the front entryway. I had spent months looking for just the right bench, table and hooks. The bench needed to be painted and the cushion needed to be recovered.

The mint green and cross stitch flowers just don't work
with our decor.

I did a neutral color and modern print

The table just needed some paint.

Crazy yellow, silver and black chalkboard paint on top

I used the same base color as the bench but
will likely use a green to accent it later.
The big thing was having that shelf below to store hats & gloves.

I added some hooks and decor items. The space isn't finished as I'm still looking for a few specific items but it's much better than it was.

Already making great use of the hooks.

Fall Failures

The big failure of this fall has been all the things I didn't get done. I had wanted to get the living space painted before it was time to decorate for Christmas. I had been waiting for our 10 month visit with our builder (which was supposed to happen in October but didn't happen until November) because we were having problems with our drywall. Since our ceiling is vaulted and we will need to hire someone to paint I wanted to wait until the drywall issues were resolved before we spent the money. Good thing it worked out as it did because Gypsy's time in the pet hospital and subsequent surgery were crazy expensive. The painting will have to wait a while. As will the water softener and all other projects.


Highlight

The highlight of this fall has been decorating for Halloween and Thanksgiving. I won't bore you with more of those pictures but you can check out the links if you want.

Lowlight

Quite easily the lowlight of this fall was Gypsy's bladder surgery and the subsequent recovery, or lack of recovery of her bladder sphincter.

What I am reading. 
I am just about to pick up True Grit by Charles Portis. I saw the most recent movie version when it came out on Netflix and hadn't really planned on reading the book. Generally I don't like to read a book when I've already seen the movie and vice versa but my father-in-law lent it to me and sung its praises. Guess I'll give it a go.

That's about all for my fall. Now let's dive into winter and Christmas.