Fall Tablescapes

7843574_SAre you ready to bring your dinner table into autumn? If you’ve started making stews and homemade baked beans again because you just can’t wait any longer, how about making the table itself feel like fall?

Start with a walk through your neighborhood. Even desert landscaping may have some dried branches around that have fallen off a nearby tree. If you don’t find anything, visit your local hobby store or florist to pick up some dried branches, pinecones or any other dried plants or branches.

Next, wander through your kitchen for pottery vases or bowls that mirror the fall colors. Any natural-color basket or wood container would also work well.

Fall flowers can be found in every grocery and warehouse market. Consider sunflowers in traditional yellow or bright dark orange coupled with Japanese lanterns and fall berries in dark reds and greens. Fill in with mums, which come in every color of fall. Add a few of those dried branches and you have a floral masterpiece to echo the season.

Because fall is harvest time, you can add almost any combination of fruit or vegetables and have the mix work. Look for pomegranates, bosc or other yellow or brown pears, apples, and dark red or purple grapes.

Do you have a fall table runner? That’s a good place to start. Now, set all of your discoveries on the table and move things around until it looks right. Those branches may work well in a tall vase or pitcher, or maybe just lay them along the center of the table. Pile fruit in a bowl – a couple of apples, a pear, an eggplant and a few fall leaves and you have created the vision of a harvest feast.

Above all, enjoy the process. Celebrate the changing of the seasons with complementary changes in your home, and you can welcome autumn‘s bounty along with the cooling temperatures. For more ideas, we invite you to visit Fulton Home’s Pinterest board: Seasonal décor.

Dress Your Home for Fall

It’s hard to believe that autumn is upon us when we’re still dealing with triple-digit temperatures. But you can start bringing the season into your home. To get into the mood, select colors, shapes, products and even foods that create the feeling of fall.

Start with the produce department of your grocery or warehouse store. Look for pumpkins, winter squash and gourds or decorative Indian corn. Set up a display in your foyer or on your buffet. Or if you want to go simpler, just put a large basket or pottery bowl on your dining room table filled with apples and pears – fall fruit.

You can introduce the season to your home right at your front door with a fall wreath or hanging. Many stores have ready-made door decorations, or you can create your own easily. Stop by your local hobby store and select a grapevine or other wreath shape in fall tones. Look for garlands of fall leaves in silk, and wrap it around the wreath. Finish with a bow of wire-edged ribbon in fall colors.

Another simple door option involves selecting three complementary ears of Indian corn and tie them at the top with ribbon or raffia. Hang and your home announces the season to everyone who enters.

If you make a trip north to see the colors, bring some old books with you and press the best of the leaves you discover. Add some pine cones and branches and you have a ready-made centerpiece. For other decorations, press the leaves and scatter them on side tables and in bowls.

Even with our hot summer temperatures, your home can carry the feelings – if not the temperatures – of fall.