Maybe I'll just leaf them up there

Hey guys, I'm squeezing in an unrelated post today because my favorite person on the internet invited me to a party and, well, pumpkins.

If you're looking for the latest installment in the Catholics Do What? series scroll down to the post just before this one, and be sure to come back later this afterno...oh screw it, evening, and read today's post. For now, sit back and enjoy the underwhelming domesticity that is my seasonal decor.

I want to tell you a little story. It begins, as these things often do, with a girl and her shopping cart, and a pumpkin display at the local Walmart.

Actually, I don't believe any story worth telling has ever begun thus. But I will press on. Last month when Fall was still a dream in my heart and a smudgy, overly enthusiastic chalkboard advertisement in the Starbucks drive through, I happened upon the most perfectly curated collection of pumpkins and winter squashes the world has ever seen.

There were tiny white ones. Large, perfectly rounded fleshy ones. Weird little gourds with multiple color bands covered in warts and blemishes and looking so completely unlovable as to become intensely, intensely desirable. Screaming like a little girl in the Littlest Pet Shop aisle at Target, I started throwing pumpkins into my cart with reckless abandon, piling them around my astonished 2 year old and eventually evicting him from the body of the cart so as to claim his prime real estate for my newly adopted family of gourds.

Later that afternoon upon our return home, while the groceries languished in the mini van and the children milled about in a mild confusion, I raced to the front porch, my arms loaded down with autumn bounty which I lovingly arranged in a Pinteresting fall porchscape. Actually, I just grouped them in the corner with a decorative stump and then fist pumped the air while yelling "hell yes, first pumpkins on the block!"

I heard snickering and whirled around to see my still-unmet neighbors from across the street and one house over, disappearing into their garage from whence I suspect we shall never see their return. But that is one fewer loaf of pumpkin spice bread on my to do list, so win/win.

Hail no.

I'm totally kidding actually, I don't really bake. But I did yell that about my pumpkins, and a neighbor did laugh, perhaps coincidentally.

When Bonnie asked me to participate in this little blog carnival I scanned the list of other names and said to myself, self, if you want to come to this party, you're going to have to play to your strengths. Namely, hyperbole (see above), pumpkin arrangement, thrifting, and minimalism.

So I give to you bold new installation piece:

thrifted, minimalist fall decor + grocery store pumpkins: a love story

My little apple sticks close to his tree.

Basically I threw those pumpkins out there and just let the spirit move me. And oh how it moved.

I think it's important to be true to your seasonal spirit animal. Mine is a crouching lioness. She waits, crouching, eyeing her prey and biding her time, and when the moment is right, she acts. The sale is made, the tree is decked, and she demurely licks the blood from her paws and returns to her state of understated elegance. 

Also, she's not as flashy as a male lion. Understated, intentional touches of beauty. And blood.

Why am I the way I am? I just don't even...

Moving on.

I think it's worth noting that everything seasonal in these pictures was thrifted, except for batman and the cereal. And I feel amazing about that.

I love you, bumpy gourd.

I just cannot quit those damn decorative gourds. Can not. Will not. (Pardon the linked language.)

Pinecones imported from the one and only Monument, Colorado. 

And I have to admit that even though I'm doing yet another freaking Whole 30 (day 4, feed me ice cream) I can't stop myself from buying pumpkin flavored contraband for the children.

I just love the possibility inherent in Fall. The feeling that the holidays are just around the riverbed and that all will be most well by imbibing in a densely caloric hot beverage in a festive gold mug.

Which cannot be microwaved or dishwashed. Causing me to question their overall safety...

And so to you, dearest season of my heart, I throw open my doors and say bring on the decorative gourds and the skinny jeans and the tallest boots in all the land, and I will be ready with my scarf.

Well, and Batman.

Be sure to check out Bonnie at A Knotted Life, our beautiful hostess, along with the other fabulous women of fall: 

Svellerella

Two O's Plus More

Team Whittaker

House for Five

Clan Donaldson

Fountains of Home

This Ain't the Lyceum

Surviving Our Blessings

Better than Eden