Thankful for My Favorite Time of Year

We took a long walk around the neighborhood today and even though there are houses with Christmas decorations up already, it was the most perfect fall day with leaves falling on us as we walked and a bright blue sky. It may still be a little too warm in Georgia to remind me of fall in New York but it's getting there!

It is tempting to start putting up Christmas decorations early but we have so much to be thankful for I can't let myself skip right over Thanksgiving.

Instead of rushing through my favorite time of year to get to Christmas decorating, I like to wait until the day after Thanksgiving to deck the halls and then I just leave it all up until February.

We took down most of the black and white Halloween decorations from the mantel and added some more pumpkins and pussy willows.

I finally changed our hallway flowers for fall and hung a fall wreath on the front door.

We went apple picking and drove north to a pumpkin patch.

We worked on some toddler friendly crafting including these Mod Podge leaves that I'm using in a project and a little handprint spider.

It was our first year with a little one old enough to trick or treat!

It may not be a NY fall but I'm grateful for every minute of it so far!

Spooky Black and White Halloween Mantel

Though it's been months since moving to our new house many boxes still sit unopened in the garage so I was happy to open the one with my fall decorations knowing that they had a place to be unpacked.

Because it's still a few weeks until Halloween, and it's 86 degrees outside, and feels nothing like fall, I used black and white decorations for the mantel.  My Thanksgiving/Autumn decorations are mainly oranges and browns, and in an effort to avoid looking at those colors until Christmas, the black and white spooky mantel was born.

I love the way all of the black and white looks with the silver metallics of the decorations and the gold mirror I rescued and had restored a few years ago.

The antlers that I painted white look like bony fingers holding up the black cat.

I've used my same white painted branch for an Easter egg tree, a Christmas snowflake ornament holder, and here, as a bat tree that throws the best spooky shadow on the wall behind it at night.

After Halloween, I'll switch out some of the black and white for more of my brown, orange, and green autumn decor for Thanksgiving. I hope that by then, Georgia weather will have changed enough to make me feel just a hint of what fall in NY feels like. But for now, it's the perfect time of year to have a black and white mantel.