Decorating for Fall - the Lazy Q&E Way

Hello, my blog friends, how I've missed you. Remember my last post where I shared the story of my youngest son and I tamed his adventures in crib climbing? We've moved on from that to adventures in sprinkle spreading, plate breaking, and nudity. (Him, not me, on all of the above. He's apparently decided that clothing and diapers are overrated and, therefore, completely unneccesary. I, once again, disagree.) Did I mention that he just turned 2? And that the sprinkle spreading involved not a petite, handheld bottle of sprinkles but a 12 ounce plastic tub of sprinkles? On my kitchen floor? And did I also mentioned that all of the above happened Friday as I was trying to get back here to blog, mere hours before from a small group get together at my now sprinkled and one-plate-down home? And so I was delayed. I nearly titled this "The Blog Post that Almost Wasn't." Moving on! I thought I'd share with you a super quick, super cheap idea for fall decorating. My friend of Amish Friendship Bread fame, Nikki, and I decorated a table at a fall dinner for our womens' ministry at church. Our goals in decorating were to be fall-ish, fast, and frugal. After a bit of brainstorming, we decided on a centerpiece comprised of apples along with whatever other free fall items we could scrounge up from the great outdoors. ("The great outdoors" being my parents' front yard.) I gathered up a few oak branches with the help of my dad and his clippers and lots of pinecones and delivered them to our workroom (also known as Nikki's garage). We added to my fall bounty the apples that lived their first lives as teacher-themed baby shower decorations and worked our fast and frugal magic with a quick coat of gold spray paint. The apples got a full covering but we only did a light and purposefully inconsistent coat on the leaves. We wanted some of the green to show through for some depth and variation of color.

We arranged all of our new-and-slightly-improved fall bounty on the table along with some glass jars from my house. They tend to make an appearance in all of my decorating schemes. They go with everything and I have a variety of sizes so that they hold nearly anything. Or at least anything under a foot tall.

We ended up with enough apples to make some of them into little name cards! I just wrote the names on tiny little tags from the office store and tied them to the apple stems. Super easy. Super cute. My favorite kind of decorating.

I should note that yes, I live in Texas, so yes, the leaves are actually still green. And I'm betting that these leaves will stay green and gold for quite a while, so I'm thinking about taking this theme to the mantle until Thanksgiving and adding in some spray painted pumpkins. I know it sounds a little crazy, but seriously, spray painted pumpkins are *beautiful!* Similar to the Martha Stewart glittered pumpkins but even easier.

I'm always on the lookout for more fast and frugal decorating ideas. What are your favorites for fall?