With the landscape changing so quickly as the temperatures drop even further overnight, I felt the need to keep pace with Mother Nature and swap out the blog's header...yet again. This time I opted for a "watercolorized" verison of a shot I took in October 2014. It's of a favorite location and stand of maple trees near where I lived briefly, in the country, of course. The colder temperatures overnight were just the thing to trigger the start of the leaves changing color dramatically, although they've been hinting at making their long-awaited change for several weeks.
Autumn, which was only a few days away when I first posted this, is upon us full bore now, so I broke out my autumn decorating accents for the season. (Please see my apologetic note below on my uncharacteristic post publishing error as I started, but never finished ny original post, so I've rectified it here.)
I have a lot of deep, rich blues and deep red in my decor, which, fortunately is the perfect contrast to the stark brightness of brilliant orange pumpkins. That said, I have noted with some interest, if not amusement, that pale turquoise seems to be THE thing in autumn decor this year, at least if one believes the decor-oriented retailers.
Here is a shot I took earlier in the season (really very late summer), of a display of faux pumpkins at local outlet of a major, national chain, when I noticed this sudden trend.
I'm sure those in the world of agriculture have been aware of these varieties for years (and I remember Martha Stewart showcasing them early on in her publishing empire, so I've known about "blue turbans" for a few decades now), but I think this is really the year when the blue/turquoise pumpkins have emerged as the latest "new" thing in mainstream retail world. Hardly, new, I'm sure, but they certainly give some interesting contrast to the standard orange pumpkins.
As a creative, artsy sort since childhood, I have to say, I love the unusual in the common perception of traditional fruits and vegetables. I'll take these pale blue and turquoise, and even white/off white, pumpkins and squashes any day...and certainly they're pretty to look at. That said, I am not a proponent of adding turquoise into my Christmas decor color scheme. It's jarring and I lean toward dark, rich reds and greens, and lately this autumn season, I'm embracing deep plums and olive greens with just a touch of turquoise thrown in. In fact, it's the color combination of my Ralph Lauren Chaps handbag that I brought out of storage for the season.
The color combination just makes me smile, so much so that I'm leaning toward using more olive and plum in my Thanksgiving holiday color scheme. In fact, my favorite Thanksgiving dishes are these beauties from The Victorian English Pottery called "Woodland Pheasants".
I'm thinking of pairing them with these nice Botanica plates in olive green with raised leaves around the border. I have some of each plate pattern, so it would be easy enough to make them the focus of my dining table for my very favorite annual holiday (the one with food and gratitude at its core).
I also have a nice set of olive green corduroy placemats, so I'll probably break them out with a nice, neutral table cloth. We shall see what I ultimately pull together, but I do have the elements needed for a festive seasonal table in hand, so stay tuned when the holiday gets closer in late November!
I've had traditional turkey dinner plates in the past, similar to the pheasants, but, while I like a lot of the various classic turkey motifs on fine dinnerware, I really am fond of those patterns that can be used readily throughout the autumn and winter), so I've sold my turkey plates and have replaced them with these nice pheasants. I also have a number of other decorative pheasant items that I like to break out during the autumn, as well - it's that crisp, fall harvest season that I so enjoy. I do love my region most of the year, and it is gorgeous right now, but how I would love to have a second home in an area where there's little winter snow and where the temperatures area a bit more temperate during the earliest months of the year - that, to me, would be heaven!
(As I noted above, I offer humblest apologies to those few who read the earlier version of this post when it first appeared in mid-September. I thought it was ready to go at that time, but, apparently, I got distracted and hit publish when I should have hit save, so I've rectified that by augmented it with more text and photos, as originally planned, but rather belatedly on Oct 17. Mea culpa!)
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