First of Fall: Decorating your house for October

I swear I didn't know this was the done thing before moving to the USA. My mom-in-law says she's done it for as long as she can remember. Not only that, but there's a method to decorating for this season. According to some, there are places in your house you must decorate even if you have a busy schedule. Who'd have thunk it?

First of all, you've got to put up fall and Halloween related decorations. This involves leaves, and can include corn and scarecrows:

These were all put out by my husband, but I took the photos so I get some credit, right?

But it also includes pumpkins. They can be carved, decorated, lit, or as is. The supermarkets here sell them in all sizes from super-jumbo-bigger-than-yer-head-how-are-you-gonna-get-that-in-your-car to itty-bitty-mini-little-gourds in all shapes and shades of ugly:

May the odds, er, gourds, be ever in your favor. I'm funny aren't I? It's a Hunger Games joke yeah? You see, it's a cornucopia, full of gourds - oh nevermind.

Then straight after Halloween all the spooky stuff gets ditched and replaced with more harvest-related decorations, turkeys and pilgrim things for November and Thanksgiving. After Santa arrives at the Thanksgiving parade (and no sooner) then you're allowed to start decorating for Christmas (or winter, or whatever relevant festival you celebrate). Apparently that takes weeks. Ooft.

This all seems like a lot of work to me. But then I come from the small island of small houses that get built practically on top of each other. We barely had the space to fit a Norwegian spruce in our house over Christmas, let alone fake dried leaves, scarecrows and giant pumpkin-beasts.

I like it, especially driving around the country seeing all pumpkins piled on pumpkins and oversized ears of corn stacked up around people's porches, but it's a bit bewildering. So that's why I'm trying to figure this whole October thing out.

I scoured Pinterest for some of my favorite Fall decorations; you can take a look here. Just wait until we visit the pumpkin patch. I'm running straight for the ones bigger than my head, you know it.


Remember, it's the Glad Blog Octoberfest all this month, so please send me your own Fall themed posts - I'd love to feature my favorites. Bonus points if you feature pumpkin related activities or products, local Fall Fests, or fun traditions I haven't heard of.