Is It Fall Yet?

While we were sweltering in the heat and humidity in Taipei I couldn’t help but notice a lot of fall decor popping up on my favorite Instagram feeds. At first, I thought it was a fluke but soon it appeared as if everyone was changing seasons on me. This was all happening behind my back while I was really far from home. What the heck?

Summer is my favorite season and traditionally I have held on to summer as long as possible. Primarily that’s because summer in Southern California lasts until October. Case in point … it was 108 degrees this week in Pasadena. And our hottest month is usually September. Plus, two of my kids were on the quarter system and didn’t start college until really late in September. So you can see why I was thinking this past week, while we were halfway around the world, that it was still summer.

Apparently not.

So, just so I am not the only one left on Instagram with chalkboards that say “Happy Summer” and “Food, Friends, and Summer”’ I decided I had better start thinking about decorating my house for fall.

There is only one problem. I have only been on Instagram since February. And while many of you are pulling out bins and bins of fall decor, I own two plastic orange pumpkins and a small string of orange lights. And the orange pumpkins are actually jack-o-lanterns. Seriously, this is the truth.

So while all of you are posting beautiful fall tablescapes with a plethora of decor, I was in Taipei frantically searching the internet for pumpkins. And fall leaves. And anything else that might help my summer-decorated-house get into the already-fall-decorated season that I had completely missed.

You can only imagine my husband’s shock when we opened the front door (after flying 14 hours to get home) only to find so many boxes in the front entryway that he thought (or hoped) we had entered the wrong house. (And yes, I had anticipated this problem. I strategized the whole way home if I could run in the door and hide everything while he got the suitcases out of the uber. But even I underestimated how many boxes it took to hold pumpkins.)

On the way home on the plane (which for some reason I could not sleep at all … probably because I was worried about the boxes in the entryway), I came up with a color scheme. My fall colors are green and white. As in olive and sage green and shiplap white. (Ok, I made up the shiplap part but I thought it sounded good.)

The only problem is that I ordered some of the pumpkins and decor before I had my color scheme so now I need to do some painting of my brand new, never been used before pumpkins. The old jack-o-lanterns and orange lights might just have to stay in my bin that will soon be marked “fall decor”. Hmmm.

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