autumn birthday

I know we are fully into the Christmas season but if you’ve been following my blog, Instagram page or Instagram Stories in particular, you’ve seen a few photos of our family’s big celebration for the birthday of our matriarch! We called this special day the “Jean-a-palooza 95” because Jean turned 95! My mother-in-love is an amazing woman who is active, is on Facebook, sends emails, prints out her own photos and is the founder of a knitting group at her residence. You’ll see why I mention this in a future post. 🙂

Due to location logistics we hosted the event at our home so I started planning in September. I always start with colors and themes because it’s the most fun and it’s my jumping off point for everything else. The birthday girl’s favorite color is aqua which is very pretty with the golden and orange colors of fall. At this point in the photo below, I was gathering colors and textures to see what I liked together. The blue votives were mercury glass. I loved them!

I had the idea to combine the theme of autumn and birthday and thought “sprinkles on pumpkins” would be the perfect blending of happiness that would bring them together. I planned for these decorated mini pumpkins to be placed on the main dining table on mini cupcake pedestals. When I added a tag it became a special invitation. I wrote a post about the decorated pumpkins with sprinkles but here’s a photo just for you before you click over. I can’t tell you how much I love these sprinkles by Sweetapolita. I found them on her Etsy page.

I bought dozens of pumpkins before Halloween knowing they wouldn’t be available after the 31st. I found a great variety at Trader Joe’s and Pavilions, our local market. I decorated our mantel with about a dozen. I added little warm-colored fairy lights which can’t be seen here but they added such a magical touch.

I also grouped pumpkins in our color beds in our front and back yard amid 35 flats of color that we planted. I wish I had taken photos of the back yard but you know how that goes when you’re busy prepping in other areas.

Totally unrelated, but we’re going to be painting the house. What do you think of black doors and black trim around the windows?

I ultimately decided on yellow-centered sunflowers with eucalyptus in Mason jars tied with raffia. To bring some aqua into the flowers because there were no aqua colored flowers to be found, I placed pieces of blue, green and white beach glass that I had on hand in the bottoms of the jars. At first I thought using beach glass would be too summery but the shapes were diffused in the water and you could only see the color which worked perfectly.

I decorated our curved staircase with a base of holiday greenery with lights to save time in the scope of holiday decorating but topped it with raffia bundles, silk colored leaves and Indian corn. The green base showing here and there among the more fall textures really made the fall colors pop. The autumn decorations were a snap to remove to put up the more glittery Christmas decorations after Thanksgiving.