Fall is my favorite time of the year

Fall is my favorite time of the year. And where I live, we're just starting to see the first changes in the weather. It'll be another month before it really starts to feel like fall, but for now, I'll take slightly cooler mornings and evenings and be happy to have them.

I never decorated for fall, just Halloween. But this year, I spent a little bit of money on some simple decorations for the living room to get started with. The little display in the photo cost less than $20, and that includes the fabric placemat and candles. It's not much, but it's a start and I can add a bit more this weekend, and keep adding a little bit here and there, as I can. Eventually I'll have enough to decorate the entire living room, just like for Halloween and Christmas. I figure I can leave the fall decorations up until the first of October, then swap them out for Halloween, then put them back up the first of November and leave them there until Thanksgiving. I can stretch my decorating season out from the beginning of September through the beginning of January! I don't really decorate for spring, the color scheme of our living room just isn't good for springy colors. But that's okay, I like fall and winter best anyway.

I've got a few little silk flower decorations that should be in the photo too. But Gizmo the cat decided to mess with them (only the silk flowers, he couldn't care less about the candles, or fake pumpkins and gourds) so now they're put up in the entertainment center and probably will get used high up on the baker's rack where he can't reach them. One of them had a velvet-ish sunflower in the middle, and I woke up one morning with it on the ground in the bedroom doorway. He hadn't torn it up, just took it off the tabletop and dragged it there. Maybe he brought it to us as a present?  Who knows... But even after the "hey, new stuff!" curiosity wore off, he kept messing with them, so away they went.

I'm starting to see fall and Halloween stuff everywhere in stores now. The supermarket had a display of pumpkins the other night, and I bought a few $.99 cent pots of bronze colored fall mums at the garden center to plant in pretty containers this weekend. I may go back for more since they're inexpensive, colorful, and easy to care for. They had bright yellow, bright orange, bronze, violet, and burgundy.

I'm going to have to get the ingredients together soon to mix up a batch of "Russian" tea mix. If you have never had it, it's an old housewife recipe where you mix powdered tang, instant lemon tea mix, and some ground cloves in a container, and just use as needed with hot water. There are different recipes with different proportions and slight tweaks in ingredients. But the basic premise is spicy, orangey, tangy hot tea. But it just screams "FALL" to me, because that was when I always seemed to have it as a kid. It's an alternative to spiced cider, which I usually wait and make on the first really cool and windy night of the season. But I'm craving Russian tea now, so I'll have to put the ingredients on my shopping list.

So, it's been a week since we lost our cat, Shadow, and I'm still really sad about it. It's getting better though. This weekend we're going to have to level the ground out where we buried him, and since it'll be a while before I can get his memorial statue, I'll put a large pot full of those fall mums there on a paving stone.