After a couple long, rough winters (read: major vitamin D deficiency and hypoactive thyroid) I discovered I had lost my excitement for fall.  I only saw it as the approaching of winter, of being ccccold, of short dreary days, and being housebound.  Gone were the days of a shiver of excitement about wearing a fuzzy warm sweater, cozy wool socks, curling up by the woodstove, the sound of crunching leaves, leaf-pile jumping, pumpkin bread and the like.  This made me so sad!

While working my way through a thought-and-heart-provoking book this summer, and again with some fabulous women in a bookclub this month, I am working on changing how I am thinking about things.  Not actually changing things in my life, but how I am in my life.  And I decided I wanted to do this to reclaim my excitement for fall.  This was my first attempt to embrace and welcome fall:

Inspired by The Inspired Room (who just adores fall), I started with my porch:

I really have to find a better way to take photos before my October blogging series, and more fall posts!  But here it is, in all its imperfection! 🙂

I fell in love with spray-paint when I found The Nester a couple falls ago. ( I am now studying her most current post in an effort to embrace fall with my mantle.)  I spray-painted a “stool” (chair with the back broken off) that we inherited with this house.  I have nearly thrown it away 6 times, but I always thought “well if it were painted it might make a nice stool… for the front porch anyway.”  So I finally did it!  I chose some favorite warm fall colors (red and golden yellow- the flowers are a deep red, you just can’t tell, with a touch of yellow) and added the real pumpkin for the traditional orange.  It makes me smile every time I enter my house- even when it’s 80 degrees and I am sweating from helping my  year old work on riding on her bike without training wheels.

Despite the 80 degrees we keep hitting here, I am beginning to get a little excited for fall! Are you?