Cozying Up the Condo

Summer to fall transition in our new condo has me honing my nesting instincts. Most of summer was all about settling in, furniture placement and organizing closets. Now it's time to have some fun in decorating. I'm cozying up the condo in anticipation of fall's arrival. While some of what I've been doing (pillows, throws) is for seasonal change, much more (wall art) is for enhancing the overall decor, which will likely stay through the seasons.

Today's post gives me the opportunity to share with you the little creature comforts I've been adding to the condo, filling in what were previously some blank spaces. Thanks to Amber of Follow the Yellow Brick Home for organizing a bounty of bloggers who are doing much the same kind of seasonal decorating in their homes, you'll find lots of inspiration in the links provided at the end of my post today. These are bound to help you jumpstart your own creativity for fall in your home!

The first and only pumpkins to arrive on the scene in my home for late summer, early fall transition will greet you at the front door entry mat.

Inside, a freshening up on the sectional comes with a mix of older pillow covers, together with a perfectly coordinated pair of lumbar pillows I found on sale recently at Pier 1. Their colors match a throw I already had almost exactly (see lead photo in this post).

These pillows aren't just for show either. I use them for back and leg support!  And pillows rotate around from place to place in my home with the seasons. What was previously on the sectional stays for fall, this time on the Parsons chair behind the sectional.

Little things like antique, wooden croquet balls are suddenly elevated as seasonal transitional showpieces in a quadruple silverplate bowl (antique estate and auction finds).

A West Virginia potter's piece with signature maple leaf design works especially well for fall.

The wall behind the sectional leads to two additional rooms on either side of the central fireplace niche pictured below.

The 5" original sketches are by a WV (now NJ) artist/friend. They are my state outline (WV) and my state's official tree (sugar maple) leaf.

While we're in the great room, I want to show you the Japanese byobu (a folding screen) I mounted on the wall behind our dining area, below, as viewed from the sectional.

I have owned this screen since 2007 (estate auction purchase) and am just now hanging it! I found an art gallery in Honolulu, HI (specializing in Asian art) which sold the mounting clips that solved my biggest dilemma - how to properly mount a folding screen of this size. 

On the table currently is the vignette pictured below (normally on the glass top, but placed on a tablecloth to eliminate glare). The quilted runner was purchased from a WV artisan, the antique dough bowl at an estate sale, and the bouquet of sunflowers inside are faux.

Sunflowers on the kitchen counter (real) and a MacKenzie-Childs teapot are other welcoming visuals seen as visitors step inside our door. The framed prints on the wall are foods among the flowers, our main food groups as I like to refer to them: fruits, veggies and ice cream (the latter being Mr. P.'s main food group 😉). These are vintage cross-stitched finds recently purchased at an estate sale.

Sunflowers are also in my laundry room, which I have decorated with mostly garden themed items. In a basket on the counter are my melamine plates I created with pictures from my garden on Shutterfly (mentioned and shown here, here, and here). Late summer blooms are featured.

In my office, I hung my vintage Art Deco framed needlepoints (estate finds).

This room carries a distinct Asian vibe with furnishings, and the Asian art vase now holds cotton bolls and pheasant feathers for the summer to fall transition.

The bookcase in my office has a gathering of my favorite things: a vintage mannequin head form with Art Deco period beaded skull cap, a Parisian-themed child's purse on hatbox, a couple of my antique trophy collection, along with a treasured antique lion's head embossing seal (which reads, "ST RITA CIRCLE NO 45 INST MAR 28, 1915, NATIONAL CIRCLE DAUGHTERS OF ISABELLA"). The shelf framed art is a unique, androgynous Art Deco figure, handmade of paper and folded satin (estate purchase).

Even the fire exit in our condo has a seasonal transition, a sort of back-to-school / library feel. The jib door holds various books, while the framed art includes a pencil sketch of my undergrad alma mater (by local artist), with an Andrew Wyeth lithograph, Early October, on the wall beside the books. I've held onto the Wyeth litho since 1989 and never hung it, just stored it.

The master bedroom is getting cozier too. The quilted wall hanging is yet another item I've had, this one since 2001, now taking center stage on the wall behind the bed. A WV artist created it in 1999.

The nine botanicals on the side wall are my most recent estate acquisition. I am pretty excited about these. They are 1885 original chromolithographs by German botanist Otto Wilhelm Thome. They were all professionally matted and framed recently, very tedious for me to hang, but I am in love with the end result.

Having these in the bedroom gives me another sense of garden zen in my surroundings. For some reason, the fig illustration was what grabbed my attention first at the sale. I don't really know why, but it speaks summer to fall transition perfectly in my mind. While the prints themselves do have some foxing, the left side matte is just glare from the light in the room when I took the photo.

Though I'm not quite finished hanging art in the master bedroom, I am happy with the cozy factor progress with pillows, throws and lighting.

I also swapped the grey flannel chair pictured above into the bedroom, and took the leather barrel swivel chair previously there into Mr. P.'s space. You can see the before looks in this post, here. His room is the least finished (no hurry), but still very cozy for watching TV. I have ideas for his space that I still hope to persuade him to go with.

It'll be a little while before I go all out with the pumpkin patch I've accumulated, but I gathered most of them into my dough bowl for a look-see of what's to come.

Thanks so much for stopping by today and for your readership. I love reading your comments too, and I try to respond to each one. If you don't receive a direct email response from me, check back and see if I didn't leave a reply here on this post. Some who leave comments have a "no reply" when I get notified, so I may not have your email to reply directly.

Be sure to check out all the links below for more inspiration!

(A special thanks to Debra at Common Ground's All About Home Link Party #5, Rebecca at Zucchini Sisters' Celebrate Your Story #197, Kathy at A Delightsome Life's Home and Garden Thursday, Amber at The Yellow Brick Home's Thursday Favorite Things, and Suzanne at Pieced Pastimes' Saturday Sparks Link Party #340 for featuring this post!)

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Rita C. at Panoply

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