You all know that I live for fall decorating and pumpkins galore, but frankly I’m a little tired of two things:

1.   My overgrown yard that is super ugly right now (i.e. zero landscaping)
2.   The hungry squirrels who eat the pumpkins immediately every year

This means I am not super amped about putting a ton of time, effort, and money into decorating the outside of the house for fall. Then there’s my child who is way influenced by our neighbors who own every single Halloween inflatable that’s ever been made and he wants to have all the inflatables too (ahem). No. Ummm, how ’bout a hay bale instead! Yes!

When I was in Boston, I snapped this shot of the Kate Spade store’s fireplace display, and I got this idea for the mantel since I’ve been rearranging and childproofing everything. And why not fill it up with pumpkins and do a big display of colorful books?  Yes! This is a project I could do that would also make us feel festive that wouldn’t require a ton of work. After rounding up some pumpkins of all sizes, including these cute little faux black decorative pumpkins (with gold stems!) from Target, I got to work stackin’ away.

First, start with your largest ones to build your framework and take up the most visual space. I kind of propped the biggest ones up against the logs in the fireplace and worked my way up to the top. Don’t worry about all of them looking picture perfect, because it’s more important that they stay solid and not move around a lot. If you were looking at it from the side, they kind of spill out a bit, and it creates different “ledges” to wedge the other sizes of pumpkins in.

I also used smaller pie pumpkins, some white casper pumpkins, and those itty bitties we picked up at the pumpkin patch for difference in scale. You could also do this with all kinds of gourds and specialty pumpkins (I LOOOVE Cinderellas!).  I love how the pumpkins all pop against the black interior of the fireplace. Aren’t they happy and cheerful?

Whimsical, graphic, and cheerful. Right up my alley.

Bring on the pumpkin bread and all the Halloween candy!