Do NOT Decorate With This For Fall - Thistlewood Farm (2025)

Around here I talk a lot about decorating.

Okay—sometimes I talk about Lee Press On Nails and shopping the side of the road and bad hair days and football and the best cookies on the planet.

But decorating is definitely number one at the top of my talking-about list.

However today?

Today I’m going to share a story that’s not for the faint of heart—a cautionary tale.

Truth?

I shuddered and cringed a little bit even typing the words to this post.

It’s a story that needs to be told.

So instead of talking about decorating right now? Instead of showing you a mantel or a coffee table or a staircase or all of my fall front porches through the years.

Instead?

I’m going to discuss the ONE THING you should never decorate with for fall.

Fall is the season to bring the outside in.

I love shopping the yard for all the fall decor. Just between us, there’s nothing prettier for fall than a branch that’s full of leaves that have dried perfectly in place with all the fall colors.

When you bring the branch in and add it to a vase and leave the leaves exactly how you found them?

It looks fancy.

It looks professional.

It looks like art.

Yesterday I took Buddy out for a walk and saw this in our driveway.

Isn’t it beautiful?

Doesn’t it look like art?

Natures’s perfect way of celebrating the season.

Our backyard is FULL of acorns like this.

There are hundreds of them scattered all over the yard that crunch under your feet.

Those acorns look like the perfect way to decorate for fall for FREE.

Several years ago I was planning a party and walked outside and saw those acorns all over the ground. I was having a party and I wanted to create a truly authentic fall feel for the house—so I brought the outside in.

Just like they do in the magazines.

I don’t have a picture of the display.

I was in a hurry and didn’t take pictures, but I found this example so you can get the idea. This is kind of the look, but instead of a birch vase like this (which was a much better choice), I used giant glass urns instead.

I added acorns from the yard as the base and tucked branches into them and strung tiny bits of twine from branch to branch and wrote thankful quotes on pieces of paper and tied them onto the twine.

Isn’t that the cutest idea? I was patting myself on my fall decorating back.

Seriously.

All that fall glory for free.

People came to the party and ooohed and ahhed and told me how much they loved the idea of going all Little House on the Prairie and decorating with nature. And I decided right then and there—why ever decorate with anything else? I told myself that I was never wasting another dime on store-bought decorations when nature had already done such an amazing job.

Truly.

Think of all the money I’d save on fall decor.

Visions of dried leaf garland and acorn garland and acorns on branches and acorn wreaths and the house swagged with all the fall that I had I gathered from my yard.

I was going to be literally the most brilliant fall decorator on the planet.

Until.

Until a week later when I was cleaning and something caught my eye.

A wiggle.

What in the world?

I thought it was a trick of sunlight. So I walked up closer and looked at the bottom of the vase.

AND SCREAMED.

I cannot.

I will not.

I am completely and utterly unable to say out loud what was coming out of the acorns and wiggling all over the bottom of the vase. Not just one wiggle or two wiggles.

Just between us that vase WAS FULL TO THE BRIM OF WIGGLES.

We are not discussing what it was that I found in those acorns.

You are probably drinking coffee right now and I want to still be friends.

Just know that I took the urns and those acorns outside back where they came from…..

…..never to return again.

And now I buy all my acorns in plastic bags from the store.

Because those types acorns?

They are guaranteed to be wiggle-free.

So when you decorate for fall. Bring in the branches. Bring in the fall flowers.

But the acorns?

They are part of nature that is amazing and wonderful and brilliant and awe-inspiring…..

….especially when it’s left outside. 🙂

Want to know how to decorate your home for free?
Click here to get my FIVE BEST secrets.