Work in Progress Wednesday: Holiday Decorating

I really struggle with the whole concept of decorating my house for the holidays.  I know it shouldn't be that hard, but I think it has its challenges.  Challenge #1 is that is requires more stuff.  I am more of an "everything all over the place" than an "everything in its place" person.  So the idea of adding more stuff to the place makes me a little nervous.  This challenge was eradicated by my former intern Kaleigh (you remember her)

Hi Kaleigh! 

Kaleigh informed me that when decorating for the holidays, you put your normal, every day decorations in the box the holiday decorations came out of, then when its over, bring them back out.  I know this should have been obvious, but it was seriously a light bulb moment for me.  

Challenge #2 is how to arrange it.  I read a lot of crafting blogs and you should see the way these people claim their houses look all the time.  I mean were do you eat dinner if your table looks like this? 

http://planbeat.net/halloween-decorations/26/events-blog-wordless-wednesday-halloween-decor-for-grown-ups/

Where does one get so many pumpkins? 

http://www.whileyouwereblogging.com/?tag=decor

Where do you put all your piles of mail and bills? 

http://blog.myweddeal.com/2012/10/24/halloween-wedding-inspiration-decorations/newlywed-halloween-decor/

Or your purse and all the other random bags that go on tables like these?

http://betterdecoratingbible.com/2011/10/

After reading enough blogs and looking at enough pictures, I realized a pattern.  That I could just group things together as opposed to spread it out everywhere, add touches here or there, and use things I already had.  These revelations lead me to create a little bit of Halloween that actually looked good.  I was rather proud of myself when I came up with the idea to add the Harry Potter books from the shelf into all of the Harry Potter Decorations I had from my teaching days. 

I threw in the an owl candle (Hedwig) I'd bought the week before on a whim and a plastic glass I must have had from a Philadelphia party (it could totally double as the goblet of fire).

Then I took the rest of the owls, some randoms pairs of pumpkins and flowers, and some candle sticks from a wedding, bunched them all together and placed them in a couple of spaces in the room.

It's not a master piece, and this won't turn into a "decor" blog anytime soon.  But it's Work In Progress, and it's Wednesday.  So here you go!

Happy Halloween!