I never carve our Halloween pumpkin. After Halloween, I clean it, cook it down, and make copious amounts of pumpkin/cranberry/raisin bread and an occasional pumpkin pie.

Our boys grow pumpkins, starting in June, and we take out the seeds for the next year. We give to our friends & keep enough for cooking & decorating. We smash gallon milk cartons to place the pumpkins on once they start growing. They need to be off the ground. Win-Win.

I love to put out my collection of glass pumpkins and gourds along with real pine cones in bowls and baskets and one here and there on shelves and end tables all threw the house, Sept thru Nov, this gives me 3 lovely months of fall decorations.

I love autumn decorations! I have some artificial "jack-o-lanterns," and some pumpkins that have expression related to Thanksgiving on them (i.e., "Give Thanks"). What I do is put them on wall shelves, or tables/dressers that are against a wall, throughout the entire fall season, turning these decorations around for Halloween or Thanksgiving and then back again as desired. That way, they get a lot of use, year after year.

In the realm of using items from nature, I was visiting a relative who lives in an area with huge oak trees, many years ago, and gathered a bag of large acorns to bring home. I put them out on a coffee table in a nice dish, every autumn. (I did have to glue some of their "caps" back on after several years, but a little household glue took care of that). They bring a touch of "real autumn" to my Florida home.

Today