Where's Martha Stewart when you need her???

In the past, decorating for the holidays has been a non-issue. We just don't do much decorating. I'd get home from work late, spend some time with the family and go to bed. I wasn't home enough to even notice that the house was the bah-humbug house on our street. I mean, we put up decorations just before Christmas. And by "decorations," I mean a tree, maybe a wreath, and one year, we even put up lights on the outside of the house. We even turned them on a couple times. And by "just before Christmas," I mean sometimes the week of.

Now that I'm at home during the day, we've spent much more time outside playing in our neighborhood. It's also becoming glaringly obvious that our house needs a little shot in the arm of festivity. So, when I saw one of our neighbors hanging their Halloween decorations yesterday during our nightly after dinner walk, I kind of got excited about doing some decorating myself.

We went shopping today and as soon as we got to the Halloween aisle at Target, Carter started getting upset. He refused to go down any aisle that had a witch or anything else scary. Great. I tried having him stand at the end of the aisle where I could see him, while I walked down the aisle looking for decorations, but that only lasted until he decided that "stay right there and don't move" could easily be interpreted to mean "hey, I know you're bored, why don't you wander around to where I can't see you and find something interesting to look at." I know, he's only four. What should I expect???

Luckily, Target also had a section of decorations that were more Fall oriented than Halloween, which I think I prefer anyway. I found a really pretty cranberry vine wreath - I think the "cranberries" were made out of Styrofoam, or something like that, and I hung it on the back of Bella's stroller and we kept walking. Next thing I know, I hear, "Mommy, could you please tell Bella to stop eating those berries." Awesome. (Hey, I had to give him credit for being polite). I look down and there's a trail of fake berries behind us on the floor and Bella has a very satisfied smile on her face. I fished around in her mouth to see if any were actually in there and it appeared, luckily, that they all fell on the floor before any of them actually made it to her mouth.

Good thing Halloween is still a long way off. Otherwise, I may never get this house decorated. If anyone has any easy (and not at all frightening) decorating tips, let me know...