EP 157 // Clever Switches To Style Your Home For Fall

Cara Baker (0:00)

Do you love the idea of your home changing with the seasons? But seriously, who's got the time or brain power to keep re-styling it every few months?

The good news is you don't have to. I'm sharing some clever ways to bring that full feeling into your home without creating another decorating job for yourself.

Cara Baker (0:25)

Welcome to the Daring Home Decor podcast. Are you tired of playing it safe with your interior design? Are you overwhelmed with choice and just want simple steps to pull off cohesive and unique decor?

I'm your host, Cara Baker, Virtual Interior Designer and Bold Decor Coach. I'll help you get brave, find your style and create a home with pizzazz. So grab your paintbrush, put on those overalls and let's get decorating.

Cara Baker (0:55)

Welcome to this week's podcast episode. And if like me, you're feeling a little bit like, where did summer go? I want it back. This is the way I always feel. I have to tell myself to look for the positives in the autumn and fall, because I just love the summer so much. But we can only control what we can control. And it's lovely to add a few little hints of the new season to our homes in a way that makes us feel good and not in a way that we feel obliged to do. When I used to be on Instagram, when I used to do regular posts, if you may or may not know, I still have an Instagram account, Daring Home Decor, which I used to post regularly on for quite a few years, but I no longer do that. And the reason is because I was spending more time trying to please the Instagram algorithm than I was trying to please myself or my followers or my home. And I said, no, that's it. This is not my life. So I totally detoxed from posting on Instagram. So that's the reason why I don't do it anymore. And one of the reasons was because I did find myself being pushed into certain content, especially seasonal content, that I probably would have never and still and do not now do, had it not been that I felt I needed to be the same as everybody else. Oh, it's Halloween. Everybody else is doing a Halloween display. I need to do a Halloween display. Just for Instagram, I would never have done it otherwise. And I thought this is just not aligning with who I am and who I want to be.

And I found myself creating seasonal content just for Instagram, and not because that's what I would normally do in my home. And I never want you to feel like you have to do that at all. But if you do want a little sprinkle of autumn in your home, I'm going to tell you how to do it really cheaply, really quickly, and really easily. And not because you feel pressured in to doing it because everybody else is, or that you think it's the right thing to do. And also because you probably don't want another item added to your to do list. You already have enough to do. So let's make it easy, let's make it quick. And so instead I'm going to give you a handful of deliberate changes that will shift the whole mood. So firstly, when the summer sun disappears, so does unfortunately the light in our homes too. So we need to add a little bit more in there. So the first thing I would suggest you do is look at the lighting. We want to create cozy nooks and pools of light rather than relying on one main ceiling light because that just zaps all of the atmosphere out of our homes. And as the evening's drawing, lighting has a much bigger effect on how a room feels than added seasonal objects everywhere.

I can give you a tip now of something really quick, easy and cheap that you can do. And it's something I've done, I love doing it. I do it through the summer too as well actually, but it's more noticeable with the darker evenings. And this involves one Amazon purchase and a timer or an alarm set on your phone once a week. So you can buy some realistic looking tea lights from Amazon. They flicker, they look realistic, and they're rechargeable. And you can usually get like a pack of six. Now, when I say they're realistic, we're not just leaving them bare on their own. What you're going to do then is to go around your house, and I'm sure you've got a few cute tea light holders, pretty tea light holders. So you pop them in there, and they will actually look like a real tea light. Then what you do is you create a repeated alarm on your phone for once a week when you will recharge them. Because if you don't do that, they'll end up, the batteries will end up dying, you won't notice it. And then when you do, you'll pick a couple up, recharge them, notice a couple of others. So it's just easier if you just do them all once a week and then you're never going to be without them working. This is exactly what I do. I use my alarm on my phone, set alarms on my phone for all sorts of things. You can label them, you can type in what it's for. So you remember when it goes off.