✨🍂How to Cozy Up Your Home | Affordable Fall Decor Ideas! | Minimalist Autumn Clean + Decorate | DIY

A portion of today's video is kindly sponsored by Factor. Well hey friends, so glad you stopped by to hang out with me today as I spruce up my home for the new season. Happy autumn to those of us in the northern hemisphere. This is my favorite time of the year and it's the perfect time to cozy up our homes first of all by doing a bit of cleaning and decluttering and then also by setting out some decor. I like to keep things simple and minimal and more on the natural side so I'll take you along with me as I do all that. We've got some DIY that we're going to be attempting in this video as well. Drop this emoji in the comments. We're actually going to get started here in our main bedroom. I didn't make the bed this morning and I would like you to believe that that's because I'm just going to strip it and do the sheets but I probably make my bed in the morning half the time if I'm being honest. I am going to strip this bed though and get the sheets started and that's going to be running while I move on to doing some cleaning up and restocking in the kitchen. This room could use a good tidy and wipe down. I'll do that when I make the bed. This video is actually part two in my fall clean and decorate with me series. I've split it up into a couple of chunks that way we can kind of get everything done but in a more gentle and laid back way. That's how I like to do things on my channel. I love to share that inspiration and motivation and help you get up and get going but sometimes we do need the permission to take things one little step at a time. You're going to find that here on my channel. Welcome to those of you who are new. I need to clean up this kitchen. This fridge, if you watched part one then you may remember Weston cleaning out the fridge for us last week. He did kind of the gross big job of totally resetting it, taking everything out and wiping it down and all of that. We also shared his two quite obscure and unrelated music genres that he likes to work to. That was a lot of fun. I am determined to keep the mojo going. It's now a week later and keeping up with a weekly clean out of the fridge, it helps so much. The job is much smaller when I'm keeping up with it regularly. So that's what we're gonna do right now. I just got a grocery order in to restock a few things. I just got a factor meal order in. So thanks so much to Factor for sponsoring the next couple of minutes of this video. With the kids back in school and our family's fall schedule in full swing, I am taking this opportunity to hone in on some of my routines. One of which is my meal prep and planning routine, which thanks to Factor has gotten a whole lot easier. Factor is America's number one ready-to-heat meal kit delivery service that requires zero mess and zero prep. 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Before I get these in the fridge, I just pulled them out of the box that arrived, I am going to do a little bit of inventory in here, do some decluttering, some gentle wiping down and stock up the fridge for this next week. In my weekly or bi-weekly meal prep that I do, I like to confit a lot of garlic and then we use this over like a 10-day period or so, ding dong. We also like to pickle red onions, that's another thing that we do for meal prepping. We didn't quite make it all the way through this garlic though and I think that it's not safe anymore, so womp womp. A few cloves left in the bottom of that jar, but everything else is looking really good. I'm just stocking in some of our yogurt. My goodness, my kids are going through the food like nobody's business, like way more than ever before. We easily go through an 18-pack of this protein yogurt in a week, probably even faster than that because Weston and I also eat it, it's just crazy. Gone are the days that things ever really rot in our fridge because our kids eat through our inventory so fast, like that garlic is literally the only thing that I'm tossing from this week's fridge clean out. Okay, looking good and sparkly in there. I'm gonna give the rest of this kitchen a once over and then set out a couple of autumn decor pieces in this room. We didn't actually get to the decorating last week in the kitchen when we were tidying it up in here because we needed to move on to How was work, dad? Which one says oats? That one. Good job. Yep, oats my goats. Ow, you're a fast runner. Okay, that's restocked, counters are wiped down, the espresso machine little tray, I wash that every Friday night so that I have it nice and fresh for making Weston coffee on the weekend. Not the deepest most thorough clean in here, but it's good enough. Sometimes it's good to know when to call it quits and I am just feeling like doing a little bit of decorating. So we're going to start with swapping out the wreath on my hood vent. I've got a more autumn time one. This is kind of my year round when it's not Christmas or fall time. And look at that, this time I actually remembered to do this project when I did not have something cooking on the stove below. We get a lot of fallout from these wreaths and debris lands on the stove top. Not the tastiest ingredient in our stew. Thankfully we're having dinner somewhere else tonight with our church small group. Okay, and then we'll put this one up there instead. Bring a little leaf down to cover the white command strip. There we go. So pretty. Hey, could you give me the little hand vacuum? I want to vacuum this ledge up here. A little juj. And we are good to go. Happy fall y'all. Okay, onto this little vase tray. Weston brought his coffee cup home. Gotta include that in the dishwasher. His water bottle is ruining the aesthetic, but I mean check out these cool stickers. Shrek, Dwayne the Rock Johnson, The Goat, Gordon Ramsay. It's raw! And then we've got, bless God, on that side. Got a bunch of little essential oils over here and I'm going to rearrange this tray when I get my new essential oil diffuser set up, which I'm DIYing a little bit later on. For now I am going to swap out this pink foliage. I mean very pretty, but a little bit more springy summer than what I'm going for. Last year I did sort of a dark brown, which I still have them, a dark brown sort of wheat looking vase filler. That would be pretty, but I have been going for a bit more color. I like a nice neutral sort of basis for my home, but then I like to piece in pops of color and I feel like this spot is perfect for that. I loved the pink in there. I have some dried hydrangeas. They've been hanging in our school room window. I clipped these several weeks ago to dry. They don't look as good as like the professionally preserved ones, but they look better than a different method that I tried. I need some scissors. There's these ones. Okay. Individually they look a little sad, but put together in the vase. I don't know. Is this the Barney Stinson group effect playing out before our eyes? Maybe taller ones in the back. Okay. Not bad. In fact, I think that's rather pretty. I'm going to wrap these up. I knew the name of these flowers at one time. I can't remember them right now. If you know what these are comment below. Okay. I actually think I love it. This is so pretty. I love a pop of blue or kind of like a bluish green during the autumn time. I feel like it really helps to balance out all the oranges and yellows and ambers and all of that warm sort of tone. This is really pretty. Plus the shape of this is much more fluffy and poofy than pretty much anything else I have in vases around. I tend to do taller, more wispy things. And then I feel like sometimes it's overdone and my eye wants a break from that. So I think this is perfect as imperfectly as they dried. Okay. Something else that will likely go on this tray is my little DIY essential oil diffuser project. And we're going to work on that right now. Welcome friends to unqualified DIY, the new segment where I'm going to attempt a DIY project that I probably have no business doing, but that's never stopped me before. So today I am going to attempt to drill a hole. Even the words coming out of my mouth right now, it sounds so ridiculous. I found this cookie jar. It's vintage. It's adorable. And it's exactly what I had in mind to put an essential oil diffuser into. There's a nice open space inside here. And I want that steam from the diffuser to come out the chimney. The chimney right now is solid and needs to have a hole in it. So I am going to attempt to drill a hole in it. I bought diamond tip drill bits. This is what you use to drill a hole in tile, in ceramic, in pottery and porcelain. So hopefully, hopefully this works. I'm going to lay this tablecloth out underneath this project because this is my grandma's vintage teak table from the 1970s. And I do not want to mar it. How cute is this vintage tablecloth by the way? How many times am I going to say vintage in one video? Not as many times as I say it in an antique haul, which actually just went up on my Patreon. You're welcome. $5 a month. And we have a lot of fun over there. I hope this works. This might actually work. I don't want this to overheat. Oh yeah, that is pretty hot. So maybe I should give it a little break in between. Okay. I flew too close to the sun. The piece broke off. Can absolutely super glue that back on. We are so close. We have like two millimeters left. Yes. Hopefully that is a big enough hole for some steam to come out of. I have to clean up this work area, super glue this chipped off corner and, oh yeah, you won't even be able to tell. Okay. That's a minor fix. Oh, I'm so happy right now. Okay. So the little part that chipped off of this chimney that needs to be repaired is actually, we can put it on the backside because either side is the same. So I can just position the good side to be here in the front by the front door. For now, I thought I had a tube of super glue. Turns out it's completely dried up. So I can't finish the repair right now, but I think we'll still be able to see the effect of getting this little diffuser into here. And hopefully the steam will come up through the top. As far as the cord for this diffuser goes, I know you can get like battery powered ones or whatever. This is the one that I have. So I'm going to thread the cord through this chip here in this lower sort of lip that sits down into the bottom of the cookie jar. This was here when I bought it. And rather than drill a hole through the side of the house, which I could still do if I need to, but I'm just going to try to use this as the little slot that the cord comes out. So let's put this here cord coming out the back. Okay. First I got to fill it with water and essential oil. I'm going to use the thrive market defense essential oil. I think it's kind of like thieves or four bandits. It smells so good. Perfect for the fall time. I used to diffuse this oil all the time in our old house. So it smells very nostalgic for me. I'm a very scent oriented person, especially when it comes to memories. So here's some water. And for those of you who are concerned, I have one essential oil diffuser and it has this pretty glass top. Oh my gosh. Was that a moth? Oh, it was. I have one essential oil diffuser that actually does heat up a little bit on the bottom. Um, but this one that I have in here does not, I have actually been kind of testing out the different diffusers that I have to see which one would be good to put into here. Um, and I think that this is going to be fine. It's not going to overheat. There's plenty of room around it. See if we can get some steam to come out of here. Okay. Moment of truth. Like the steam isn't going up very well. We shall see. Maybe eventually it will. It's going all through the inside and not up the chimney. I wonder if there's like a little tube or something that I could direct. Okay. I broke into our emergency water bottle stash. I'm going to go water one of my mums that I'm going to put on the front porch later on in this video when we work out there. I'm going to go water it with this since I, I don't really drink water bottle water unless it's an emergency. Okay. Okay. It's going out the top. If I hold something dark behind it, can you see? I think the problem is not the design or the idea, but the diffuser itself is very gentle. I need to get one of those small diffusers. I used to have one, but it broke. It just shot out the steam. This one is just kind of like barely doing anything. By putting a pin in the diffuser project, I have that little piece that needs to be glued back on. I went on Amazon. I've got same day shipping for a pack of Gorilla Glue Super Glue and an essential oil diffuser that from the video reviews, which are so helpful sometimes, it looks like it really does pump out that steam at the rate that would make it effective for this situation. You want to guess which product was more expensive? The Gorilla Glue. This essential oil diffuser was less than nine dollars. So hopefully, hopefully it will work. It should be here between 5 and 10 pm today. For now, I'm ready to move on from this because I'm at that impasse. I have our bed to make, which last night when we got back from our church home group, I did put our sheets back on our bed off camera, but I have yet to put our duvet cover on and I kind of want to arrange the pillows nice and cozy on the bed and wipe some stuff down and just get that space tidied up. And then I have a few other little places around the house where I want to swap out some artwork and then we're going to move on to that front porch. You know, I might be the minority here when it comes to opinions about spiders and spider webs. I think they're beautiful. I'm fascinated by spiders. I have been since I was a little kid. I think Charlotte's Web actually really piqued my interest when I was little and there are so many this time of the year. I realize that spiders and bats are kind of part of that Halloween aesthetic. We don't really do Halloween, but we do spiders and bats here in the Pacific Northwest in abundance. For now, this room is looking so nice and cozy. That deep maroon sunflower that I put in the vase on Weston's side table is just so pretty and it really does tie in the sconces that we have on the side. I love these pillows. I have been storing them for a while because they just felt not right for the season over the spring and summer, but they're back out and so pretty. They're that perfect sort of deep rusty color and you know it's autumn when Natalie puts the Chugi Get Cozy pillow on her bed. There you go. Yay! I just think that color really does tie in some of what we've got going on in the rest of the room. That's so, so pretty. Okay, I think we're good in here. I have a couple of art pieces. I have had this painting up since Christmas time this last year, and I actually did this fake little ribbon at the top of it. I have been on the lookout for spring and summertime paintings kind of in this style. I love a good landscape or like a cozy house or something to be able to put into this spot, but I just really didn't come across anything for those two seasons. And I have this little apple embroidered sampler that goes under there. I think it's perfect for fall time and for for school time. So I will pack this into the Christmas tote. This will get swapped out again at Christmas time and maybe by next spring and summer I'll have another alternate one. So this is gonna go. Speaking of winter paintings, let's go take a look at what I still have in the bathroom. Okay, I have these two Currier and Ives paintings which are so pretty. They are for the winter time. One's called New England Winter Scene and this one's called Frozen Up. This one is definitely more autumny. We've got some orangey leaves in these trees. I think this is a print. This isn't an original. It's behind glass, which is actually good for a bathroom with the splattering. I need to find a little something to go on this. I got this Darling little painting. This is an original. Please don't mind the kid band-aid. I got this in that antique haul that I did over on my Patreon this month. Isn't that so pretty? It's just like this dainty little painting, foresty painting. It'd be perfect to hang right there. Should I have the larger painting on the bottom and the small one on the top? Hmm. I'll have to live with it for a little while and see if I like it better the other way around. Okay, speaking of that antique haul that I did over on my Patreon, something else I got to swap out this Hollyhock picture is this. This is also an original. Look how pretty this painting is. I already swapped it out the day I got it because I was just too eager to see it in this spot. I just love the detail on this painting. I think the autumny sort of warm colors really balance well with the blue of that river. Just gorgeous, and it's the perfect dimensions. I've been on the lookout for something that I could swap out this one for for the autumn. It looks like just a beautiful sunny early autumn day, which is what we are experiencing today. It's a cool, comfortable 56, 57 degrees outside right now. Just perfect weather. Beautiful blue skies with fluffy clouds, sunshine, a light breeze blowing through. It's just the best, and I'm gonna go out and enjoy it a little bit as we work on the last spot that we're going to tidy up and decorate, which is our front porch. It very much feels like just an extension of our living space out there. We installed our front porch swing just about a year ago. It was in early October last year, and my goodness, we have spent so much time out there. Our cats spend most of their time on our front porch, and I can't wait to cozy it up for the fall. It is raining, but all I can see is the summer we spent. The letter in my wallet, I'll keep it till we meet again. You never doubt it's true, I am not for good at you. You're the one on my mind. As long as I am there with you, cause you're the one on my mind. The only one I reached inside. The only one on my mind. We'll meet again. Friends tell me that I should move on and try and forget, but this is not another tragic love saga that dies in the end. The letter in my wallet, I'll keep it till we meet again. Well, our little front porch just got a bit cozier, and I'm so happy with all the little touches around here to welcome in the autumn. I think I'll probably hang that more orange colored leaf wreath on the inside of the door. I like to have wreaths sort of matched up inside and outside, because it's a clear, it's a window. I might even swap out these blue check pillows. I got these for the summertime, and they're pretty, and you know I like a little bit of blue in the fall, which I'm seeing it repeated a few times here on the front porch with that blue pottery, the flower pots on the steps, and then the blue background of the new autumn welcome mat. So I might very well just keep these, but I was thinking that little vintage gingham tablecloth that I was using during my DIY, I could probably repurpose that into pillowcases as well. Might just do that for the living room throw pillows that I have there. The possibilities are endless when you're an unqualified DIYer. I hope you enjoyed coming along with me today as I did some cleaning, a bit of decluttering, some DIYing, some decorating. So nice to have your company today as I got all of this done as we welcome in the autumn. I hope you're having a wonderful day wherever you are. Thanks so much for spending a little part of it here with me on my channel, and I'll catch you later.