My Unstructured Bliss: No-cost Fall decorating

Last October, my next door neighbor and I were lucky enough to get tickets to the Martha Stewart show in NYC. We had an outstanding time and were awed by her set. It was completely decked out for fall and had total eye-candy everywhere you looked! One quite beautiful decorating detail was oodles and oodles of bittersweet vine berries tucked among all the creamy white dishes. It looked so warm and inviting, that it was something that I had to give a try at home.

Bittersweet is a vine native to the US and has yellow berries in the fall - these burst open later in the season revealing a gorgeous orange berry framed by a yellow paper frame. Its not too difficult to find bittersweet vine on a nature walk in the northeast. For me in NJ, this meant hopping over the fence into the “natural” area behind our home. There was an American Bittersweet vine inhabiting one of the small trees, not too far from the fence. American bittersweet can be distinguished from it Chinese counterpart by the absence of thorns. Since the vine was about 7 ft up, I had to jump up to get a grip on the tree branch to pull the tree slightly over to one side. Had this been a cartoon, no doubt the tree would have snapped back to upright and catapulted me off into the air to land several miles away - a fact that my husband, who I love dearly, relished in telling me as he stood safely on our side of the fence! After a little hard work, I had several generous branches of berried vine.

I’ve never been one of those people who can artfully arrange drying branches in a vase or across a mantle to make that beautiful display with the crinkly leaves. My mother-in-law can do this with both hand tied behind her back, and last year arranged a gorgeous vaseful for us! I tried to do the same this evening but to no avail - however I arranged it, it just looked like I had brought dead smelly tree branches inside the house. So I settled on harvesting the twigs laden with berries, removing the leaves and making tiny sprays of bittersweet. These were tied with some left over ribbon from another project and tucked them in strategic places around the house. I think they give our house a homey fall look and the best part, cost nothing at all!