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Fall is one of my favorite times of year. Crackling fires, warm cider, and a landscape full of beautiful earth tones, all bring feelings of coziness and peace. Decorating for fall has always been a special time that I’ve enjoyed, and as I’ve gotten older, I savor the quiet moments of decorating for this special season even more.

My decorating style tends to lean towards a more moody and muted color pallet overall. Anything overly saturated and bright I tend to pull away from. I focus on colors you would naturally see in the landscape, and I tend to decorate for the season, rather than specific holidays like Halloween, for example. Almost all of my seasonal decorating consists of adding florals, stems, pillows, and throws. I also like to sprinkle in a few vintage finds, usually in the form of a brass animal of some kind or artwork that is related to the season. Finally, I almost always incorporate some kind of natural element. For fall and winter, my go-to natural element has always been pinecones. This year, I was inspired to add something a little extra for fall when I was browsing an antique store in Augusta, GA recently.

While my husband and I were wandering through a booth in an antique mall, we were stopped in our tracks - not because of something we saw, but because the smell was out-of-this-world delicious! There, in a small bowl right in front of us, were tiny cinnamon pumpkin decorations. The smell had me so mesmerized, I had to buy a few - and no joke, our car smelled like cinnamon for a solid week afterwards. I was hooked and wanted to try to create my own for the fall season.

I did some research on how to DIY your own cinnamon pumpkins and ended up merging a couple different techniques.

Here’s how I created mine…

Materials Needed:

About 7.5 oz of ground cinnamon
2.5 cups of cinnamon applesauce
3 tablespoons of glue
Small twigs ranging in sizes
Butter knife
Mixing bowl
Cookie sheet/drying rack

Process:

Pour the cinnamon, apple sauce, and glue together in a large mixing bowl and stir thoroughly. Gather a small portion of dough in your hand and roll it into a ball. Vary the size of the dough to match the size you want for your pumpkins - I did sizes ranging from a 1 1/2 inch to 2 inches in diameter. Place the ball of dough onto the cookie sheet and flatten the top slightly. Repeat the process until all the dough has been rolled into a ball and placed onto the cookie sheet. *Pro tip - work quickly. If the dough starts to dry out, your pumpkins will look grainier, rather than smooth.

Using a butter knife, press gently into the side of each ball to create the pumpkin ridge/line. When pressing the knife into the dough, start at the bottom and roll the knife upward towards the center - this will ensure the deepest groove is at the base, which will give you the signature scalloped look that pumpkins have around the bottom. Repeat five more times moving around the pumpkin after you make each impression - you should have a total of six ridges. Remember that the harder you press the knife into the dough, the deeper the indentation, so be careful not to distort the shape of your pumpkin. Finally, select a pre-cut stem and press the stem down into the center of the pumpkin, being careful not to push the stem all the way through. Repeat this process until all pumpkins have ridges and stems.

Now it’s time to dry your pumpkins!

I tried two different methods for drying my pumpkins. For the first batch, I transferred the pumpkins to a drying rack and let them air dry for about 4 days. For the second batch, I tried baking them in the oven at 200 degrees for about 1 hour, checking them every 15-20 minutes to ensure they weren’t burning or breaking - unfortunately, they still burned (oops!). This didn’t bother me, however, because it just gave me a little more variety to decorate with. Either way you choose to dry your cinnamon pumpkins, your house will smell amazing!

Once all your pumpkins are dried out, place them around your house to bring the smell and sight of fall to your home. I added these little cuties to bowls, gathered them next to candles, and used them as fillers in my dining table centerpiece.