Fall/Autumn

Holiday Tablescapes {Thanksgiving &Christmas}

October 29, 2012 By Stacy 30 Comments

I have a confession to make. I have never done a tablescape before. A nice dinner at our house consists of non-paper plates and putting some candles in the middle of the table. I guess that is what I get for living with 5 boys :) So when Wayfair contacted me about doing a tablescape challenge I was really excited!

The way it worked was that I was sent a list of a dozen or so items and I was suppose to pick 5 of them to include in the tablescape. Here are the items I picked.

(3) Tablecraft Cake Stands, Lenox French Perle plates in white, and a David Shaw silver platter

I was tempted to rush out and buy new decor items, ribbons, etc. But them I realized that it just wouldn’t be “me” if you know what I mean. I like simple. I like rustic. And I like to reuse items I already have and incorporate nature.

Remeber when my tree fell over during a terrible wind storm this summer? I was devastated and also determined to use it for some projects so it would not be a total waste. Parts of the trunk work perfectly under the cake stands to give it texture and added height.

Fall is the perfect time to bring in nature!

I had so much fun pulling together the fall look that I decided to go ahead and do a Christmas table as well. With just a few changes it became a whole new look.

Not only did decorating for Christmas really throw my kids off, but they kept asking when I would be done so they could eat the cake :)

These wood candle holders are also made from the fallen tree. I used a 1 1/2 inch bore bit to hollow the log out enough to stick the candle in it. I love the contrast of the rustic candles on the shiny new platter.

How much do you LOVE these plates? These plates are my FAVORITE. I think they are perfect for any occasion and can be dressed up or down. I am so in love with them. I never got china for my wedding. My dad had passed away a few years before and things were tight. I have never been sad that I didn’t have nice plates until now. I think I might need to save up and get the whole set!!!

So are you the type of person who loves to go all out for holiday tables? I wasn’t in the past but I think I just became one……

Filed Under: Decorating, Fall/Autumn, Projects, Winter/Christmas 30 Comments

I Love Fall!

September 23, 2012 By Stacy 10 Comments

There is nothing in the world like the crisp autumn air. I love the cooler weather after a hot summer and the leaves changing color. Because of all the wild fires in Utah this year and the campfire bans, we did not spend as much time up the canyon as we normally do. We are spoiled to be such a short drive away from the mountains.

My son just turned 11 years old. I told him he could pick anything to do as a family. I gave him all kinds of options. He picked going up the canyon for a hike. I actually tried to talk him out of it at first because the canyon is so close and we can go anytime we want. But in the end I was glad he chose a hike :)

Not too shabby considering I stuck the camera out the window as we were driving, eh?

There is a hiking trail up our canyon that leads to a small waterfall and pool. The water fall is smaller in the fall without all the spring run off but it is still fun to go.

(Trail head)

The hike is not too terrible long and is pretty easy most of the time. It is perfect for a young family. My two year old was able to walk most of it himself and he felt so grown up.

Here is an instagram of my boys playing in the water. The pool is usually deeper and they wore their swimming suits in hopes of swimming like they usually do. But this drought has affected the canyons as well.

After a busy, busy week and after being out of town and away from my family it was so nice to have a day where we could just be together. The beach and the mountains are two very special places for us as a family. There is something so soothing about being out in nature!

Is there a special place you like to go to unwind and regroup?

Now I feel like I am ready to tackle another week of DIY!

Filed Under: Fall/Autumn 10 Comments

Fall Style Guide

October 7, 2011 By Stacy 3 Comments

Traditionally Home Depot has been looked at as a Hardware Store. A Guy’s Store. But there are so many of us women who frequent the isles of that Orange kingdom.

Home Depot has come out with a Fall Style Guide! I LOVE that they are focusing on design. I LOVE that they are appealing to women!

It went live yesterday but I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek on Monday. The style guide is Ahhh-maaa-zing! It is set up a little differently than traditional online magazines. Not only can you click an arrow to go to the next page, but there are arrows on the bottom of the page too. So lets say you are looking through and you come to the page on front doors/porches. If you want more information and more pictures about doors click the arrow on the bottom. If not, you can click to the next page. But trust me, you will want to look at the whole thing :)

I love that turquoise popped up here and there in the style guide. I love that color. My office will be that color . I loved the MEDALLION WALL. Holy CrAzY AWESOME! And there are little video clips along the way if you want even more information.

So go check it out! And get some inspiration for your next project :)

Filed Under: Decorating, Fall/Autumn, Projects 3 Comments

Fall Flashback

October 1, 2011 By Stacy 4 Comments

Since most of you were not around last fall (since my blog was new) I thought I would share some of the fall related posts of 2010. PUMPKIN TOPIARY

Filed Under: Fall/Autumn 4 Comments

County Fair Birthday Party

September 28, 2011 By Stacy 21 Comments

We went to a Fall Festival held at a local farm last year. On the drive home my (now) 10 year old told me he wanted his party to be just like that. He literally has been planning this for the whole year. He drew pictures and made lists. I of course had to scale back some seeing as I don’t have any connections with people who have Ferris Wheels, but I think we did a pretty good job :)

(I created the invites in photoshop)

Remember last week when I told you my one and only lens for my camera broke? I have to manually focus it now. I am not use to having to do that so some of my pictures turned out blurry. I am so sad. But blurry pics are better than none, right???

We did things differently with this party. My son wanted it to really feel like a fair. Plus he is saving up for something big. So we invited the WHOLE FAMILY of each child. Instead of bringing a gift we had them bring the money they would have spent on a gift to “buy” tickets.

They could use those tickets to go and do all the activities.

Like face painting. . .

This was my booth. It was hard to be the photographer, manage all the booths and face paint, but it worked out. I wish I had the money to hire someone to take pictures. But this party was on a shoe string budget :)

The hit of the party was the petting zoo!!! My son spent the most time here and none of the kids wanted to go home because of the animals. (P.S. You can see the new fence we are building! I love it)

We have some awesome friends that brought their pygmy goats and bunnies over for the zoo. Our neighbors let us borrow a mother hen and her chicks to go along with our chickens and ducks.

I am totally in love with these little pygmy goats! I almost have my husband convinced to get a couple :) That is as big as they get!!!

The other popular thing was the ring toss, for 2 reasons. 1) The party had a ton of little boys. Boys are competitive. 2) The prize was live goldfish!

Yep. Real goldfish! But I had other options in case any of the parents didn’t want the fish. (I knew the parents though and wasn’t too worried) They could choose a toy and a bag of goldfish crackers.

(I made the signs to match the font of the invitation using my Silhouette machine. It cut the lettering out and I used spray adhesive to stick them to poster board)

The bottles are 2 liters of Rootbeer and the rings were mason jar rings.

I am so sad that this one is super blurry (darn broken lens!). I wanted to bring out my kitchen table but we would have had to take off the kitchen door. So I used a card table (thanks mom!) and some apple crates. You can’t really tell but the fabric was red and white checkers.

For the pumpkin decorating I bought foam sticker sets from Oriental Trading for the kids to use on the pumpkins. They could mix and match and the best part was NO MESS! I was a little surprised at how much the older boys liked this. I thought mainly the smaller ones and the girls would do it.

Not all of them are pictured. I forgot to take pictures of this until after some people had gone home. There were a TON of kids :)

This kiddie area was not in the original plan. It was a last minute genius idea. I realized since we were inviting the whole family of each child that there would be some tiny kids. They wouldn’t want to do all the things there. I grabbed out play tents and all our tunnels. I was going to fill one of the tent with a giant bag of plastic balls we have but couldn’t find them in time. We also put out slide over there but it is not in the picture. The little ones LOVED it!!!

I didn’t really get a picture of the food table. It was not anything fancy since we were having hot dogs and chips. But we had a rusty yellow barrel that the cute red table top barbecue sat on. Next to that was the table with a denim table cloth. To hide the ugly orange water cooler, I set it inside of a wood barrel. I had used my jigsaw to cut a hole so you could still access the water spout.

My husband took the kids for a hay ride around the neighborhood towards the end of the party.

I always have a hard time right before a party. I always have things that don’t get done. I always have to scrap certain things. And there are always things that go wrong, or get lost, or break. I have a hard time because I know how I wanted it to be and what it COULD have been. But at the end of the day the only thing that matters is that the birthday kid was happy. He didn’t care that the dozens of blue ribbons I had cut out were still on the kitchen table. He didn’t care that I had to buy the bake sale items because I ran out of time to bake them myself. And he didn’t care that I had my hair slicked back and was a sweaty mess. He felt special. And he had fun :)

Filed Under: Fall/Autumn, Kids Activities, Projects 21 Comments

My version of a "Thankful Tree"

November 18, 2010 By Stacy 20 Comments

The idea of a thankful tree is not new and I have seen so many of them around. So I almost didn’t share mine with you. But it is a little different so I will. The main difference is how it is used. I know this will sound incredibly silly, but it has always bugged me that you add leaves everyday instead of taking them off. It is Fall after all. The leaves fall off the tree ( ok, so I might be a little OCD or something. . . ) So at our house we make all our leaves together and write what we are thankful for on them. We put them all on the tree. Every person has their own color. Mine was red! Then at night when we are doing the whole scripture reading, prayer, bedtime thing, we each pick one of ours off and we talk about those things. You could do this at dinner time or when ever it is easiest for your schedule. Then the leaves are “falling” off the tree gradually just like in nature. Okay, here is how I made mine:

I used some plaster of paris that I had hanging around,

a bucket, (and yes, that is a 90% off sticker you see) and a little tree that died in our yard. You could also use a flower pot. Just make sure to cover the hole with tape so the plaster doesn’t come out the bottom.

I picked out some fall paper for the leaves too.

I mixed up the plaster and stuck my tree in it. I let it sit for most of the day to make sure it was hard.

I cut one leaf out and then used it as a pattern. I traced 24 leaves per piece of paper. Then I got craft wire and cut about 2 inch pieces.

Instead of tape, I used my glue gun because I thought it would be more secure.( plus I really like my glue gun!) I want to re-use the leaves for next year.

Because I added the wire to the leaves instead of using say, string, I was able to wrap the wire around the branches and bend them where ever I wanted. I had control over where they faced and everything (I like having control!)
And there you have it! My Thankful Tree!!!

We left some of them blank so we can add things next year. I figure most things we wrote this year we will still be thankful for next year too, like our home, food, family. . etc. It didn’t take a ton of time, but I would like to get at least a couple years out of it!

Oh, and I forgot to add something to the bucket to hide the plaster. I will probably throw some moss in there or something. Maybe. If I get around to it :)

Filed Under: Fall/Autumn, Projects, Tutorials 20 Comments

Grass costume

October 31, 2010 By Stacy 15 Comments

My son was grass this year. It was so easy and caused quite a stir at his school carnival. Everyone was snapping pictures with their cell phones!
I used heavy duty hair gel and then sprayed it with tons of hair spray. Then I sprayed it with green hairspray. I used the blow dryer to dry it quickly (we have early school) and then for some of the plastic bugs I hot glued them to the hair. Yep, I used my glue gun :) I tested it on the tips of his hair just in case it didn’t come off easily. I figured I could cut it off. But it did come off pretty easy. I think it is because the glue was mainly sticking to all the gel and hairspray and not his actual hair. Some of the critters I attached with fishing line. I tied it around the bug and then around a chunk of hair. I then added a glob of hair gel to act as glue so the knot wouldn’t come out or slip out of the hair. Both ways worked great. If I had had more time I probably would have done them all with fishing line.

I wish you could see the back. The dragonfly perched on the back was my favorite. The bugs stayed in all day and night. And then they came out pretty easily. A big glob of shampoo and we were back to normal!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Filed Under: Fall/Autumn 15 Comments

{homemade} Costumes from Halloween past

October 28, 2010 By Stacy 5 Comments

For someone who possesses very little sewing skills, I end up making costumes an awful lot. I figure they only get worn once, and at most once a year, so they don’t need to be quality. Right? I can wing it pretty well with out a pattern. Here are some of the homemade costumes I have done ( the ones I could easily find pictures for at least).

My oldest wanted to be a crocodile a couple years ago. I tried to talk him out of it. But when I saw the picture he drew at school, I melted and gave in. I tried to match it as best I could.

Don’t you just love how little kids spell??? Although, without spell check I am not much better. Not so cute when you’re 30 (ish).

This isn’t the best picture, but it shows it more up close. I cut a Styrofoam ball in half and glue gunned it to the head piece. I made the teeth out of felt and they got glue gunned too. I bought a green sweat suit at Walmart for less than $10.00. I found matching green material there too for $1.00 a yard. I only sewed the tail and head thing.

I made a parrot costume one year. I bought a cheap blue jacket and a big bag of feathers from the craft store. I glue gunned them on. The craft Store also had plastic beaks and pig snouts that you could wear on your face held on by elastic. I cut off the elastic. Where the elastic had been were holes. I sewed the beak on through those holes. I also added two big googly eyes. I wish you could see the head better. This kept him nice and warm.

Yes. This is a fly costume. Only my little guys would come up with this! I made this without a pattern and it turned out pretty well. He loved it so much he was a fly 2 years in a row. The wings are wire shaped to what I thought was a good fly wing shape, and then covered in netting fabric (glue gunned, of course!). I had black elastic for the arms to go through. Again, the eyes are a styrofoam ball cut in half. I used fishing line to hold all the arms ( or legs)together.

Come see why I posted about Halloween past costumes! See HERE!

Filed Under: Fall/Autumn 5 Comments

EASY No Sew Pumpkin

October 27, 2010 By Stacy 17 Comments

My friend was given this as a gift from a friend. I thought it was darling! And guess what is INSIDE????

Toilet paper!!! It is almost so easy that I feel silly doing a tutorial. It is a “no sew” project which is my favorite part.

My bench is 16″ wide, so the fabric is probably about 18 inches. The leaves are also fabric and the stem was brown paper rolled up.

Just tuck the fabric in. There is no right or wrong way.

Lay the leaves on top and poke the rolled up paper in the hole.

And Voila! A pumpkin. Wasn’t that easy??? And convenient in case you thought there was another case of TP in the garage but there really wasn’t. And you get stranded. Unless that only happens at my house. . .

And they do make cute little gifts. Or you could make a bunch of them and have your own little pumpkin patch. This is a good kid activity too.

Filed Under: Fall/Autumn 17 Comments

Fall Favorites #2

October 14, 2010 By Stacy 2 Comments

I love love love these Frankenstein pops from Craftomaniac! The shape of the marshmallow is perfect for his head :)

Kimbo from A Girl And A Glue Gun added fall leaves to her family tree. I totally love the tree idea and it is EXTRA cute with the addition of the leaves! See how HERE.