Halloweeeeeeeeeen!

Halloween is in a week! OMG! I need to buy some candy. For trick-or-treaters you ask? Uh ya I guess so. :)

So last week I showed off all my fall decorations in my Happy Fall to All post.  But lets switch gears to Halloween now!  Naturally I have a Halloween board too!

And here's one of my favorite things.  I love all things 3D so I loved this pin the minute I saw it.

It's so fun to see these bats 3D like they're really flying around your house.  Of course if they were really flying around my house I would FREAK OUT! I hate live bats. But when I'm not worried about them getting trapped in my hair, I'm good.

So here's what I did:

It's not as many bats, so I should cut out some more, but it's so simple to make these little guys.  All you need is black construction paper or card-stock and scissors.  I free-handed my bat drawings and then cut them out, folded them in half and taped them to the wall! Presto, 3D bats!  I kind of want to have some of them taped on my large picture of Big Ben there so it looks like they are flying out of the picture, but I need more construction paper!  If you are a freak for simetrical bats (don't worry I am too!) you can always fold the paper in half before drawing your bat.  Draw half of it coming off the fold, cut it out and both sides will match!  If your not much for free-hand drawing, I'm sure there are patterns available in the vastness of the internet you can use as a template.

I also really enjoyed this idea:

I didn't necessarily want it on my front door, but I did it the same way.

I buy these plain, wood letters from Hobby Lobby all the time.

I just painted these black and then put a layer of mod podge over them and sprinkle them with black glitter.  Who doesn't love glitter?  Well looking at it anyway, I know it's a pain when you keep finding it no matter how well you clean your craft room.  The point is, these letters can be turned into any cute craft and they don't cost very much to make!  Some day soon I will do a collection post about how often I really do use these guys!

Take a look at the rest of my decorations!

I got this guy on clearance at Target a few years ago.  He's indoor/outdoor so I could put him outside if I wanted to, but someone would probably steal him :(

My Grandma Leonetta would always do little crafts for us when we were younger, she did these little tin can makeovers for Halloween one year and I have put it out to decorate ever since.  I think she also bought me the Halloween bear at some point, but it wasn't for the same year.

These guys I just brought home last weekend! They were my Grandma Mary's decorations and she and Grandpa have been downsizing the farm a lot lately, so my cousins, aunts and I got to go through a bunch of junk.  I always love hand-me-downs. I didn't appreciate them enough when I was a kid and had to wear hand-me-down clothes.

This is my favorite part! I got the cheese cloth and black/purple roses from the dollar store, the pumpkin and the black wrought iron candle holder on the left were more of my Grandma's discards and I've had the burlap sack and the flowers since my husband deployed and my mother-in-law sent me a little fall themed care package a few years ago. :)  I've always liked the idea of putting a serving tray like this on a coffee table but have never tried it until now.  Let me tell you, I am hooked! I think I'll try it all year round and just keep swapping out the decorations when I feel like it. 

Let's talk pumpkin carving!  Every year my husband and I get together with my sister and her boyfriend and have a pumpkin carving night!  This year we went to a pumpkin patch to pick the pumpkins where normally we just buy them at Ace or Walmart or something.  It was fun to make a whole day out of it but here our creations this year.

This one's mine.  I'm not the best carver in the world (clearly).  I think this one should go in the realm of "nailed it" pictures haha.

Nathan's bat turned out good!

Lonna's Kitty looks cute! She had some trouble with the whiskers falling through because they were a bit too weak, but it still looks like a kitty.

My husband James is the master carver.  He's the first to start and the last to finish but it's totally worth it! His bass is lighted below:

You can't see it in this picture but he actually has a real lure stuck in the pumpkin by it's mouth! (There's my love of 3D again!)

My cat looks better with the light on!  I hope you all have a great Halloween!! Don't eat too much candy! Just enough to make you full, but not enough to make you sick.

What's your Halloween tradition?

Happy Fall to All!!

Happy Fall everyone!  I honestly can't believe it's already Halloween! I don't know where the summer went let alone August and September.  Did you see that time pass?

Fall is probably one of my favorite seasons! I love how fall clothes look on me (especially compared to summer clothes), how nice it feels to cozy up with a sweater and a blanket, sip some hot chocolate, or better yet, a pumpkin spice latte, and just read a book while the weather gets cooler.

Not to mention all the awesome fall decorations I always see on Pinterest!  Some of my favorites are pinned to my fall board:

    

I love the white pumpkins and the burlap flowers and the brown tones of the pine cones. I love that fall sign and all the orange and brown and even pops of green in the multi pumpkin box on the right.

I wanted to bring all of this in to my home so I started decorating for fall at the beginning of September.  I've always loved how burlap looks on a table and found this one where it's covering a console table:



But I definitely wanted to put it on my pretty table that I showed off last Christmas in my Pretty new table!! post.

I also think cornucopias go perfectly with fall and Thanksgiving so I put together my own pretty tablescape.

:) It makes me all smiley inside! I love my glittery pumpkins and the fake leaves and the cornucopia.  Let's take a closer look shall we?

It just feels so much like fall.  I'm totally ready to have a great big Thanksgiving meal on this table.  Maybe all its missing is some long tapered candles on candle sticks. (I'll have to get some of those for my little Thanksgiving get together.)

The burlap doesn't stop at the table either.  I couldn't resist putting the rest of the roll I had on the piano too!!

Burlap on ALL THE THINGS!! Just kidding but I do think that Burlap goes best as fall decor. :)

Take a look at the rest of my fall decorations!

This is a fun little project that you can save every year! It's a fake pumpkin from Target and I drew our initial on in sharpie!  Someday I'll thicken up the letter a bit but for now it looks good, and let's be honest, I don't want to ruin it by marking even more.

The picture of my husband and me with the pumpkins was actually an engagement photo but I always like to put it out for fall.  We actually have a picture for every season taken throughout various portions of our relationship (which dates back to 2005 by the way).  It's always fun to swap out the picture when the seasons change.

Of course we have to have a chalkboard sign, like just about everyone else now a days.
It's so much fun to change the message with the events that come up year round!

Hope you enjoyed all my decor! Stay tuned for all my Halloween decorations show and tell in the next few days and get excited, because I made some of them myself, plus they are super cheap to do! Who doesn't love that?

What's your favorite way to decorate for fall?

Be Our Guest!

Holy cow it's been a while since my last project/post!  We have been through a lot in this last year with some family and their friends living with us off and on so our guest room was always full with someone else's stuff.  Well we finally have the house to ourselves again!  As soon as the room was empty I cleaned it up, scrubbed EVERYTHING, and got to work making it ours again.

Now I'm done and it's my favorite room so far!!!

I always loved the idea of crisp, white, spa-like hotel rooms so I wanted to model our guest room after that.  My husband and I love hosting family and friends whether its just for a bar-b-que in the back yard, overnight, or for a weekend so naturally I wanted to create a space where they will have the most relaxing experience.

Here's a sneak peak:

Before I show off the whole room, let's take a look at what it looked like before!

It was so generic before with the tan walls.  I also had wall art that blended in too much with the walls and the curtains definitely didn't pop.

Naturally I hit Pinterest and tried to decide on a color scheme and decor.  I found these pins that really made me want to go spend a night in these rooms. (click here for my whole guest room inspiration board)

So I decided on a dark blue/grey color with white accessories because I saw this pin:

Ok here it is!!  My finished guest room!

I do wish we had a double bed in here but that's not quite in the budget right now.  But I do have a white full size comforter that I got free from my cousin so I'm ready when we get a new bed! :).

I just love the white accessories and curtains and I LOVE this comforter from Wayfair!  It's so cozy and pretty and I want to sleep here! Now let's take a closer look at the decor because I got almost all of the ideas from Pinterest.

Inspiration pin on top and then my version underneath.

 

           Inspiration                           

                                    Reality

I think I've shown this one in my post "Print your heart out" because I just worked this up in Microsoft word and added some clip art, print, frame and voila, beautiful art!  Plus I love Beauty and the Beast so of course this needed to be in the guest room!

 

                Inspiration                         

                               Reality

I love this one and the next one.  I printed the little "Blessed" sign and used mod podge to put the glitter stripes and the sign on a canvas.  (How-to post coming soon!)

 

                Inspiration                         

                              Reality

I love the lettering and they look great!! Who doesn't love a little sparkle?

 

                Inspiration                         

                                 Reality

Little touches like the "get cozy" tag and a blanket make your guests feel well taken care of knowing that there are extra blankets in case they get cold during the night.

            

                Inspiration                         

                                     Reality

The pictures of the ocean in the inspiration pin seemed so relaxing and beautiful to me.  In my version I used pictures from various vacations that I've been on.  Top left is the Ferris wheel on the Navy Pier in Chicago, next to that is Santa Monica beach in California.  Bottom left is the sunset over the ocean on Maui and last is a view of downtown Chicago close to Millennium Park.

                Inspiration                         

                                     Reality

For those of you who don't know me, my husband and I have 3 cats and a dog and there's nothing cozier than snuggling up with a kitty and taking a nap.  I definitely wanted to bring some of this into the guest room.  I found the inspiration pin and it didn't seem too hard to draw so I took a sharpie and just went for it.  I added the "Snuggle up" from printing it off the computer and mod podging it onto a white painted board from Hobby Lobby.

My finishing touch doesn't have an inspiration pin because it was created about 40 years before Pinterest was around: 

There's a little reflection on this from the window but it's a chalk drawing my mom did in high school that's an abstract picture of a woman holding her baby.  It's always fun to have a family treasure like that around.  

Fun fact! that picture is hanging right above the rocking chair that belonged to my Grandma (my mom's mom) when she was in high school! 

This rocking chair is actually a makeover of it's own because it used to look like this:

This, I'm sure was beautiful in my Grandmother's room many moons ago but I love that I could take it and make it my own while keeping the sentimental value.

I am in love with this room and we've had several happy house guests since then. Here are all the close ups of the decor that I haven't talked about yet:

I actually took  these pictures of my hands in black and white with an artistic tree background.

I still want to makeover this dresser, but I haven't found any drawer pulls that are big enough for these.  It's quite frustrating.

Hope you enjoyed this little make over!

Which room in your house is your favorite?