Mum’s the word

Ok, ok so the title’s a little corny but I had to!  Forgive me.  So in yesterday's post I mentioned that I had a mum-related project that I was working on.  It ended up taking me more than one day, but that’s ok.  So to me, fall is all about mums.  Literally, as soon as the word “fall” is uttered I’ll be the first girl down at the nursery snatching up some beautiful mums.  This year was no different, except that usually I end up paying a fortune a little too much for a nice, big, full mum and this time around I didn’t!  One of the girls I work with was selling them for her kid’s school and they were only $6 a piece!  It was a steal so I got three, 2 crimson and one orange.  They were HUGE when I got them and I was oh-so-happy.  Now, fast forward a few weeks and my mums are wilting…*sad face*…and I know why.  It’s because the little plastic pots they came in were waaaaaaaaay too small for them to flourish, and I knew I needed to do something about it.  Here’s one crimson one, all wilt-y.

  Lately, there’s been absolutely no “budge” in our budget, if you will.  That means no extra money for pots to repot my precious mums!  Pots are expensive, not to mention that I unfailingly have champagne taste on a Natty Lite budget, so I knew it was best to not even go looking and just figure something else out.  Enter: The Dollar Tree *angels singing, heavenly light shining down on local Dollar Tree*.  I scooped up 3 black buckets for 3 bucks, some cheap potting soil and hoped for the best.   
                                                                  
The hubs helped me drill some holes in the bottom, ya know, for drainage and what not. This took about 5 seconds.  He’s so cute, I love him!

Then I filled them up with potting soil and repotted my plants and gave them a good soak.  The “pots” are a little big, but the black color goes well with my Halloween décor and there’s plenty of room for growth. 
 
So of course after I finished I thought to myself, “Self, these pots need a little something extra.”  I thought about all sorts of things, like ribbon, some braided yarn, or something really Halloween-ish but none of those options seemed right.  And then it hit me, OUR LAST INITIAL! PERFECT!  So I printed out a huge L in a font I liked, laminated it and cut it out to make a stencil.  I taped the stencil to the pot with some painter’s tape to see if it fit and it did!
 
Then, I used some old newspaper to cover everything else so I wouldn’t get anything on the rest of the pot.  Fancy, huh?

I busted out my handy white spray paint, as seen in this post, and got busy.  Now, I kind of figured that my stencil wasn’t leak proof and that some paint would get under the stencil and I would need to do some tough ups.  And booooy, did I!  Here’s how it looked after the spray paint and removing the stencil.

It was a full on Monet.  From far away it was ok, but up close it was a big ol’ mess!  So I grabbed my giant Sharpie and cleaned things up a little bit.  Muuuuch better.

And here they are!

Disregard the gourds, they’re temporary until I can get my hands on some pumpkins from the farmers market.  The L turned out great and I love that it breaks up the 3 blank “pots”.  I still think I’ll add something else to the other 2, but we’ll see once I get some pumpkins and such up there.  Anyone else have any fun fall activities goin’ on?? I’d love to hear all about it!  It’s fall, ya’ll!!!
Thanks for stoppin’ by!

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