My Fall Mantle

So, first of all, I would like to say that I am really enjoying trying to focus on the blog right now and post things as often as I can.  I feel like I’m really getting into the swing of things and I hope I can keep it up.  Also, please ignore the way the blog LOOKS right now.  It’s going through some changes and I can’t quite figure everything out just yet, so please just ignore the funky margins and awkward layout for the moment!  I say this as if there is anyone but my family and a few friends reading this, LOL!
Anyhoodle, on with the show!  So in yesterday's post I mentioned that today I wanted to share my fall mantle, yayy!  I love fall and everything about it, especially the decorations and coffee drinks.  Pumpkins, owls, mums, and rich colors are all so beautiful! Speaking of mums, tomorrow I will have a post about a little project I did today dealing with my beautiful mums!
So here’s my little fall inspired mantle:

Here’s a close up of the gourd, which my momma grew in her garden last summer!  I love the way the spots on it look, kind of like they’re tie-dyed.

I made the paper bunting myself with some old scrap book paper and everything else I already had on hand.  The mirror is one of my favorite things I own.  My parents bought it for me the weekend Nick and I moved into the house from the vintage store by my house.  It came from a barber shop in southern Indiana and it has so much awesome character, I just love it!  Also, I think the sconces add a little bit of charm to my setup here. 

Not sure why, but I never took a picture of the mantle from the front, so there it is again from the side!  haha!  So tomorrow I’ll be sharing my little mum project I worked on today, which I LOVE by the way.  Oh! I almost forgot! I’m getting some things ready for my etsy shop, so when it’s ready I’ll share the link on here.  I’m excited. 
*Side note:  decorating the mantle for fall makes me think of all the UH-MAY-ZING things I can do with it for Christmas!!!!  Now imagine me jumping around my living room, giddy about the prospects for Christmas decorating.  Anyway….
Thanks for stoppin’ by!

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Weekends and Wine Corks

Let me start by saying that we have been BUSY lately, which is why I’ve been lacking in the blog department.  We have been out of town every weekend for the last four weekends, which is fun but exhausting.  Every Sunday night I would say I was going to post something and then I would end up getting sleepy lazy and not do anything but lay on the couch like a lump.  But now I have a fun little project to show! Yayy!! 
About a year ago I was really wanting a whole bunch of wine corks to either do crafts with or use as vase filler, but I don’t really drink wine and none of our local liquor stores were giving up their stash of corks.  After being turned down by every liquor store in town, I was sad and pouty.  Obviously my sweet husband saw this and wanted to make me happy, so he worked his magic.  He has a way of getting people to do things for him that they wouldn’t normally do, which is a very handy talent.  He walked right up into one of the places that had turned me down the day before and walked out mere minutes later with a HUGE bag full of corks!  I almost passed out, I was so happy.  I never did much with them and they sat in their cute paper bag just being awesome, until the other day when I got a wild hair.  I was driving home from work, and on my oh-so-lengthy 3 minute commute the idea hit me!  I would make a letter out of corks!  Our last name initial!  Hooray!  So as soon as I parked my car I was gathering my materials. 
I swiped a Cheerios box from the recycle bin, grabbed my corks and hot glue gun and got down to business.  First, I drew my letter and cut it out…

Then I just started gluing on my corks.  I tried to pick ones that were pretty unique..

I let them hang over the edge of the letter and little bit and staggered them so they weren’t all just in a row.  I also cut some in half and laid them up on their ends to kind of break up the design a little bit. 

I did a little slicing and dicing and got all the spaces filled up..

And took a break to eat some delicious pasta that my sweet hubby made, since I was too busy crafting my little heart out!  Yuummmm…


When I finally got all the pieces glued on I took a picture of it and showed off my creation on Facebook! I still haven’t done much with it, it’s just sitting in my window but I kind of like it there.  I will say, since I used the cereal box it’s not the most sturdy little letter but I don’t need it to do much more than just sit and look puuurtty, which it does quite well! 

And now, some pretty pictures I took last weekend…with a post to follow…



Hope everyone had a great weekend!  Thanks for stopping by!

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Decorating with Ke$ha..

..well, kind of.  So maybe I was just listening to some Ke$ha whilst doing a little decorating in my guest room, but whatev.  Alright, so a couple of weeks ago I was cruising the interwebs when I found this tutorial on making paper wall flowers! Exciting!  I have been deeply in love with these wallflowers from Young House Love since the moment I saw them, but I didn’t exactly feel like shelling out the moola to have them for myself so when I saw the paper version I knew I had to make them. 
The beauty of making these myself is that I can use whatever paper I want, make as many as I want and, best of all, they cost me a big fat NOTHIN’!  Woohoo!  I won’t go into great detail about how I made them because you can read all about it for yourself in the tutorial but I will say that it is time consuming. I traced and cut and glued with my booty parked in front of the TV, watching some America’s Got Talent.  Although, this year I don’t really think America’s got ANY talent, but that’s beside the point. 
So today I came home and decided it was time to put up my flowers.  So, I gathered my supplies and cranked up the Ke$ha radio on Pandora and got down to business.  Here are my supplies…

Ke$ha Radio on Pandora, Michelob Ultra and all my pretty flowers!  No, beer is not a requirement but I find that it increases creativity. Ha!
Now, before I put these up I knew I didn’t have quite enough flowers to really fill out my area but I figured it would be a good start.  I used some scrapbook paper I had lying around.  It’s white with a grey pattern on it but from far away it just looks white.  A couple weeks ago I put one of my big flowers up on the wall just to see how it would look.  It sat there alone for a while.

I laid all my flowers out on the bed to get an idea of a pattern or shape I might want them to be in, but of course that little design didn’t exactly transfer to the wall.  I really just pinned them up the way I thought might look good.

See? Not very many, but it’s still pretty for right now.

I ended up not pushing the thumb tacks all the way in and I like the way they stand up off of the wall a little. 
I like the way they look and they perk up our guest room a little bit, since at the moment there is no color scheme or décor direction in there.  This weekend may bring a painting project, but the details are still up in the air so STAY TUNED!  We’re off to make spaghetti for dinner…yuummmm….  Thanks for stoppin’ by!

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