Pumpkin Palooza!

It was pumpkin decorating night in our house last night!  Check out the pictures from our fun night:

Charm's Pumpkin Request: Circle eyes, Square Nose and 5 teeth

Lucky's Pumpkin Request: Heart Eyes, Triangle Nose and Squiggly Mouth

Lucky's Completed Pumpkin!

 Next up, one of my pumpkins using inspiration I highlighted in this post:

This pumpkin came from my dad's patch.  We picked it over Labor Day weekend!

Marking my drill holes

Bill used a 15/64 drill bit.

I popped these lights in the holes Bill made.  The set was less than $3 at Target.

I only needed about 50 lights, so the rest will hang out within the pumpkin.  My only tip for doing this is to drill a cord exit hole prior to stringing in the lights.  We made our cord exit hole after stringing the lights which proved a little tricky.

Finished Pumpkin Product!

 Here's my other pumpkin using inspiration from this post:

I found black patterned tights on sale for $2.50 at Target.

Ribbon was used to tie off the ends.

End Result.  This decorating option was so easy and so fast!  I love the look!!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Knock Off Pottery Barn Halloween Display

I've held onto this image from an old Pottery Barn catalog for a couple years now:

I love the spooky look...the black urn, barren branches, black crows and old book pages.  Do you recognize the Boo Rug from this post?  I decided almost immediately upon viewing this page that  I wanted to recreate the overall look, but I needed a black urn.  A black urn that I didn't want to pay Pottery Barn prices for.  I didn't want to even pay Home Depot prices for it, so I waited and waited.  Then early last month, Home Depot cleared out many of their planters including this one:

Originally $89.99, it was on clearance for $29.  Yeah to the hey!!  It's taller than the Pottery Barn urn and just looks nicer in my opinion.

I had put sticks aside for this project last year.  I grabbed them from my parents old house right before they sold it last fall.  The sticks have sat in the garage for over a year, and I've had to defend my need for them on many occasions to avoid having them land in our fire pit.  I've decorated using faux black crows and faux white pumpkins from Michael's for the past couple years, so I already had several of those on hand.  Finally, I used pages from an old Goodwill book and fishing line to hang the pages from the branches.  I tried to hunt down an old 'witchcraft' book with images, but that proved difficult.

Here is my front porch look now:

It's hard to see the dark crows against the color of our siding, but I still love it! 

My porch is covered, so as long as there is no major precipitation I'm in good shape leaving it as is for a couple days.  However, if I wanted to make it more weather proof, I'd need to laminate the book pages and perhaps invest in some indoor/outdoor birds or be okay with a poly'd bird look:).  As for now, this works just fine.

Cost Breakdown:
Urn: $29 (I also bought a second one in case I decide to do 2 on either side of the door...I like planters in pairs)
Sticks: FREE
Faux Pumpkins and Crows: FREE (already owned, but they have crows at the Dollar Tree and the Faux Pumpkins at Michael's.)
Book: $0.15 from Goodwill Clearance Book Bin
Rug: $8

Total for Look: Under $40, although it would be closer to $55 if I count the original cost of  black crows and faux pumpkins.

Maybe next year, I'll add the scroll, bench and lanterns from the original inspiration image to our overall Halloween front porch look:).  As for now, I love our porch decor!  And if you couldn't tell already, we love Halloween around here.  I'll actually be back this afternoon with a post about our pumpkin decorating adventures.

Linking up to Finding Fabulous!

Colors of the Month: Black and White and Orange

The choice for October's Colors of the Month was a no brainer: black, white and orange to keep in the spirit of Halloween.  I've shown a few projects I've worked on already this month including my bird cage light fixture, my DIY mercury glass pumpkin, my work in progress witch hat bookshelf and my black crow lampshade update.  Here's the room as a whole:

Bill picked up about 15 more 15 cent books at Goodwill a few weeks ago.  Total cost $2.25.

I can hardly believe it's almost Halloween...which means November is just around the corner!!

Decorating cost this month:  

$2.99 cord set for lamp

$1 for crow silhouettes

$2.25 for black books

$10 for mercury pumpkin

Total: $16.24

Boo to You!

I've been tossing around the idea of painting a big rug, and I wanted to do a small trial rug first.  So, I picked up a $4.99 jute rug from IKEA and got to work making a Halloween appropriate stencil.  I picked up some blank stencil pieces from Walmart for under $3.   I used Berlins Sans FB font in size 400 to spell out the word, 'BOO!'.

I decided to have a border on the rug, so I removed a 2 inch wide section of tape around the perimeter of the rug.

I then taped the printed computer pages to the blank stencil and then used a utility knife (with a magazine under it to avoid cutting our rug) to cut out the stencil.

Next I centered the stencil on the rug, and taped off all areas that I wanted to protect from the spray paint.

I used a few coats of black spray paint that I had on hand already, and this was the final result:

I filled in the 'holes' in my letters using spray paint that I sprayed into the lid of the can I was using and a foam brush.  Easy Peasy.

It ended up working out really well, and now I have the confidence to go forward with another painted rug project that I am SUPER excited about.

(Side note: The only thing that I would do differently next time is use a spray adhesive around the letters to avoid some of the 'smeared' look around the top of the B and the exclamation mark.)

Total cost for this project: $8

Fall Family Fun

Are you getting tired of family pictures?  No?  Good, because we visited Bill's parents this weekend and enjoyed a wonderful fall day!  Here are some pictures of the family fun:

Rock Throwing in the Mississippi River!

Birthday Celebration Time!

Cousin Fun!

Thanks for hosting a lovely day, Gram and Gramps!