Feeling Fall

It's that time again: fall. For some reason fall feels like the biggest season shift for me. Fall kinds of melts into winter and spring drags on into summer, but fall clearly starts when it gets cooler and everyone is back in school. I also know because my Starbucks order changes flavors. :-)

Anyway, I haven't done anything too new in terms of decorating for fall, but I hauled out all the good stuff from last year. Since I haven't had time the last month or so to do much DIYing, I thought I'd put together a collection of fall deco I'm coveting and thinking about accomplishing this weekend. Plus a couple of my own projects from the last few years.

Pumpkin ideas (from here): 

Apparently I am attracted to white pumpkins.

My monogram pumpkin. How-to here.

Fall Wreaths

This one is perfect, not sure it would stand out quite the same way on my pink door though! From Etsy.

Source unknown but possibly from here, lots of dark doors and I love how the white monogram pops!

Witch hat cookies - these were delicious! Read about them here. 

Halloween Run

This year T.J. and I are running a 5k on Halloween. So naturally, I needed a costume I could run in! A quick Google search showed me that I was not the first person to need a running costume. Apparently they are a big thing! I may never run without a costume on again! :-)

My need for a DIY costume just happened to fall during the Pinterest challenge put on by Young House Love and Bower Power. As if I needed another reason to make something this week. Here are the pins I picked to inspire my creation: wings & shirt.

Back to the costume: A tutu was basically a requirement. I had my options down to Minnie Mouse and a bumble bee and decided to go for the bee. My plan was a black and yellow tutu, yellow shirt with black stripes, and wings. I frankensteined some different ideas together from across the internet to come up with my costume. I was reminded by this post of the technique I used on my sewing room curtains last summer (see the details of that post here). I learned how to make the wings here.
 

Here are the supplies:

Shirt

Yellow t-shirt - $6

Black fabric - clearance $1.60

Wings

2 wire hangers - already owned

1 pair of white tights - already owned

Tutu

Black Elastic - $2

Black and Yellow Tulle -  $6

Antennae

Headband Antennae - $4

Total Spent: $19.60

Bonus Bee Keeper Costume for my Husband - 
$5 white painter's jumpsuit at Menards

A great tutorial on wings can be found here, but basically I took some old coat hangers, re-bent the wire (with a little help from T.J.) and stretched old stockings over them. Attaching them was a little tricky but with some extra tulle I made it happen by just wrapping them tightly together. Then I sewed extra loops of elastic for my arms.

I love how iridescent the wing color looks in this picture - almost real!

The tutu was super easy to make. I just slip knotted the tulle on to a piece of black elastic. I sewed the ends of the elastic together before I started. I used about 6 yards of tulle. 4 black and 2 yellow.

 

Here the tutu was still in process - so it is a little sparse. 

Now onto the shirt. Like I said earlier, I used the same technique as I did in this post about my sewing room curtains. I cut the black fabric into strips using pinking shearers, gathered the strips and sewed them onto the shirt.

Here is the costume in action... along with my bee keeper!
We won best costume at the 5-K.

This post is linked up with these other hosts of the Pinterest challenge: The Ugly Duckling House and Our Fifth House.

Happy Halloween!

T.J. and I volunteered to host the CGSA (Communication Graduate Student Association) Halloween Party this year. It was so much fun! Not to mention I had an excuse to get a few more projects around the house finished and was able to decorate for Halloween more than I ever had before. More than anything though I was very impressed with the costumes that showed up at my door. I tried to snap a picture of all of them. Check it out.

 

 These two are Toad and Mario - 

and the talented Toad was able to create these costumes the day of! 

She made her hat and added to her sweater.

 

This Breakfast at Tiffany's costume was one of my favorites. 

It is amazing what we can do with clothes we already own.

I could not get enough of these two adorable penguins.

T.J. and I... as usual, disagreed on what we should be this year. T.J. got this mullet wig at a wedding earlier this fall, so of course he wanted that to be part of his costume. I went with a classic... 1950's housewife. I wore a dress I made a few years ago when I was going through my vintage clothing stage.

A party isn't a party without food...

I made these witch hat cookies (from here) using Keebler striped cookies for the bottom, and a Hersey kiss for the top. It is just held together with some orange frosting. They even won the prize for scariest food (in a category of one...)!

Getting Spooky

This is the first year I have ever really decorated for Halloween. It was sort of fun and I wish I would have done it earlier in the month rather that just earlier this week. This also makes me think of how fun it is going to be to decorate the new house for Christmas... I can hardly wait! Take a gander at what I did below:

After the farmers cut down the corn in our "backyard" there were a few stray pieces left standing... well they aren't standing anymore. :-) Also... read more about my monogrammed pumpkin in yesterday's post. I brought this candle chandelier out of the bedroom and hung it in the living room for its spooky appeal.

 

Lots of black cob web and spiders. :-)

 

Spoiler alert: Pepperberry wall post coming soon....
I found this adorable spiderweb at Gordman's, a store here in Indiana that I recently discovered, for less than $10.

How all this deco got put to good use... tomorrow on Hems & Haws (Imagine that line being said as if it was an Oprah show promo...).

Monogrammed Pumpkin

This year I opted for the least messy pumpkin situation I could think of... a no-carve, spray paint instead, monogram! In fact, I may give up carving pumpkins all together until I have kids. Why bother? I did sort of miss eating pumpkin seeds... but I can always carve this one up if I get desperate. Here's what I did:

First, I taped off our monogram, the letter H, using painters tape. I made sure to apply pressure to the tape so all the edges would be stuck down tight to the pumpkin.

Next, I took the pumpkin outside and applied a few coats of glossy black spray paint.

Once it dried, all I had to do was peel back the tape and viola....

I took the pumpkin around the house and put it in its rightful place... the front step.

T.J. was a little thrown off by the black at first... I think next year it would be cool to get a white pumpkin and spray paint it orange, then peel off the letter and have the white showing through... that would really get people thinking about what was going on. :-) Happy Halloween...

Stay tuned for 2 more days of Halloween inspired posts!