Did you miss anything in September?

Well, it's the last day of the month. Recap time!

September was a great month around here. Well, actually they're all great, productive months when I look back on them. That's why I do this!

I started out by showing you how I made these pretty trellis pattern pillows out of lame flat chair cushions that I found on clearance for 94 cents. I can't believe that was only a month ago. They already feel like family.

I showed you our drop zone, that works for us, but is nothing fancy.

I dressed up some simple K Mart lights,

made an easy, but time consuming rag garland,

and discovered a trendy metal basket lurking in my old freezer in the basement.

I shared with you how I'm trying to recover, 15 minutes at a time,  from being totally lazy about my yard this Summer.

The house got into the Fall spirit in the dining room,

the kitchen,

and the mud room.

I managed to get a little less freaked out by thrift stores.

Kennedy and I did a really simple Fall craft together (more easy crafts for kids coming up this week too!).

I put a really cute little turkey graphic on a pillow cover,

and I showed you how it was done!

I topped it all off by bringing a little (or a lot of) Fall into the living room by decorating our Fantel, which means our fake mantel around these parts.

And that was September!

Tomorrow's a whole new month.

October may just be my very favorite of all months. I can't wait to see what unfolds!








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Paper Fall Silhouettes on a Stick

This one falls into the category of "sometimes the simplest ideas are the best".

Cute, festive, cheap, and easy to do, even with kids.

Kennedy and I did these a few weeks ago, just for something to fill one of those "I'm so bored" type of afternoons. My favorite! Oh, wait no. I actually start hyper-ventilating a little bit when I hear her say those magic words.

So on one of those types of days, we did this!

We traced out some Halloween shapes onto fun scrapbooking paper, glued them onto BBQ skewers and tied a little green and orange ribbon for some pizazz!

I like that you can use really any scrapbooking paper that goes with your color scheme and make it look festive for that holiday. I thought these would look really cute all lined up in a (covered) window box.

We were doing a little Halloween-style sprucing in Kennedy's room the other day and ended up just sticking them into the existing topiary ball thingies that were in there. Done.

Insta-festive!






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How to transfer an image onto fabric using wax paper and your printer!

If you were here yesterday, then you know that today I have a little tutorial for a super-easy short cut for getting an image transferred onto fabric. This is for those of us without fancy cutting machines or special materials around, unless you count wax paper as a special material, which sometimes I do!

Here's the pillow, which I showed you yesterday, with the turkey silhouette we're going to be working with today.

Before we get into it, let me tell you,we are going to get real close today, me and you. I don't go around taking just anyone into this area where I do my blogging and my real work. This is special, just for you. Sometimes you see pictures around this blog that make it look like we've got a pretty cozy little house around here and today you're going to see that we have all kinds of ugly around here too.

I wanted to show you how it's really done and how really unfancy a process this is, so today, we're keepin' it real!

Find a free clip art image online and copy/paste it into Word. I just find it faster and easier than using anything else. So this is what I do!

Gather your supplies: Wax paper and scissors. Cut the wax paper to about the width of a regular sheet of paper.

Load the wax paper into the printer and hit print! It helps if you put the concave curving side down, I find.

Now you have your image on the wax paper. Careful, the ink is still wet! No touchy! Find a flat surface like a dresser next to a half-demolished wall to work on.

Since the ink is still wet and doesn't absorb into the wax paper like it does in regular paper, you're going to use this like a stamp. Find the spot where you'd like to place your image. You can measure, or you can do like I did and just eyeball it based on where my image was on the other side. Smooth and press with your hand.

Peel 'er back!

The pillow cover that I'm working with here is actually the back side of another Halloween themed pillow cover I did about a month ago. So I made it reversible!

You can see there are some areas where it bled through from the other side when I was doing the first image. Lesson learned. If you look at the finished product, you can see I came up with a clever solution for this.

Your image will now appear to be a light grey. You can leave it like this, which looks perfectly nice, or if you want it a little darker, just color it in with a Sharpie! Don't forget to place a sheet of paper underneath so the ink doesn't bleed through! Just look at that mess I made the first time when I didn't have the sheet of paper!

Color, color, color.

Hmm, now what to do about all those little ink marks? Oh! I know!

Now it's a turkey in the grass! With a cloud over his head! It's an angry turkey in the grass!

The classic Thanksgiving imagery of the brave turkey, angry because of the impending turkey injustice about to take place!

No?

Well, if it's not a new classic, and it's not really a political poultry statement, then at least it's cute!






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Super-Duper Easy Turkey Silhouette Pillow

Remember how I made this Haunted House Pillow Cover a few weeks ago? Remember how I cheated my way through it and it was awesome? Remember how I said I might maybe possibly get around to putting a turkey silhouette on the other side to make it reversible?

Well,  I actually did! That never happens!

It's really just because it's a ridiculously easy project, made even ridiculously easier because I was just basically reusing the whole thing. I can be so smart sometimes. Or lazy. You decide!

Here is said pillow:

I used the same method as last time and I even made a tutorial for it! That never happens either!

Maybe because of all of this (sort of) work, I am just super drained, beat-down, dumb-as-nails exhausted today.

So today we're just going to look at the pretty pictures! That sounds nice.

Tomorrow I'm going to re-gather my wits and show you the tutorial on all this goodness in all its glory. (I mean it!)

I just gobble (haha) up all this turkey-themed thanksgiving stuff. It seems to not be as big of a holiday in Canada, so we don't have all the same variety as you can get across the border. I try to add to my collection a bit when I'm over there this time of year though. Luckily, I'm a crafty girl so I can fill-in-the-blanks where needed until I can get over there.

So now this little corner is all ready to welcome our guests for (Canadian) Thanksgiving dinner in two weeks!

Pop back here tomorrow when I'll show you how to transfer an image onto fabric using your printer and wax paper!

See ya then!

Linking up with The Inspired Room's Holiday Nesting Party!

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A Harvesty Fall Fantel

I'm so excited to show you all my Fall Fantel for this year! In case you're just joining us and haven't been around for previous incarnations of my Fantel, we use that term to mean a fake mantel. Cause I don't have a real one yet, but should I be left out on account of that? I thought not.

Here's what I have going on for this year!

All kinds of complicated ideas were floating around in my head for my Fantel this year. What really happened is that one day the weather was perfectly Fall-ish, I had a little bit of free time, and I wanted Fall in the livingroom now.

Progress needed to be made right then and there and now dilly-dallying of any sort would be permitted.

I started playing around with things I had on hand, and what do you know? It stuck. This is almost always the way it happens, despite all of my grand plans.

I kept up with my tactic of sticking things to the walls (that need to be torn out and replaced anyway eventually) just like I did last year. This time, instead of nailing sticks into the walls, I hot glued on some burlap.

The orange Jack-Be-Littles came from our garden and then white ones I had picked up at the farmer's market for super cheap. The cornucopia came from Michael's on clearance a couple of years ago for something like 74 cents. I keep forgetting it in storage and I haven't had the chance to use it until now. This emergency-perfect-Fall-day decorating situation was just the chance I needed!

Aren't my new dollar store crows the prettiest? Around here, we get a ton of crows in the Fall and Winter (real ones). People here hate them. They chop down trees to try to get rid of them. They hold crow hunting contests to see who can kill the fatest one. But I kind of love them. Shh! Don't tell the locals! Oh, oops... I just did. Well, there. I said it. I think they're pretty!

This underneath part has always bothered me. I never know what to do with it. This time though, I think I got it.

The shutters from on top moved down underneath and I brought in a potted mum (wrapped in more burlap!) and a pumpkin that I meant to go on the front step. It's so simple, but really almost perfect to me.

I brought in a few of sorta changing leaves from outside in this little zig-zag-twine-clothespins doodad in keeping with the theme of clothespins I seem to have going on this season. This pretty much started when I saw this and I just haven't been able to stop!

The whole thing was framed by a few extra cornstalks and it was good to go!...er stay.

Do you have a mantel you like to decorate for the seasons or do you just fake it like I do? Either way, there's always a way to make it work and bring a little extra fun into your room!


Linking this one up to the Fall Around the House Party!






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