It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like FALL!!!!!

The weather is still trying to make up it's mind what season it wants to be.... but in my house, it's FALL!

Pumpkins and scarecrows are my favorite

Gourds everywhere!

Outside

(before new wreath)

I love it!  We are planning on getting a few more pumpkins and carving them.

Of course, the centerpiece from last year (with a few updates)

Oh, and some towels

I'm not usually a "holiday towel" kind of person, but I saw these (on sale!) and liked them.

Yeah Fall!!  Winter will be here before we know it!

Corn Maze 2010

Over the weekend we went on our yearly corn maze trip.  Two years ago we went by ourselves.  Last year, we went with our friend Laurie.  This year we went with our friends Jason and Erica.  (We seem to be adding one person a year?!? :) 

We went to Lynds (which is where we went apple picking).  It was great fun!

Silly boys...

They've been friends since high school.  You don't see those kind of friendships these days!

Leading the pack

Classic self taken photo (a little blurry)

We had no clue where we were going!

That way?

Such a cutie!

A quick self taken picture

The flash was so bright!!!

Checking the map

Still no clue where we are or where we're going...

You are suppose to find these podiums with plates on them that you can rub.  If you collect all 8 you get a prize.  We went to three podiums that had no scratch plates.  It was very sad.  FINALLY we found one to do a rub!

Something was apparently funny

We had a great time.  We have no idea how much of the maze we did and how much we left uncovered.  We only found 3 rubs, but we had a great time.  I love fall!

Before and After, Take 4 (Let there be light!)

This before and after actually happened a few months back, but I never blogged about it.  I was taking pictures yesterday of some other stuff and thought I would go ahead and share pictures of our new lamps.

BEFORE

 This set of two lamps was bought in a box from Kmart for $35 when I was moving out on my own 8 years ago.

 See that floor lamp over there... it doesn't work.  It hasn't worked since it was moved into this condo 3 years ago.  I have no idea why.  But I felt the room needed it, so we kept a non-working lamp around. :)

With Michael doing school work, we really needed more light in our living room.  There was no getting around it.  So I went on a search for lamps.  At first I was going to do mix matched and ones with fun shades like the one that is now on the entertainment center by the keys.

I quickly found that the price would add up, because for most of those type of lamps you have to buy everything separate.  Plus, that lamp puts out very little light since the shade is so dark.  So I went with ones that match.

AFTER

 I love them.  They are a little more grown up than the $35 ones! :)

 This one has two bulbs.  You can turn one on for softer light, or  both for a little brighter light.

Michael loves that it has the strings that hang down.  It makes turning them on much easier.  There was LOTS of trouble with our last lamp!!

The floor lamp is a 3 way, which is also nice.  We have lighting options!

We are so happy to have better lighting.  I purchased these at Lowe's for just under $100.  

(They are sold separately.)

Cute Owl

This craft is not actually something I made up.  Remember how I get all those crazy magazines trying to get me to buy stuff for my classroom?!?!  Well, one of the magazines I get often is Oriental Trading Company.  I love looking through it and getting ideas.  Most of the stuff they sell is in bulk (ex. makes 12), so it's not something I can benefit from.  However, I can copy! :)

I saw a cute little owl craft and figured I had most of the supplies to just make it myself.  So that's what I did.  I used foam board because I had a pack.  It's what was used in the catalog as well.  Although, I'm sure construction paper would work out fine as well.

First I cut out he body

Then the inside layer

Next, I drew all the other pieces out so Little Man could cut them.

He probably could have cut the top two pieces too, but I wasn't thinking.  The craft comes with all the pieces cut out and you just put it together, so that's what I started doing.  Oh well.

They actually used huge googly eyes, but I didn't have any.  I had two different sized smaller ones, but knew they wouldn't work.  So I improvised and chose some sequence we had.  Paper would have worked too.

I did cut out the leaf wings.  I drew them out, but they were just not working for me.  I knew I'd have to improvise a little when cutting to make them look right.  So that's what I did.

Then, when Little Man got home from preschool, he cut the remaining pieces out and glued it all together to make a cute owl.

(Cutting foam feels pretty neat, so we had to save the extra pieces for him to just chop up for fun!)

Adorable!

Fall Wreath

You may remember this wreath from this before and after post back in June.

 I bought it so that I could have a wreath for times when I didn't have a holiday to decorate for.  I got it in the outdoor section at Target.  It was sort of expensive (for a wreath), but I thought it could be used year round.  Unfortunately, it started molding shortly after we got it.  It is now four months later (almost to date) and it is ruined.  It is all black and nasty looking and is going in the trash.  Awful.  Don't buy it!

So I figured it was time to make a fall type wreath.  

I considered just buying one, but most of the ones at Michael's and Jo Ann's were $20 even at 50% off.  

I didn't think they were that great, so it was craft time!

I bought another one of those grapevine wreaths for $4.

Only, instead of leaving it brown, I decided to spray paint it a cream color.  

Hence the reason it's sitting in some dirt.

I did it in the dirt, because my last spray painting project left a little paint on our porch.  Michael wasn't thrilled.  This time it looked like this...

Then I just shifted the dirt around with my foot! :)

These are the other supplies I used (all on sale for 50% off!)

I used some rafia and wrapped it around like ribbon.

Sorry... I didn't realize the picture was blurry when taking it.  This was actually the second picture I took too.

Then I added these picks

Next I hot glued the leaves and pinecones.

You may have noticed I bought two bags of leaves.  One bag would be enough, but I wanted the varying shapes.  One bag was oak leaves and one bag was maple leaves.  The bags were $1, so I didn't mind buying two.  I can use the leaves elsewhere.

Hanging on my door

I am glad I spray painted it.  It helps it stand out a little on my dark door.

The entire thing cost me under $20 (so less than a pre-made one), plus I have lot of supplies left, AND I got to be crafty.  I call that a WIN! :)