Autumn Decor

First, I would like to take a moment to say thank you to my sweet friend, Allison Aller for being my guest blogger yesterday.  I hope everyone enjoyed meeting Allie and seeing her gorgeous Place Quilts.  Allie is the queen of landscape crazy quilting and I so much appreciate her willingness to be my guest.

I've been quite busy with my projects lately.  I tend to start a bunch of different things in a bunch of different mediums, both here at my house as well as at Mom's!  So for today, I'll share my latest in Autumn Decor!

This is my Crow On A Pumpkin centerpiece:

And my Harvest Cornucopia centerpiece for Thanksgiving:

I've been experimenting with soft, muted and understated colors.  I love the bright colors of Autumn but am finding that soft colors are more soothing to me.  Definitely cottage in style and tone!

Kathi has been playing with her collection of roving and other needle-felting supplies.  We've been to 2 fiber shows this Summer and are going to another on Saturday.  Here are her latest Autumn Home Decor projects:

Check out her hand-felted leaves!  Those are gorgeous!!!!  And I love how she added a tiny black spider to them.  I have a 3rd one here but haven't done the photos yet.

My Autumn Cuff Bracelets are done so I'll try to have photos of those for you tomorrow.  I'm so pleased with how they came out!  I used elastic in them so not buttons or other fasteners to mess with!  Stop back to see them.

I'll leave you with a photo of a tiny visitor to my home last night.  I went out on the front porch for a few minutes before I went to bed and found this precious little creature sitting on my window frame:

If you've never seen one before, this is a Praying Mantis.  They're totally harmless and usually rather elusive.  I was so thrilled to see one that I had to grab my camera and capture his visit!

Glittered Pumpkins & Pumpkin Biscornu Designs

Well, my new Kitchenaid has kept me quite busy! I've made 3 batches of cookies this afternoon. I also made some fudge and another candy. I'll have photos soon and I'll share my fudge recipe. It's so easy!

In the meantime, mom & I did a fun little project yesterday. Glittered pumpkins:



I was driving to the Post Office yesterday, and decided to stop at the farm market on the way back for some squash. Those little tiny pumpkins always catch my eye! I already had a few but decided to get some more and suddenly, I had this idea to glitter them and add some dried flowers to the top. So I bought 8 pumpkins and drove over to mom's house! (Ya'll know I love my glitter!)

These are the supplies you'll need if you would like to make some:

Aleene's Tacky Glue
Hot Glue Gun
1 inch wide flat paint brush
Fine Gold Glitter (I used Martha Stewart's glitter available at Michael's)
Small Silk Autumn Leaves
Moss
Dried Flowers or dried stuff from your backyard.

First, wash the pumpkins and let them dry. Using a 1 inch wide flat paint brush, spread Aleene's Tacky Glue on the pumpkin starting at the stem. You don't want the whole pumpkin covered. Just the top but you do want it to look like frost settled on the pumpkin. Sprinkle on glitter and let dry.

Then, using a hot glue gun, glue some moss to the top near the stem. Add some small silk Autumn leaves, some dried flowers and snips of dried things from your backyard.

A quick & easy project, perhaps perfect as Thanksgiving Dinner Favors!

I have to go and frost my pumpkin face cookies but I'll leave you with a new design project:



I feel like I missed out on Spring (I don't even remember it) and Summer wasn't much better but I am enjoying the Fall. If you would like to stitch my new Pumpkin Biscornu designs, you can find them here.