DIY Translucent Faux Pumpkin [Part 2]

I have managed to fix this pumpkin! Hooray!!! You may need to read Part 1 of my adventure so you can understand what's going on. After much contemplating and scouring my house for supplies, I managed to come up with a solution to fix my almost craft fail.

I've photographed the rest of my project so you guys can see what I did. I suppose it's like a ghetto tutorial. 

Anywho, here's the result!

DIY Translucent Faux Pumpkin [Part 1]

The autumn themed crafts continue! This is supposed to be the last project to be posted, but it's taken me forever to get done and I found another project to make after this one! It's been quite a hassle to work with and I ran (and currently still running) into a lot of pitfalls. As with most of my craft projects, I usually fly by the seat of my pants and hope for the best. In the process of imminent fails and shaky recoveries, I learned a lot!

This post will be in two parts since I technically haven't finished it. It's not really a tutorial per-say.... more of a step-by-step photo documentary of the process and its trial and errors.

I was originally inspired by Martha Stewart's translucent pumpkins tutorial that I pinned on my Pinterest board. Martha used real pumpkins, of course. I have only carved one real pumpkin ever in my life and it was a mess and a half. I decided to try a faux pumpkin instead. (No seeds!) I bought mine at Hobby Lobby with a 40% off coupon which came out to be about $25. It's the Funkins brand, which is pricier, but higher quality and more realistic looking than other faux pumpkins. I figured it would be a long term investment.

Birthday Boy! (with pizza dough recipe!)

A small interlude between the autumn themed crafts! It was my husband's 25th birthday yesterday! Quite an eventful day it was, indeed! We started off the day early (11am is early for us, okay?) and got ready to go survey people tailgating at the MSU vs South Alabama game for his Master's of Business capstone project. We managed to survey 50 people in a little over 2 hours. It was a little warm and sunny out, but a nice breeze kept us from  dripping with sweat. 

Surveying the event staff...

DIY Dryer Hose Pumpkins

The autumn themed crafts continue! I did not make my own tutorial for this post, but I will provide links to the two blogs where I found the tutorials. The good thing is that these are pretty cheap and quick to make! I made 2 pumpkins from 5 feet (4 inch diameter) of dryer hose and it cost about $7 total for the hose and spray paint.

Aren't they cute? I'm currently obsessed with white pumpkins. I really don't like the color orange in general, so I chose ivory! Plus, ivory pumpkins are really unique! I know they exist, but I've never seen one in real life. The stick for the "stem" was found in my backyard and I had some leftover gold organza ribbon from an old project that I tied around the stems.

Here's how they look before painting and after hot gluing together.

Autumn Wall Decor

More autumn themed crafts! Yay! This time I made something to go with my front door wreath! I was originally inspired by this pin from Pinterest (of course) and wanted to do a slightly different take. As usual, I made it more difficult than it had to be and took photos of my progress.

Here is the final product.

Faux autumn leaf wreath I made last year... from a pool noodle!

And here's how I made it.

Autumn Leaf Bouquets

I can't believe it! The weather here is finally under 90 degrees! It is simply amazing! I can go outdoors and breathe normally without feeling like I'm breathing through a warm, wet sponge. (Ugh.)

I love fall. :)

Since the weather has been nice, I've gone into craft overload. I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a Fun-kin faux pumpkin to carve! I haven't started on that yet, that will be another post soon. I've also started working on my Christmas wreath (crazy, I know.) and I've actually run out of thumbtacks, so that's on hiatus for now. That is also another post for another day.

I saw this amazing post on Pinterest about making pumpkins from dryer hose so I went out and bought ivory spray paint and dryer hose and I'll have another post on those soon! (AHH so many blog posts!) For today's post, I decided to make some indoor autumn decor since I put up my autumn wreath on my front door. I made the wreath last year from left over faux maple leaves I had bought for my wedding decorations. The wreath base is a pool noodle!

Here's one of my bouquets!

I also made a short tutorial on how to make them!

DIY Regular Scarf to Circle Scarf

Instant gratification crafts. We all like those. You make them quick and wear/use them quick. I remember seeing a tutorial on transforming a regular pashmina scarf into a circle scarf, but I can't seem to find the link. I was rummaging through my scarves and found one that I did not wear much because I hated the dangl-y ends getting in my way. 

So, I turned it into a circle scarf! In 5 minutes!

Chinese Sticky Rice

I love Chinese food. Well durr, I'm Chinese! One of my favorite dishes (besides Hainanese steamed chicken and chicken rice) is sticky rice with Chinese sausage, Shiitake mushrooms, and chicken. My mom used to cook this entire meal in just the rice cooker. My rice cooker is tiny so I have to cook most of it in my wok then mix it together when it's done.

Alot of these ingredients may not be found at your local grocery store even if it has an Asian section. I actually buy my Chinese sausage (DO NOT use regular sausage. It is NOT the same!) in bulk when I go visit my sister in Alabama 3 hours away. There is a local Asian market in my town, but it is owned by Taiwanese and Chinese sausage is not part of their cuisine so they don't sell it.

Let me tell you though, this is REAL Chinese food. You probably won't find this at your local Chinese buffet. As I begin my pretentious rant, American Chinese buffet food is NOT real Chinese food. Sure, it's cooked by Chinese people (sometimes) but the food served at buffets are not eaten normally by Chinese people. Plus, China is a HUGE country. There are a lot of different ethnic groups and a lot of different types of cuisine. For example, clam chowder is a dish founded in New England. Fried pickles and everything else fried was founded in the South. Get it?

The food you see in Chinese buffets originated from cuisine in southern China. Northern Chinese food is completely different and I must say that I don't think I've tried any myself. Enough information, onto the recipe!

That's not Corona Extra. It's just sweet tea. 

Deep Dish COOKIES

Split second decisions. We've all made them at some point in our lives. You've probably made a few that you regret and you've probably made a few that you're thankful for. Some were big. Some were small.

Some were delicious.

Well, the decision I made happened to be. While bored and stumbling on Stumbleupon, I stumbled on this recipe by Healthy Food For Living. In the few seconds it took to skim over the ingredients needed, I had already made up my mind. I WOULD make these. And so I did.

Left: Ghirardelli Chocolate Chip - Right: Reese's Peanut Butter

While they're not that healthy, the single serving size they came in was definitely better than a dozen of cookies. Plus, they were pretty quick and easy. The longest part was setting out the butter so it could reach room temperature, which took about 30 minutes.

Here's the recipe!

DIY Mousepad

So, I am cheap. And lazy. I would say I'm very lazy but my husband says I'm "not that lazy." I guess so since some things get done around the house lol.

I've noticed that the area on my desk where my mouse resides was slowly being worn away. For the better part of this weekend and week, I've been using the back side of a memo pad as my mouse pad. I like to make lists so it was a hassle to flip the memo pad over and over every time I needed to write something or use it as a pad for my mouse.

Since I am too lazy to leave the house to buy a mouse pad, I googled tutorials for DIY mouse pads and most of the results I found involved cork. I have cork but it was only a 4 inch wide strip. Not close to enough for my needs. Then, I stumbled on Sara vs. Sarah's tutorial which used 2 layers of craft foam. Bingo! I had a roll of hideous orange foam I had never used and tons of scrap fabric.

Thus, this was born.

Winter Shorts (And How To Wear Them)

Ahh... the approach of fall... one of my favorite seasons of the year! Except, it's not coming fast enough. In the South, fall and spring only exist about 3 weeks out of the year. Right now, it's 98°F with a heat index of 105°F with no drop of temperature in sight. Oh don't worry, this isn't a heat wave. This is normal. It's just Mississippi. :P

Most of you probably think it's ridiculous to wear shorts in the winter. Since it rarely drops below 40°F during the winter in the South, I think shorts (with tights or leggings) is a fabulous idea although the trend hasn't really sparked down here. Then again, Mississippi doesn't catch onto trends as quickly as the rest of the nation. :/

Although I get strange looks from strangers wearing shorts in the dead of winter, I don't really care. For one, I don't get cold very easily. Ever since my wool pants to shorts tutorial, I have been looking for wool pants of every color to convert into shorts. This week, I've made a pair of brown, navy, and black leather shorts!

Feast your eyes!

I can't wait to wear these! I was sweating just trying on these outfits! Let me break down on how to wear these babies.