Acorns or Turdcorns?

The weather in Mississippi isn't getting cooler as fast as I'd like it to. This is very disappointing to me. Some of the inhabitants of the South are already wearing jackets and leggings. I don't believe it's jacket or jean weather until it's below 60°F. Ugh. Come on, +70°F weather! Go away! I want to wear my boots!

So, I'm still stuck indoors with the A/C trying to envision a cozy, warm house on a cool autumn day. To help achieve this, I decided my house needed some cute acorn decor. Since my kitchen is apple themed, the dividing wall  between the kitchen and dining area holds two glass apples (one green and one red). I made two giant acorns to replace them so it'd add more of an autumn feel.

The results weren't as great as I'd hope.... so are they acorns or turdcorns?

Here's a mini-tutorial on how I made them!

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.

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 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.