Fall-ified

I don't really consider myself to be a seasonal decorator.  I mean, I decorate for Christmas of course, but that's pretty much a given.  The only other time I really decorate for a season or holiday is if/when we're having a party of some sort.  That said, yesterday I brought home some pumpkins and added a touch of fall to our house. My mom helped host a couples' shower Saturday night and she was in charge of the table decorations.  Somehow that meant that I was also responsible for the table decorations.  Huh.  We procrastinated until the very last minute but finally settled on a pumpkin theme late Friday night.  That's how I ended up with decorations for our house - they're leftovers from the party.

Here's our newly fall-ified (fallized? falled?) dining table.

This is pretty much exactly how we decorated the tables for the party, minus a few votive candles.  The tables were outside and we had three of them to do (plus a food table inside) so we needed something that wouldn't get too expensive.  We bought our pumpkins from Home Depot for about $4 each.  The mini gourds came for the grocery store.  They were 3 for $1.

Like my dining table, each table at the party had three main pumpkins - one white one, one large orange one, and one funny shaped orange one that we laid on its side.  I didn't get a picture from that angle but this one kinda looks like two pumpkins stacked on top of each other with just one stem.  For the white pumpkins, I pulled out my Silhouette machine and and cut out a fancy G (the initial of the soon-to-be-married couple) out of black vinyl and just stuck them on.  While I had my machine out, I went ahead and cut out an E for me and an S for my mom so we could use them at our houses afterwards.

The big orange pumpkins all got carved.  My mom left me to do this part by myself and I thought my arm was going to fall off!  I had six pumpkins to empty and as I got my work area set up, I realized I've never really emptied a pumpkin by myself.  I had no idea what I was doing, but I guess I figured it out ok.  Getting all the guts out is hard work!  Then, once they were all finally empty (and I had broken a good sweat), I grabbed the drill and got to carving polka-dotting.  The drill bit went through the pumpkin really easily, so it wasn't hard to do at all.  My problem was that I was using a re-chargeable drill that had a heavy battery on it, and it seriously got heavy after a while!

It looks ok during the day, but it really looks cute at night when its lit up.  I tried to take a picture of it, but I couldn't really capture its cuteness.

I know my burlap needs a little fluffing.  It's not arranged very well yet, but I didn't feel like fixing it for the pictures.  I'm lazy like that.

I put another polka-dotted pumpkin on our kitchen table.  Much plainer, but it works I guess.

I did crank out one tiny craft project too.  After cutting out all the monograms for the pumpkins, I had a small strip of vinyl scrap leftover that I didn't want to just throw away.  So I cut out "give thanks."  I grabbed a scrap piece of wood and painted it brown then yellow and sanded it down.  The letters were easy to stick on and I just added a piece of wire we already had to hang my new little sign.  I didn't have the raffia bow on it at first, but I think it gives it a little something extra.  Total cost?  Zilch.

My new little sign is hanging on the china cabinet for now, but that could change.

The last fall decoration that I put out is my set of wooden pumpkins that I made last year.  I still love them.

I also have a bowl of candy corn sitting out on the coffee table but I didn't think I should take a picture of that.  I'd hate for someone to come over and expect to see it because it won't be around much longer...