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...