Halloween ~ Does It Have To Be Black & Orange?

It does not, but there should be some black and orange thrown about in there somewhere.  I say this with some authority, since my birthday is on Halloween {and as such, I believe I have something to say about it}!  I got an email from Fabric.com highlighting some holiday fabrics.  I wound up purchasing a few of these kid-friendly Halloween fabrics.

From the Costume Club Collection

 From the Moon Dancers Collection

From the Happy Haunting Collection

 From the Spooktacular Collection

Many years ago, when I was a young, stay-at-home mother, I wanted to do something fun for my kids at Halloween and I found a great candy corn fabric.  I also did a lot of sewing at this time, too, so I decided to make them Trick or Treat sacks.  How often do you see these great costumes on kids and then they have a plastic shopping or garbage bag for their candy?

The picture above is what those old candy sacks look like today.  Not too bad after several years of Trick or Treating, washing, and age in general!  I’m making a bunch of these ~  including for two special little boys and one for that little granddaughter of mine {even though she won’t really be trick or treating!}.

At this point, mine are usually pulled out, smiled over and then put back in with the decor I’m not using, which seems a shame really.  Maybe they could be chair covers! 

I’ve made a few extra ~ you’ll find them in my boutique, hopefully by tomorrow.  If you think you might be interested before I get them listed, they are $5.00 plus shipping; you can e-mail me and we’ll work out a Paypal invoice.

These Halloween bears are sooo cute!  If I have any fabric left over, I’d love to do something with cutting the figures out of the fabric and making something.

This one has kind of a retro look to it.  I love these colors.

I love this green!  The pink they use with it is great.  I liked it so much I diva’d up my granddaughters burp cloth with it!

Love the hot pink glasses on the black cats!

Here’s my little cutie’s Halloween burp cloth.

      I’ve got several designer fabrics I’ll be adding to a few other cloths for a designer burp cloth look.  If they turn out any good, I’ll be making up a bunch more for my boutique.  {Fingers crossed!}.

I also got this great fabric that had panels and a banner-like piece at the top and bottom. 

The panels would make great pillows or some kind of art piece.  Maybe on a canvas.  The banner piece is just too cute; a Halloween pumpkin parade!  I may need to see about framing that somehow.

It’s Hurricane Season!

My Dollar Tree finally {finally!} had the large glass vases to make the hurricanes and I picked up four this past weekend.  I probably should have got more, because last year I couldn’t find these at all.  I had to go with the next size down last year and, while they turned out nice, I really wanted to do the larger size.  You can read last year’s post here.  Even Dollar Tree knows they will go fast ~ they didn’t even bother to take them out of the box!

For under $10.00 you can get a nice Fall decorative piece that will carry you through to Thanksgiving and beyond.   You will need one of the larger glass vases with a flat bottom ~ the main one has a slight flare to the top.  You will also need the vase the next size down {no flare}, also flat bottomed, and I checked it in the store to make sure it fit inside the larger one; one candlestick {the stand}; some Fall leaf picks; and glass adhesive. 

I had my glass adhesive so I don’t know if the dollar store carries it.  I definitely suggest glass adhesive as last year I had a problem with some of my pieces coming apart and I used three different adhesives that were mentioned as being used with this project.  I have since fixed all my pieces with glass adhesive and so far nothing has come apart. 

I washed all my pieces and follow the directions on your adhesive.  Mine mentions wiping the area to be glued down with nail polish remover, so each adhesive might have different instructions.  Once everything was clean and dry, I applied the adhesive to the candlestick and placed it in the center of the bottom of the larger glass vase.   This is your stand.  I left this to dry for a couple of hours.  Once dry, I put the other vase inside this and started to cut some leaves off my Fall leaf pick, varying the shape, size and color. 

I started to put the leaves in between the main vase and the inserted glass vase.  To make it a little easier to get the leaves further down, I also cut one of the stems and used that to push the leaves down. 

Once you’ve got that how you want it to look, put your pillar candle in the inserted vase.  Place it in the desired location in your home {I put two of these on my dining room table}, light and “ooh/ahh” over the beautiful job you did!

Once Thanksgiving is over, just take out the glass insert to easily remove your leaves.  Now you can add something decorative for Christmas or Hannukah!  Some fake snow or snowflake decorations will take you right through Winter.

On a side note, and to give a little Etsy love, I got these great fabric pumpkins you see on my table from Becky at Junk to Joy.  I just love them!  Three of them came as a set and I also purchased a great looking set of tags from Becky as well.  This is a new Etsy shop, so I hope you will visit Becky and check out all her great things.  She is one of my new favorites!

Linked up to:

Fall Party at Tatertots and Jello

Much To Do Beside Blogging

I’ve got my hands full, so to speak.  Things have been just a little busy for me recently and I see it continuing for a few weeks.  I’m going to have to slow things down and my blog will be the first to feel it. I have a couple of posts prepared, but my commenting will be sporadic.   I hope you’ll hang in there!

Tabletop Tuesday

I can’t believe I actually redecorated something in my house over the weekend that enables me to participate in Tabletop Tuesday over at Marty’s A Stroll Thru Life linky party!  I redecorated the top of the chest in my entry foyer. 

With Fall coming I removed some dollar store birds, an apothecary with a nest and moss, a picture of a nest, a medium size pot of mini daffodils, and the tray I had in the middle of the chest {holding the apothecary, the fern and an extra drapery hardware finial just as a decorative piece}.  I moved a few things around and kept them on the chest; the little fern, my Goodwill clock and the books. 

I brought in the floral arrangement I did several posts back {because I want to do something different on my dining room table} and used it to balance out the lamp, an extra book The House In Good Taste by Elsie de Wolfe in its lovely orange cover, a new reading bunny which I totally copied the idea of from Pat at Back Porch Musings, and a faux white pumpkin {from Michaels last year}. 

Can I tell you how much I love this bunny?

I also put my Fall/Winter window treatments back up in the dining room, which is just to the left of this area.  It gets too dark to take photos, so I don’t have any to share.  Hopefully, when I do what I have planned for the dining room table, I’ll get a shot to share.

The pillow on the dining chair below is from Rhonda at Blue Creek Home.  She makes such great pillows!  This one has bunnies on it and the colors go with my dining room, so I couldn’t resist buying it.

I don’t really do much decorating for Fall.  Luckily, I do have Fall {warm} colors in my dining room.  I do decorate a bit for Halloween, so I will kind of mix that in with the Fall stuff in October.  I decided not to buy any other Fall things and just use what I have to get the feeling of Fall across.  This is especially since we hope to put our house back on the market after the holidays and I don’t need to make up a whole new box dedicated to holiday decorations!

Update:  I moved the cloche I made {see post below} over to this chest so I’m just adding a few pictures here rather than redoing all the pictures in this post.

 I really like this little cloche I made!  I’ll have to see what ribbon I have that might look nice tied around the knob.