Fall From the Outside In

10.27.2015
Fall decorating from the outside to the inside.  If you’ve been here before, scroll all the way to the bottom, because it took me about a week to put this post together.  Live and learn! 🙂

Well, this post isn’t going to look exactly like I thought it would.  I wanted just photos of the fall decorations without the Halloween decorations.  Welllll … enter Hurricane Patricia.  Nothing big, just a lot of rain and some wind.  It’s been raining for 3 days and now everything is waterlogged and wind whipped.  Kind of makes it “not fun” to take photos of weather beaten outdoor decorations.  So I’m going with what I have and if I get any more good photos I’ll just update the post.  But the upside of all that rain that you
won’t see in these photos is that the mums and marigolds look great now.  Those buds have really burst out with blooms.  We really needed the rain … just maybe not so much. 🙂

 I still need to add the fall garland around the door, but I can’t do that until I switch out the Halloween wreath with the fall wreath.  I’m also working on some more wooden pumpkins to add and I’ve got to decorate the mailbox.

After Halloween, just the fall decorations will be left.  I’ve had this scarecrow from Cracker Barrel for years.  He sat all over my classroom … on the computers, in time out, in the desks, everywhere.

Hmmm … I’m looking at this now wondering if this looks like a hot mess?!?  Maybe I should have spread it out more.  I mentioned in my very first blog post that you can tell more about what others see when you photograph what you are doing then take a look.  The more I study it the more I wonder.  Then I also hear in my head my husband saying “you’re never satisfied”.  🙂  That’s also true.  I tell him that’s the teacher in me.  That’s how they train us … never to be satisfied.  Always push for better.

This is the scarecrow I made from Pinterest.  Well, I should say I got ideas from Pinterest and then I added my own.  It’s not exactly like any one of them.  It’s about 3.5 ft tall and about 3 ft wide.  Below is the flip side of it.  I still need to add the red bow to the snowman, but I’ll do that at Christmas. Not fall, but I wanted you to get the idea.

Watch for updates to this page.  I’m hoping that the wooden pumpkins turn out soooo cute!

10.28.15

The wooden pumpkins are done!  I just have to get them out and get photos.  Hopefully this afternoon.  It’s FINALLY stopped raining and the sun is shining again! 🙂

11.2.15

OMG, it is still raining!!!  We are soooo waterlogged!  The decorations are saturated and some of them are starting to mildew and fall apart.  Ewww!

It did stop raining long enough for me to get the wooden pumpkins out and get pics.  They turned out cute .. not as cute as the ones I used as inspirations, but hey, that’s how it goes.  You can always add things to them later.  I have the base.  My husband did a really good job of cutting them out of the the very thick wood a friend gave us.  He’s pretty good with a jigsaw. 🙂  I love the little stems.  Couldn’t do all this decorating without him.

They are made from 1x4s and are 3 and 4 ft tall.  The 3 ft tall pumpkin is a little wider.  To make the pumpkin, you just cut the corner on a 45 degree angle.  (Learned that from my husband.  😉 )  The boards are held together on the back with two runners.  I sketched off the stems and leaves on some of the left over wood and he cut them out with the jigsaw.  Then I painted everything with craft paint and sanded it down to give it some texture.  Nailing/screwing the leaves/stems on was the most frustrating because the wood kept splitting.  Not sure if we needed smaller nails or thinner wood.

We also got the very soggy cornstalks up and the mailbox decorated.  Still have to get the fall wreath and door garland up.  This is taking on the proportions of Christmas!

(thanks to my SIL for the cornstalks … he comes through for me every year. Best SIL ever!!!)

Next year though, we need new scarecrows.  This one is about 4 yrs old and where she once looked like a young girl, she now looks like an old lady.

11.3.15

The outside decorating is done!!!  No sunshine still and everything is still looking YUCK, but it is done.

Put up the fall wreath and finished the garland and hung it this morning.

Now about this garland.  The whole point of getting it was because my husband told me last year that the garland was the Candy Queen’s (my granddaughter) favorite part of the decorations.  But talking to her this year, she says she doesn’t know WHAT he’s talking about.  Hmmmm ….

Anyway, I grabbed the stuff for this garland last year on sale.  Hobby Lobby had this garland for $20 for about a 4 ft piece.  I got 3 pieces 40% off.

Michaels had the “picks” that you add on to the garland for $1.29 – 1.69.  I bought about 25 of those and they were on some great sale.  I can’t remember exactly what.

To make the garland, I used thin green florist wire to wire the 3 pieces of garland together, overlapping the ends so that there were no bare spots.   Then I hung the garland on my frig so I could decorate it.  Just make sure you don’t scratch your frig with the wire.

Then I divided the picks into groups so that I could decorate the garland uniformly.  Don’t ask why I divided them into 5 groups. 🙂  3 groups would have worked …. 2 sides and the top.   I do not like symetry, but I do like things to be balanced, so it’s important not to have one side weighted down and the other side bare.

Next, I cut off all the tags into a container.  Using the container keeps things neat and organized and makes clean-up a lot easier.  It’s also where I cut my stems that I snip.  Now when I clean up, I just dump the container and I’m done.

I used the same florist wire to wire the picks to the garland, but first, I trimmed the ends of the picks to a length that would work for me.  When I got to the top part of the garland, I took it down and put it across the counter to finish.

Goes great with the fall wreath!

Well, that’s it for the outside, now to the inside!

This is the plate that I picked up at Hobby Lobby this year on sale and I love it.  I love it so much I haven’t wanted to put it up and I’ve wormed it onto my mantle.  Normally, I don’t love orange … at all.  But I love the fall colors up against the black.

This is how it looked during Oct before I pulled out all the Thanksgiving stuff.

This is now.  Maybe it doesn’t fit in so well with the rest of it, but I just couldn’t pull it down.

Maybe it should look more like this.  And I’ve got to remember to turn that overhead light off. :/

Anyway, there’s always next year, right?  😀

Ok, moving on.  (see, too much teacher left in me)

See these Pilgrims and Indians/Native Americans?

There’s a story there.  Dakota aka Candy Queen and I were at Hobby Lobby shopping last year.  I’ve been on the look out for Pilgrim figurines for my mantel for a while.  I just couldn’t find any that I liked.  Any way, Dakota and I rounded this aisle and there these are on this end cap along with Indians/Native Americans, turkeys, etc.  I’m looking at all the different ones trying to make up my mind which ones to choose because I’m not keen on things with stuff written on it (like the ones below … although I like every thing else about them).  Finally I ask Dakota, which ones do you think I should get and I give her some choices.  She chooses the Indians and says, “I think you should get the Indians and that big chicken down there.  Because I’m part Indian and the big chicken matches it.”  Oh my gosh, she cracks me up!!!  She does have Indian ancestry on both sides of her family and that big chicken she wanted was a TURKEY!  So I ended up getting the Pilgrims to match her Indians, but I didn’t get the turkey.  I was little embarrassed though that my very bright granddaughter didn’t know the difference between a chicken and a
turkey.  🙂

And another little secret, if you turned that big pumpkin around, it also has something carved into it. 😉

I’ve had these little Cherished Teddies since the 80s.  They’re some of the only ones I pull out. Winona and Miles.  Winona use to have the cutest, real, tiny, little feather sticking out of her headband, but it fell out a couple of years ago. 🙁

Picked up these little cheapy Pilgrims just the other day at Hobby Lobby.  This whole set up is pretty much made of cheapy stuff.  That tray and wicker pumpkin is from Walmart.  I picked up the bottle and silver at The Lucky Rabbit.  I LOVE the silver creamer. Something else I can’t seem to put away.  Those cute little pumpkin salt/pepper shakers I won at Bunco.  The candle was a housewarming gift and that table runner is left over from hosting Bunco.  I never would have thought I’d use that, but it’s something else that I continue to hang onto and reuse.  I changed out the flowers on the bottom for fall.  Once again, in the photo I see that I need to go back and trim the stems some.

And last, this is an arrangement that my sister did for my Bunco about 3 or so yrs ago and I keep pulling it out during this time of year.  This is my grandmother’s crock.

Hope you enjoyed this.  This post was a monster to put together! 😀