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Pumpkin “Guts” Trick

I have no idea why this has NEVER occurred to me before the other night.  So we get all ready to carve our giant pumpkin (biggest we’ve ever bought) and my husband asks for a bowl for the “guts”.  I gave him the largest in the kitchen and thought…..I sure do hate cleaning the dried “guts” off the bowl.  So it hit me!  Use a grocery sack in the bowl.  It fit perfectly and wow….all I did was stuck it in the dishwasher for any residue that might be on it.  I seriously told my husband that I thought of this all on my own…that I didn’t even use Pinterest or Google, lol!!  The other think we do that makes clean up easy is to cut open a trash bag and cover the table with it.  Newspaper usually gets wet and cleaning that off a table is not fun!

Prepare pumpkin

Prepare pumpkin gut bowl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mean Pumpkin.

Crazy Pumpkins

Last year I bought a white pumpkin for Halloween.  I’d never seen one and loved it.  I just set it on my porch as is and it was so pretty.  The best thing about that pumpkin is at Christmas I turned it into a snowman!  Then for our actual Jack-O-Lantern we got a mid sized pumpkin and painted it silver.  Then we cut an alien face on it and stuck a green glow stick in there….man was that cool and creepy!!  Here are our pumpkins from last year.  The kids had so much fun just putting stickers on them (which I got at the dollar store!)

alien pumpkinSticker Pumpkins

Snowman pumpkin

 

 

 

 

 

We haven’t been to a pumpkin patch yet this year but since Walmart carries pumpkins for $3.88 I had to get one!  A few days later a letter came home from my 8 yr olds school saying there was a pumpkin decorating contest.  So off to Walmart I went.  I found some smallish pumpkins and they were 75 cents a pound…I thought that’s not bad.  Well it was.  They were $4 and $5 because they were pie pumpkins.  WTH!?!?!  I didn’t know there was a difference.

So with that I told my son about the contest and asked if he wanted to participate.  He said yes.  This contest is to decorate the pumpkin not carve so being it was the afternoon before it was due (cause we had a busy weekend, doh!) I told him that we are limited on what we can do.  I said we can paint it black and make Darth Vader or green and make Yoda (he loves Star Wars).  But I also said unless you can come up with something else that’s easy….he couldn’t.  So the hubbs and I discussed materials.  I painted it then I ran (well drove) to Michaels for foam and felt.  Since it was a late start and Monday’s suck anyways we didn’t get around to putting it together until 8:30 that night.  And then it hit us!  DUH, we have Darth Vader potato head parts…asked him what he wanted to do and he wanted to use the potato head parts (so now I have foam in Vader colors, lol!).  So of course we were having trouble getting the younger one to sleep and guess where the potato head pieces were….yup, his room.  That meant once he was asleep we had to sneek that buck out of his room and get the parts.  So he had to do it right before school…he barely made it to school on time and he’s usually 15 min early every day.  So yah…he won 1st place for best character and 2nd place for overall best!  Can you believe that?!!  What a great way for us parents to teach our kids to procrastinate on projects till the morning it’s due….cause your gonna ace it!!!  Lordy I just know he’s gonna bring this up in high school.  Here it is….I think it’s great!

Darth Vader Pumpkin

 

 

 

 

Then since I had gotten my youngest son a pumpkin I thought let’s paint it silver…at this point I had no idea what to do on it so picking my color before was kinda silly.  I’d thought about cutting a spider and sticking it to it but then when we were getting the Vader parts I saw it!  I’d totally forgotten that we had a Transformer potato head.  So there ya go…we pulled it off!

Transformer pumpkin

 

 

 

 

 

So while I was painting pumpkins I painted my cheap Walmart pumpkin a teal color (Rustoleum’s Lagoon).  I was going to put white chevron stripes on it and well since i’m still new and learning my silhouette I totally screwed that up, lol!  I thought…what’s fallish that no one does (or that I haven’t seen).  Searched fall in the online silhouette store and voila!  Up popped acorns.  That was it…I had to do that.  I added a burlap bow to the stem (which i’m going to redo—I want longer tails) stuck on my acorn vinyl and voila!

Acorn pumpkin.

Fall is here, well sorta!

It’s beginning to look like fall in my house (not the temps outside though!)!  I changed out the placemats to red/yellow/green, put some pine cones out, made up a burlap wreath and of course Target had some awesome pumpkins in their dollar bins (not a dollar but they $2.50 was still worth it!!).

It all started because I went to Hobby Lobby to get a lamp…baaahahahaha!!  Yah, what a joke right!  I didn’t find a lamp but I made out with this stuff for only $14!!

HLburlap

So here’s my wreath!  I still need to cut some burlap to hang it from but I wanted it up so bad I just hung it straight on my door!  I love it!  I got the brown burlap and the chevron burlap from Hobby Lobby.  I know you can’t tell it’s chevron but you will once I make my bow to hang it up with!  This was also my first time to make fabric flowers…so easy!!!  I watched this tutorial from Jen over at Tatertots and Jello.

burlap wreathburlap wreath closeup

 

 

 

 

 

Next up is my mantel.  I wanted to do some Halloween decor but I just can’t come up with anything at the moment so I decided to start with Fall.  I absolutely love these pumpkins from Target!  I also used the FREE shape from Silhouette to get my pumpkin in that frame.  That was my first official Silhouette project!!!

grapevine pumpkinFall mantel

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Fall Ya’ll!!!

And here’s the updated photo with the extra ribbon.

Burlap Wreath

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Popsicle Parties!

So school is out and summer is here!  We definitely know that summer is here in this house….our air conditioning has been out for a week!!!  Luckily for most of the week it’s been out we had a little rain that cooled the temperature off a bit. So mostly we’ve been in the low 80’s but we’re quickly climbing back into the mid 90’s!  We do have 2 window ac units and a stand alone unit that we’ve hooked up so the living room and bedrooms are cool at night and tolerable during the day.

So back to the popsicle parties!  Since my youngest son is 3 and most of his classmates are young I scheduled his popsicle party for the morning.  And I had a genius idea to schedule my middle son’s popsicle party for the same day but in the afternoon.  Maybe it was the heat since we had no air or the outside temp being in the 90’s since 10am that day but yah….I don’t think i’ll ever do them the same day agian!

Here is a pic of a generic popsicle invitation.  I created the invite in photoshop (just learning how to use it).  Anyway, I used a popsicle coloring page template, added my text, hot glued a popsicle stick on the back and used a 1.5 inch scallop craft punch to make the bite look.  For my real invitations I used some super cute cardstock from Michaels.  It was a pale yellow, seafoam green, and a blue…they had embossed polka dots on them too.  But this was my test paper…paper I already had at home that I just don’t use.

 

To get the template email me at messijessimail.com (i’ll post the template when I figure out how to get a psd uploaded!)

 

Here are pictures from Jayson’s (youngest son) party!

 

And this is my middle son’s popsicle party!

 

Overall everyone had tons of fun!  I loved the smiles on my boys faces!

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Springy Decor!

I have finally finished my spring decor!

 

Spring Wreath

I spray painted a grapevine wreath that lagoon color (LOVE!) and then I let it sit on my door naked for a week, lol!!

I then finally got around to making my flowers.  Which really means I made a trip to Hobby Lobby.  Made the flowers (tutorial soon!) and then my wreath was wet from rain….had to wait, ugh!  Finally it was time to make it and I love it!  It’s springy and summery!  I might change some of the colors but I love it so much I might keep it up until fall.

 

Mantel Vases

I’ve shown this pic in another post but I added this vibrant flower.  It’s my favorite by far!  I’m really loving this teal color!

So there’s my spring decor.  Simple, bright, and pastely (I know that’s not a word)..

St. Patricks Day Stuff

I wanted to share the few decorations I’ve made for St. Patty’s Day!

I used my same grapevine wreath I’ve been using since last summer!  I just tear off (sometimes it’s a struggle, hehe) the previous decor and hot glue new on.

St Patty's day wreath

 

 

I didn’t have enough green felt so I grabbed 8 pieces at Hobby Lobby for $2.00.  The Leprechaun and the greenery I got at Michaels for under $2.00!!!  I used a cup, a bowl, and a wine glass to cut my circles out for the felt flowers.  One day I’ll show a tutorial…lol!  I then hot glued them on the wreath and stuck the Leprechaun and the greenery in the wreath w/out gluing so I can save those for next year!

Now…my favorite part of the decor!!  My Mantel.  I used some things that I’ll be able to use all of Spring so it’s not just for this month!

 

 

I used the same chalkboard vase (wine bottle) I used for Valentine’s Day…just wrote “Lucky” on it and drew a few clovers on it.

St Patty's day vases

Next I used a mini wine bottle and painted it Satin Green Apple (by Rust-oleum).  2 coats and it was DONE!  The best part is this vase will be good for Spring too!!

green apple

The vase fillers…..I liked the St. Patty’s day greenery so much I went back to Michaels and got 3 more things.  All still under $2.00!  These were actually cheaper $1.26!  I cut the carnations to fit the larger vase and then just bent those and the shamrocks to my liking.

When I was at Home Depot getting my green apple paint I fell in LOVE with this other paint and HAD to get it!!  It’s good for St. Patty’s Day (sorta..lol!), Spring, Summer and Fall!!  Heck some people even work it in for winter!  It’s called Satin Lagoon (by Rust-oleum again).  Isn’t it pretty??

lagoon

Ok ok…so you can’t really tell in that picture but it’s such a pretty teal!  We had friends over last year and we were ummmm drinking…lol!  Well I asked her to leave the empty bottle.  It was all curvy and neat looking.  So like 6 months later I peeled the label off, goo-goned the sticky, used paint lacquer to clean the goo off then painted it this LOVELY color (did you know I don’t paint the bottoms…why waste time and paint?!!?!)!!  It’s still kinda hard to see how pretty the color is but it’s definitely one of my favs!

Lagoon vase

So you see that frame there.  Well I got it at a local thrift shop for $1.99, brand new too!!  So I got 2 cream ones and 2 navy ones for that price each.  Figured I’d use them somehow and paint if needed!  All I did was google shamrock and found this cute one.  I resized it to fit my frame and printed it on cardstock and cut to the frame size.

So there you have it!  My St. Patty’s day decor that will lead the way into Spring.  I can’t wait to add some yellows and pinks in there!  Maybe i’ll chevron paint the teal bottle with a pink!  Oooooh, and a real pretty white flower will look awesome in it!

Don’t forget to wear your green March 17th!!

pretty clover

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