Home Tour: Fall and Halloween Decor

Happy Fall, Y'all!  

I frequently get asked about my handmade fall decor, so I decided to share a few areas of my home and how the decorations came to be.  I have a kid-friendly house, so nothing is fancy or expensive.  I like decorating (especially handmade stuff), but I LOVE how excited my kids get when they see that I have added fun festivity to our home! It makes me smile, too. (:

MY SIDEBOARD

 (pictured above), located in my dining room 

• Autumn Grasses. Purchased at JoAnn's, similar here and here. 
• BOO letters. I spray painted them with a warm white, then painted the rims gold. Find the letters here. 
• Chalkboard. Made using a second hand framed picture from Goodwill, using this tutorial. 
• Fabric Pumpkins. Handmade using this blog post. 

DOOR WREATHS

• Wreath form purchased at Joann's (similar here).  After trying several kinds of forms, I now have a pretty strong opinion that the kind made of pressed, shaped straw wrapped in plastic is the most sturdy. Just my 2-cents.
• Burlap and fabric flowers made using tutorial found here and here. 
• Feathers made from yarn and liquid starch. Tutorial found here. 

FOYER

• Floral pieces and Pumpkin from Joann's. 
• Thankful board: 1x4 wood, painted light brown, then sanded around edges to distress. Vinyl "thankful."
• Sitting scarecrow: This was a hand-me-down from my mom. :)

DINING ROOM

• Table: Tray and metallic balls from Pier One.  Leaves from JoAnn's. Vintage lace table runner made according to this tutorial. 
• Mini mason jar floral arrangement:  These are the Atlas Mason jars that Classico Pesto comes in. I always save them. They make excellent small drinking glasses for my kids, and they are adorable in decorating.  I painted these with a warm white spray paint.  Floral pieces are from JoAnn's.

FIREPLACE

• Painting (of Colorado Rockies in Fall) available here. 
• Wool Ball Garland made using these.
• Fall Feather Garland tutorial found here.  
• Letterboard is "The Poet" from Letterfolk.

Watercolor Heart Doily Garland

Want to add some Valentine's Day flair to your home or office?  This simple garland is so easy and inexpensive to make, and looks darling!  Need non-electronic entertainment for the kiddos while you are cooped up in the house? Invite them to paint some, too! 

All you need is paper doilies (I found mine HERE for a bargain), watercolor paints and a brush, clear tape, and some white thread or dental floss!

"Doily" looked weird to me when I typed it out, so I looked it up. Turns out, it can be spelled correctly several different ways (per Wikipedia):  doiley, doilie, doyly, doyley, and doily. 

Ha! Who knew??

I made a video tutorial to show you how easy it is!  Have fun!

Participating in these link-ups.

Fall Feather Garland

Living in the Pacific Northwest makes saying goodbye to summertime hard.  What we are really saying is "Hi, Rain. You are here for the next 5 months (at least)." 

I am embracing Autumn, though, and all that comes with it.  I love the colors. I love opening my blinds more often to let the (somewhat cloudy) sunshine in! My birthday is in the fall. So is Halloween and Thanksgiving!  And I love decorating my house with fall decor!

After putting together a wreath for my last post, Yarn Feather Tutorial, I decided to change out my Summer Flower Garland for a Fall Feather Garland! I am loving how it turned out!

I started by making a bunch of feathers using my tutorial.  I decided to trim most of the feathers, but leaving some un-trimmed also looks great. 

Each feather takes about 15-20 minutes. Put your feet up, put on some Netflix, and you'll have enough whipped out in no time! These represent about 2.5 hrs of work. 

Here they are trimmed up. Sharp scissors are key.

I used gold craft paint on a few, and I sprayed them with an acrylic sealer (not essential, but I'd like these to last!). Finally, I bent their stems (which is a covered pipe cleaner, so easily bent), and attached them to some bakers twine. So easy!

Participating in these link-ups.

Summer Flower Garland

Okay, who's a fabric hoarder?  Go ahead--fess up. :) You are in good company, I assure you.

Good news!! I have a CURE for your problem. It is this fun and festive fabric flower garland! It is easy to make, and you can use up a bunch of those fabric remnants you've been hanging on to!

I found an EXCELLENT tutorial on how to make the flowers from Rox's World of Quilts.  She shows how to make two variations of this flower--I stuck with the second one for this garland. They are seriously simple. Once you make one, you will have the process down for the rest.

For measurement reference (so you know how many you can make with the fabric you have), each 1/4 yard of fabric makes 20 petals.  Each flower has 8 petals. Hopefully that helps!

Here are my flowers all made. I used hot glue to attach buttons or pom-poms to the front and a small piece of felt to the back.

Next,  line them all up in the order you want them to be in for the garland. 

Using heavy button thread (embroidery thread would work, too), sew through the back of  a couple of petal walls to string them up.  Push them along on the thread to arrange them as you'd like.

I love the change bright colors make on my drab fireplace!

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