It’s after Halloween and lots of fall decorations are on sale. So go ahead and buy those orange Halloween lights that are on clearance and turn them into a nice fall decoration. These DIY Fall lights are so cute hanging over a bookshelf or a mantle. You can find instructions here.
I finally got around to making curtains for two of our bedrooms after 1.5 years of living here.
I made a border and tie backs for our son’s room.
I made two curtain panels for our bedroom and repurposed some old curtains from a previous apartment for the center panel.
It’s to finally get some of these things done. It’s starting to feel like home. 🙂
I love decorating for the holidays. Fall and Christmas are probably my two favorite. I like to post pictures of what we do each year as it varies from year to year. We like to do themes. This year the theme was an “Old Fashioned Christmas.” We based the idea on a literature book we had just finished in school about a family in the 1800’s. They decorated their tree with cranberries and popcorn. So did we. Here’s a gallery of our Christmas decorations.
I found a new use for our tiny pumpkins after Thanksgiving was over this year. A couple of weeks into December I realized I should do something with them. I had seen a post where someone had taken some large pumpkins, power drills and white paint and created a snowman for the front porch. I figured I try it on a smaller scale.
First the five year old painted the pumpkins white with craft paint. Then I glued them together (hot glue or super glue is best, craft glue is gummy), three stacked high. Next we painted a little face and buttons down his front. Then the eight year old crocheted a little red scarf and I whipped stitched him up a cute top hat from some felt scraps (trace and cut a big circle, cut a small circle out of the center and then cut a rectangle to size and stitch the three together).
Isn’t he cute? We’ll have to do this next year too.
Pretty fall leaves in a basket.
Fall is probably my favorite time to decorate for. I’m not sure why. I just love all the orange, red, and yellow. The pumpkins, leaves and scarecrows are quaint and I get excited as summer winds down and I can anticipate the crispness in the air that brings on fall. Here’s how we decorated for fall this year. It changes every year. I put some decorations in one place one year and in new place another year. I try to buy one new item on clearance at the end of every season so that we add to or decoration stash little by little.
Our fall twinkle lights. Made with orange halloween lights with paper leaves twisty tied on.
Window decals.
Pretty candle holders.
Cute scarecrows.
More cute scarecrows…
Our newest window scarecrow.
Isn’t this little face cute peeking over my plant leaves?
Fall is coming. Time to get ready. It’s my favorite season to decorate for. Pumpkins, colored leaves, orange and red and yellow. I just love it. Here’s how to make your own leafy twinkle lights with clearance fall and Halloween items.
First, watch for a set of orange Christmas lights on clearance after Haloween (if you didn’t do this last year, then go find some now). Next, buy a set of paper leaves. Grab a set of all those twisty ties that are hiding in your kitchen drawer that you never use on your trash bags and color them black with a magic marker (see photo above).
Poke a black twisty tie through the base of each paper leaf. Then twist them around your orange Christmas light strand in even increments (photo above).
Hang it up and you have your own custom Leafy Twinkle Lights. A nice addition to your fall decor. The kids might enjoy helping you make it too.
It’s almost Easter. We barely got our Easter decorations up in time. It was still cold until this last week so it didn’t seem quite right to be decorating for Easter/spring when it was still 30 degrees outside. But, it warmed up last week so the decorations are up now. And the nice thing about Easter decor is that it easily transitions in to spring. Here’s what we have up this year:
A white gauze babywearing wrap used as a garland for colored Christmas lights with a white cord.
Easter eggs dangle from the lights. I used colored Christmas ribbon and poked it through the holes in the tops of the eggs to make loops to hang them from.
Lilies that I had from some time in the past clipped on to a ribbon graces the entertainment center.
Easter egg window clings from the .99 cent store.
The Valentine wreath (a wire frame wrapped with a scarf) becomes the Easter wreath with clip of a flower. I’ll switch it to a spring wreath later by adding a yellow ribbon twisted around the frame.
Our scarecrow Rosie, gets a new hat and flower.
Rosie’s Easter basket with a few flowers and Easter eggs mixed in.
An Easter tree – the hall plant decorated with the rest of the hanging Easter eggs.
Happy Easter Everyone!
I’m so proud of myself I have to share this. It’s not terribly practical of me since I don’t have a template to share or any step by step directions to share, but it turned out so well maybe some of you can come up with something cute for your windows. You could outline anything and turn it into a decoration that is cute and whimsical. Let the kids try their hand at it too. All I did was draw the outline that I wanted in chalk on black construction paper and then cut it out and tape in on the window. Doesn’t it look like Mary Poppins and Bert are dancing on the rooftops? And in the snow no less! It makes the window with the ugly view much more fun. If you can’t freehand your drawing then you could trace over an image or print an image out on regular white paper. Cut that out and then trace around it with chalk on your black construction paper. Supercalafragilisticexpialidocious everyone!
From this angle it looks like they’re dancing in the snow. 🙂
I love decorating my house for the various seasons and holidays throughout the year. There is Thanksgiving and Christmas of course. Everyone decorates for those. But, I’ve always enjoyed putting up decorations all year long – spring, summer, the Fourth of July, fall (which is probably my favorite), Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, winter, and now we are at Valentine’s Day.
Having kids makes this all the more fun because they enjoy it just as much as I do. And we’ve come up with some pretty fun ideas together along way. Scroll down to see some of our Valentine’s decorations this year. You can come up with some pretty cheap and easy ideas with some simple items from the dollar store that you can reuse year after year.
Valentine’s wreath on our door made from a scarf from the .99 Cent store wrapped on a round metal frame (it’s actually a frame for advent candles) picked up from the curb.
A mini-Christmas tree decorated with paper hearts cut from a gift bag.
Valentine’s garland made with red Christmas lights wrapped around one of my babywearing wraps.
Sticky hearts from the .99 Cent store in the window – It’s Valentine’s Day NYC!
Meet Rosie. She’s our scarecrow that we got on clearance two years ago. She sits in the hall outside our door. We decided that we liked her so much that now we keep her up all year long and dress her up for each season and holiday (watch for more pictures of her in the future). See – even she has a bag of Valentine’s for you.
Felt hearts hanging in the plant.
Rosie’s Valentine.
Isn’t Rosie cute. She’s a good friend.
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
Remembering Maggie Lane 