Podged Pumpkins!

Like most of my other posts, this one is a little late.
Oh well, better late than never.

A quick personal update for my benefit first: We had a wonderful weekend. We spent the day Saturday with Zach's mom for her birthday. We went to Boathouse for lunch & got to sit outside near the water. It was a beautiful day for that! We then headed home after lunch & a little shopping, to watch the Alabama game with my fam. Mom & Jonathan came, and my sweetie grilled burgers for us. They were out of this world- just ask Mom & Jon who kept bragging about them. :) Saturday would have been Mom & Dad's 28th wedding anniversary, so we definitely wanted to keep her company that day. We really had a great time watching Bama win...and win big! On Sunday after church (which was amazing, as always), I had a full day of lunch with Mom & kid's choir all afternoon. We are gearing up for our Christmas play that will be here before you know it! Zach headed to our niece's 1st birthday party with his family. It is amazing how fast a year has flown by!!

So, back to my post...

I'll confess something... I bought Christmas stuff this past week. And a good bit of it at that. I'm talking a smaller tree for our master bedroom, some ornaments for an upcoming project (for my sweetie, and I'm oh-so-excited about it), and some beautiful glittery branches & foliage for our big tree. I cannot tell you how giddy I was (and still am) about getting this stuff! I had first talked myself out of buying the tree, when I found it earlier in the week. But, I talked myself in to going back and getting it, after thinking of how sad I would be to find them gone a few days later.

I'm most excited about the glittery goodies. Something about spending anywhere in the neighborhood of $10 or more each on these little doo-dads at, say, a Hobby Lobby just irks me!
Even on sale, I just could never bring myself to buy them last season, even though I wanted them oh-so-badly.
I'm glad I toughed it out and waited. I scored these for $1 each at the dollar store. They are not as big as what you could find at
Hob Lob, but at $1 each, I could happily spring for more.

Now, back to my post topic AGAIN :) ... I managed to squeeze in a little project last week (well, I had started it much earlier the week before, got lazy busy, then finished it this week). It seems like with each new blog follower & each sweet comment, I feel more & more inspired to get to work! I say keep them coming, because I love staying busy & keeping a creative frame of mind! :)

A quick Before & After to start off my post...

BEFORE

AFTER

I am so excited about this thrifty little craft! I have seen a few posts of these here & there in the blogosphere, but I'm posting
this one from A Diamond in the Stuff  since it's my favorite. So, just for the record, I did NOT come up with this idea myself.

I just loved it and had to try it! I also don't usually copy another project spot-on, but this one was adorable!
I've seen many other copy cats since starting this project too! 

I spent all of $1 a piece for these little pumpkins at the Dollar Tree. They are mainly styrofoam & are advertised to be "carvable." I didn't have the intention of using them for that though. I can just picture that being nothing but a big mess in the floor, little styrofoam pieces everywhere, with nothing to show for it but a disfigured, jagged jack-o-lantern-like face...

...Anyway, I bought them only for the purpose of a pumpkin form. I took them home, and many lazy days later grabbed up my Mod Podge (love this stuff!), and an old hymnal, and got to work.

Here are some more pics of the result in stages:

The last one is me putting the final coat of Mod Podge all over.
I did this just for protection, and to make sure the ends of the papers would stay. (I'm loving my nails this color, by the way.
It's Sally Hansen Hard As Nails in Gunmetal.
It's cheap and it's awesome!)

I just LOVE the antique look of these! I made sure to use an old hymnal with yellowed pages to give it that look. You could also use pages from a newer book and just brown the edges.

After the podging was done (which took two different days of working on it, because you have to complete the top & let it dry before finishing up the bottom), I did just as A Diamond in the Stuff did (see, I told you it was a total copy- I loved her version too much!), and cut the stems off. I then made a hole with my scissors, and stuck a cinnamon stick in as the new stem. It makes the room smell so Autumn-y too! (Yes, Autumn-y is a word.) Her idea was to put Spanish moss around the base of the stems, because it really doesn't look very glamorous in that area, but I was able to piece some of my music sheets to where it covered most of that area. I made a picture of both...

I only started out with two pumpkins. I had planned to do both of them this way, but after finishing the first, I truthfully didn't have the oomph to complete another one. I had a better (quicker) idea in mind. I had purchased this spray paint...

Google Images

...that I had mentioned in this earlier post. I have been dying to spray something with this since I bought it weeks ago. So, the pumpkin was my victim. It turned out beautifully, and it really adds a pop of color in the room. Here it is, the first showing its color which was actually difficult to capture in the light (in other words, these next two pics aren't great), and the second showing it on our entertainment center, with my little cornucopia I scored from the thrift store...

And for the other, what better place to have it but on my piano? :)

To close out my little post, I wanted to include something I found on Facebook this week...

Thou Shalt Laugh

It's not necessarily funny, but it is sweet to think of it this way.
My husband is one of Apple's biggest contributors, that's for sure. Just about every electronic/tech device in our house is from Apple. And, if it's not, it probably will be soon. :)

 I know Steve Jobs will be truly missed, and I'm sure his absence will be evident in the company, atleast for a while now. The world definitely lost one of its greatest innovators in Steve Jobs.

And, back to my picture... I'm sure he would be happy if that's
the job he's doing right now.