Craving Fall

The last couple of weeks I have really been doing nothing but dream of Fall time. It is my favorite time of the year and I can't stop thinking about how cozy it makes me feel. I've had the past two days off work and I've spent way too many hours tracking down every Fall idea on Pinterest.. I've been stalking too many poor strangers out there all for their Fall Pinterest boards! : )

Oh Fall... it really does make me feel so dreamy, cozy and romantic. All the smells! That's one of my favorites! Seriously, I was making oatmeal the other day and when the smell of brown sugar hit my nostrils I couldn't stop imagining myself dancing around outside with all the falling leaves! .. ok, a little exaggeration, but that almost sums up my feelings inside that are impatiently waiting to burst out once Fall hits! .. I told Hubby last night that I should start Fall early since it doesn't last long enough here! Before I know it, winter will be here drowning me in snow! .. sad face.  

So to celebrate my early feelings of Fall time I thought I would share my latest and favorite Pinterest finds with you! Enjoy!!

I am dying for my own house and yard right now! I'd love to be able to decorate my front porch up all cute for Fall like this adorable porch right here. Pumpkins, baskets, and flowers in front of the door.. we're only allowed door mats at our apartment.. But atleast I can put up a wreathe!

Oh baby, would a cozy living room like this during Fall time be perfect! I just want to curl up on that couch by the fire and squish myself comfy in those pillows! First I'll go put on a big comfy sweater and make some hot chocolate!

What a beautiful walk this would be! Crunching leaves along the way, throwing them up in the air like a crazy giddy girl! Not sure where this place is, but I'm dying to spend a Fall vacation there! Gorgeous Gorgeous Gorgeous!

Thanksgiving dinner outside in a country-fied place with hay bales and pumpkins all over the yard?? YES PLEASE!! 

Isn't it adorable?!

Old fashioned cheese graters on a platter setting on the coffee table for some Fall decor. I like it!

Oooh, I love the flickering mason jars lining up the stairway. 

How much more romantic can Fall be???

Painting words on pumpkins! What a sweet idea! I don't have a fire place mantle, but this could work on my balcony, or OOOOOH, even up in the space above my kitchen cupboards! 

{seriously, that thought JUST came to me! SWEETNESS!}

I love me those Fall smells (so much that I repeat myself a gazillion times!) 

Simmer orange peels and cinnamon and your home will smell AMAZING!

Oh yes, a Fall picnic! What could be better?! 

And I love this little picnic tote. It's super perfect!

Okay, I've been non stop talking about how much fun it would be to have a little party/potluck at our apartment to welcome the Fall! I like this pumpkin serving dish idea! That's so FALLtastic!

See this pretty apple pie? I'm totally doing this! It's already on my mental Fall to-do list. 

.. I've never made an apple pie before either. Can't wait!

Oh my goodness, these are so sweet. Hollowed out apples baked with cinnamon and sugar, filled with ice cream and topped with caramel sauce! AAH! So adorable! What a cute idea!

Love the use of a big'ole pumpkin used to display some goodies. 

I'm thinking cake pops.. oh ya!  .. for my Fall party!

And this says it all..

I really need to write down a Fall bucket list ... 

Now are you craving it too??

You can find all my Fall pins here

A Picnic in the Park

With a temperature of 83 degrees (including humidity would make it in the 90's), our apartment was pretty hot yesterday. I can handle the heat, but the humidity is what kills me! .. my hair agrees. And living on the 3rd floor with no air conditioning gets a bit uncomfortable.. especially for me lately because I've recently developed some asthma like symptoms. I'm thinking the humid weather has possibly caused this little flair up. So with it being such a hot day, we planned to go swimming at the public pool just around the corner when Hubby got off work. Then we'd have a picnic afterwards in the park. Sounded like fun to me! The pool felt so good! .. But then the sun started setting and we got a little chilly. Time for our picnic dinner! I made egg sandwiches, which have been a favorite of ours lately. And with such hot and humid weather we'd rather not make the apartment any hotter by cooking .. except I did bake some cookies to take with us! .. I realized that I need a super cute picnic basket!

Mmm, cookies and milk!

What's a picnic without cute photos, right?

 .. that and I seem addicted to taking photos of everything we do together these days!!

I have to say that we are definitely my favorite couple ever! : )

 Here are some really romantic and cozy picnic ideas I found on Pinterest...

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 A collection of picnic baskets! .. hmm, which one to choose..

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Now you probably want to go on a picnic, right? : )

Have fun! 

Ladybug Yard Decor from Croquet Balls

So while I was in California for my Grandpa's surgery I introduced my mom to the world of Pinterest. She immediately was hooked! And one night while we were up browsing fun ideas we came across a super cute yard decoration idea for painting bowling balls into ladybugs! What a darling idea! .. But we didn't have any bowling balls lying around. The next day though, we bumped into some ancient croquet balls while looking for something in my Grandpa's shed (he's living with my parents now). He said, "Hey, use those for your ladybug project!" So we did! 

After giving them a good wipe down we spray painted them all red with what spray paint my mom had in her cupboard.. it's more like a burdundy, but it worked fine for a base coat to cover up the colors because we ended up buying some acrylic craft paints at Walmart and painting over them with red.

After painting them red, we painted little faces and dots on them. That was kind of hard because of the ridges on the sides of the balls. But I actually figured out that Q-tips worked great for working with the ridges! Just kind of dabbing the paint on. My mom used to paint really cute faces on wooden animals my Grandpa used to make. She likes painting faces on rocks around her property : ) She's so cute, I love her!

Mom sprayed a clear protective spray over them once they all had faces and dots.

Now they needed antenna... 

My Grandpa went rummaging through his shed and came out with these little prong stick looking things. He wasn't sure what they were, but he had a whole bunch of them and said we could use them for the antenna. They're so perfect!

So he brought out his drill gun and then this nifty little tool that punctures a dent on the spot you want to drill a hole. Super cool! I want one of these things! 

Of course I wanted to do the drill by myself!..  and grunting like Tim Taylor from Home Improvement, "More Power! Oohhhoooo Owoooohoo!" ... ehem, something like that anyway.. 

And then I hammered in the little spikey things

.. but that didn't secure them in well enough, so my mom had some super glue and we used a couple drops down the holes and pressed the spikes back in. So much better. 

And here are all the "ladies" to model for you!

(#2 looks like Bob the tomato from Veggie Tales! ha! ha!)

This is the ladybug I brought home with me. It was the first one I started painting on and loved it! {Mom just had to paint a nose onto hers! Isn't it sweet?!}

When I was packing my little ladybug into my luggage before going home, I thought, "Oh no, I wonder if at the airport they will see my ladybug through the x-ray scanner and think it's a bomb and take it out of my bag and throw it away!..?" .. Then when I got home, I opened my luggage to show my Hubby the ladybug and it wasn't in the spot I put it! I said, "NO, they took it!" .. I was so sad. But then I found it. It had shifted to another spot when I took something else out earlier!! So then I explained to my husband the bomb thought I had and he basically said, "You weirdo, bombs don't really look like that!" ... I guess I've watched too many cartoons in my life.. 

My little ladybug is enjoying herself in the shade of my cherry tomato plants, which grew like CRAZY while I was away! There are so many little baby tomato balls.. and couple are now starting to turn orange!

I just love it! It was so much fun doing this project with my mom and my Grandpa. We needed a fun little time like that with all the stress and busyness we all had been through before and after my Grandpa's surgery. 

I'd still love to try a bowling ball next .. but I'll save that for when I have a yard someday! 

DIY Concentration Memory Game

Here's one of those fun projects I promised you! I know, I've surprised myself too by having it ready so soon after I mentioned it! : ) Do you recognize those silver round things?? Well, they are the lids from frozen concentrated juices! I have been saving them for forever! When we were little, my mom used to save them too and we would make refrigerator magnets out of them using our photos and gluing little beads on to them. So I've been saving and saving and wondering what I could make with them, and I thought a memory matching game would be so cute!! I'll show you how I did it.

LIDS! LIDS! LIDS! LIDS! LIDS! LIDS! 

so many lids!

 

I bought some pretty scrapbook paper from Michael's and figured out exactly what size of a circle I would need to fit in the lid. I traced a lid then after cutting down and cutting down I finally had a circle the right size and I used it as my tracing template. After all my circles were traced I cute them out. I used two different colors- a minty greenish blue, and a mustary yellow.. two of my current favorite colors. (no, the game isn't for me when I get bored.. not really anyway!) Each lid got a circle mod podged on it.

I rummaged through my rubber stamp collection and picked out the ones I thought would be the cutest and simplest for a little game like this. So sorry that I didn't document myself coloring and cutting out my stamped images.. I know, that must make you feel like you're missing out. Oh well! : )

 After all the coloring and cutting (most of the stamps didn't need coloring anyway), I mod podged each cut out image onto a lid. The mod podge was still sticky feeling even when it was completely dried.. that's why I don't understand how people mod podge stuff onto desks and tables and such.. doesn't it always have a sticky feeling??? Or maybe they use another Shellack of some sort. 

 I drive myself crazy, I tell ya. I create a cute little crafting corner in our spare room for all this, and I still end up going all over the apartment with my crafting stuff! .. I make messes in every room!

So because the mod podge had a permanent sticky feeling, I sprayed the lids down with a clear satin spray... at like midnight! This stuff has a really weird sweet smell to it. I don't like it. I love the smell of regular colored spray paints, but shhh! Don't tell anyone!

Yah! All finished with my sweet little game!

Now let's play!! 

Hmmm... which one should I pick??? .... 

.. Now where's that other cute little camera..? 

OOPS.. uh.. let me do that again.. 

Two cute little cameras! I win. (I'm too lazy to play the whole game!) 

I just love it!! I'd love to have a bunch of random little handmade games for kids if we ever have visitors with kids or maybe if I babysit. Wouldn't that be so cute?

Hope you enjoyed this! 

Until next time...

happy creativities!