Happy Hallowe'en!

Tonight my husband and I finally got around to carving our pumpkins. Nothing like leaving it to the last minute!

I art directed, he executed. Here is a quick share of our creations.

We used a cordless drill to make the holes. Pretty quick and easy, though a bit messy (lots of little pumpkin bits flying about).

I'm happy with how they turned out. And now I have a big pile of pumpkin seeds to roast. Yum!

Wishing you all a safe and fun time trick-or-treating tomorrow night!

I can be found linking up at these parties this week.

Fall art tutorial - from failure to success

Have you ever had a great idea for a DIY project in your head, then when you go to do it, reality takes over and it just doesn't quite work out how you intended?

That's what happened to me with this Fall art project. I was about half way through when I realized it was not going to end well. Sigh.

However, all was not lost. With a bit of tweaking and simplifying, I was able to make it all work out. So, if you will stay with me, I will lead you through my Fall art how-to, from failure to success!

This all started because my front porch was in need of some Fall-themed wall art. You can check out the spring/summer look of my porch in this blog post that shows the reno/redecorating of the porch.

My idea for the wall art was inspired by this image I found on Pinterest (original source here).

 

I love the simple elegance of the lace on burlap. I thought I could capture that look by covering an art canvas with some burlap and spray painting a lacy stencil on it using some doily scrapbook paper I had on hand.

This project started off well. I even took a nice picture of all the supplies you would need: two small canvases from the dollar store, burlap, scissors, staple gun, white spray paint, and doily scrapbook paper. I did forget to include a utility knife and ruler in the photo.

Using a lightweight staple gun, I covered two small canvases with some burlap I had leftover from my wedding decorations (we had a fall wedding three years ago). 

This part of the project went off without a hitch and looked great (except that I ran out of staples half way through and had to make a trip to The Home Depot).

Then I cut a section of the doily paper. My idea was to use it as a stencil to spray paint onto the burlap. Simple, right? WRONG!

This is where it all fell apart. Spray paint on loosely woven burlap is not a good idea. 

Luckily, I was smart enough to do a test piece first before actually spraying my burlap-covered canvas. The burlap was too porous and sucked up the paint. A lot of the detail was lost. 

This wasn't quite the look I was going for.

So to salvage the project, I decided to simplify things and just use actual lace and ribbon like in the Pinterest photo. I dug into my box of ribbon remnants and came up with these pieces.

I used the staple gun to attach the lace and ribbon at the back of the canvas. Here are the finished products.

And here is how the art looks in my front porch. I used the same nails that my round black and white wall art usually hangs on.

Here is a shot of my Fall display below the art. I added some lace and burlap to tie it all together.

Even though my original idea didn't work out, I love it when I can work an idea through and come up with a revised solution. 

The best part? The finished product was actually easier to do than my original plan!

I'm linking up with these great parties this week. Be sure to check them out!

Fall decor and a free printable

As I'm sure I have written before, Fall is my favourite season. There is something about the cool crisp air, the changing leaves, the warm, yummy tastes and smells (hello Pumpkin Spice Latte!) that hold such anticipation and promise.

Now that Fall has officially arrived, I have my decor all set up. Just in time it seems! Our Canadian Thanksgiving seems so much earlier this year - only a week and a half way!

I have been inspired by all of the fall mantels I've seen on other blogs and on Pinterest boards this season, so I thought I would try my hand at the 'layering' technique that everyone is using.

I didn't want to buy a lot of new decor, so I stuck with what I had on hand. That being said, my layering probably isn't as good as it could have been, but it was fun getting creative with what I already had in the house!

We don't have a mantel, but we do have a nice sideboard in our dining room and that works just as well.

Now you are probably asking, is that a wedding photo in the display??? Well, yes. Yes it is.

My husband and I were married on Thanksgiving weekend three years ago (there is a blog post about it here). So I thought the photo was fitting, plus it helped out with the layering.

The smaller frame on the left was a shower gift. It holds the verses about love from 1 Corinthians 13 in the Bible.

The lady who gave us this gift is a talented calligrapher and wrote this out BY HAND! It is unbelievable when you look at it up close, it is so perfect it looks like a computer font. WOW.

The white frame on the right was originally brass and purchased for 10 cents at a yard sale. A couple coats of spray paint and tada! Funky vingtage picture frame.

Now check out the artwork in the picture frame. This is my first attempt at a free printable for all of my lovely readers! That's you!

Follow the link at the end of the post and you can download it for FREE! Don't you just love free stuff? I know I do!

I gave the candles some height by using glass dessert bowls from my kitchen cupboard. I placed one candle on top of and the other inside of a dish.

The dried bouquet is actually my wedding bouquet! You can see what it looked like on my wedding day at the same blog post mentioned above.

The lantern I picked up this summer at the thrift store. It usually lives in our front porch, but I thought it worked well inside for this display.

The white mini pumpkins I did purchase this year at the supermarket, but they were just 50 cents each, not a big expense.

So, what do you think? Was my first attempt at layering a success? Any suggestions? 

Don't forget to download your free printable! It's available in two sizes.

Download 5x7

Download 8x10

Note about downloading: This links to a Google Doc.
When it opens, click on 'File' in the top left, then 'Download' in the drop down menu.

I'm linking up with these great link parties this week as well as Centsational Girl's Autumn Mantel Link Party.

Harvest over hallowe'en decor

Since being married I've opted to decorate our home with a harvest theme instead of a hallowe'en one this time of year. This is partly due to the copious amount of decorations I have stored in my basement – saved from our harvest-themed wedding. But I also find autumn leaves, colours, textures, etc to be much more beautiful, warm and inviting than the typical gaudiness and creepiness of hallowe'en decor. Plus, not having to carve my pumpkin saves a lot of mess! Here are some pics of how I decorated our front porch this season.

Even though we're not decked out for hallowe'en, we're still stocked with candy and ready for all the little munchkins tonight! – that is, if my husband doesn't eat all the chocolate first ;)

Memories of Harvest Love

Happy anniversary to us!

My husband and I were married two thanksgivings ago on October 10, 2009.  Fall and Thanksgiving in particular is one of my favourite times of year. I love the cool, crisp air, fall colours and wonderful scents of the season (candles, pumpkin pie, warm apple cider...) We named our wedding event "Harvest Love" and had a lot of fun with the harvest theme.

Since I am back at the blogging thing, I thought I would dig into my photo archives and unearth some 'things that are pretty' from our wedding photos. Here are some shots from our harvest-themed day. Thanks to july12th.ca for the wonderful photography!

My husband and I are both designers, so we had fun creating the print elements for the day. Our initials are J and H so we made a custom monogram for the program and a few other items.

The florist did and AMAZING job on my bouquet, better than I could have imagined. You can't really see them, but there are some wheat stalks in there. Those were my favourite part of the bouquet.

The church always decorates really nicely for Thanksgiving weekend, so we lucked out and didn't have to do much decorating in the sanctuary!

As a wedding gift our friend made us cupcakes for the reception. She did such a beautiful job!

In lieu of parting gifts for our guests we made a donation to the Canadian Foodgrains bank. But we also had bushels of apples and paper bags for our guests to fill to take home with them. Our last name is McIntosh, so it was fitting to gave away apples (McIntosh of course!)

 

We set up this area at one end of the hall for guests to take photos.

After the large standing reception at the church which was directly following the ceremony, we had a more intimate dinner reception with immediate family and a few close friends at a beautiful B&B.