Busy Two Weeks!

We've been having all kinds of wonderful  Autumn weather, from rain to sunshine and very cool.  This is my front patio fall grouping in the rain.  The past two weeks have been crazy!  I've been pricing tons of stuff for a huge garage sale and then "enduring" the actual garage sale.  We, of course, had stuff left over and took that to the local Mission Mart store.  The next day, my entire family (including my brother who lives in Alabama) came over for a wiener roast.  The weather was absolutely perfect.  It was frantic getting ready for the gathering, though.  You know how dragging all kinds of stuff from every corner of your house and the basement makes dust and dirt and clutter.  I had to clean the ENTIRE house the day before after spending three solid days pricing, digging through the stuff and then carrying much of it upstairs and outside for the sale...yikes!  The sale went very well and I was very happy to find homes for all those things!

This is from my front porch table.  The little spider was found at a local pumpkin farm.  It's kinda creepy, but I thought our grand kids would think it is pretty cool.  It has a short sharp spike that you push down into the pumpkin so it stays in place. 

This week I've sewn three pairs of swim pants made from towels for our 7 year-old Granddaughter, Olivia.  She is on a swim team, and was supposed to be in her first meet this weekend.  The pants turned out really cute, but she came down with strep throat and has had a fever all week.   It looks as if she will miss her first competition.   So, I've been pretty busy and need to clean my house and catch up on laundry...AGAIN...a woman's work is never done, right?

The above little pumpkin man was made by my daughter a few years ago.  It is made from papier mache' and wire.

I was going to add another picture, but blogger has decided that I am no longer connected to my server and won't let me add the picture.  My server shows that I'm still connected, so I don't know what the issue is!  Anyway, I will just stop with the pictures posted for now.

Hope you are all having a great week.  I'm in limbo with my cat rug for now.  I need to make a skirt for my DIL for a school activity...I had never even heard of Miss Frizzle!  She is supposed to dress as Miss Frizzle and needs a skirt with planets all over it....ok....I can do that....

New Autumn Wreath

We are enjoying a beautiful Fall evening here in Illinois, after rain fell all day.  The sun is shining (and will be soon setting!) and it is 65 degrees...beautiful.

I'm still working on some Autumn decorations.  This week I decided that I was in need of a new wreath for the front porch, so I made a trip to Hobby Lobby and with coupons in hand purchased three pumpkins.  I love the way they are made, but the color was really bright orange, not my favorite.

They actually look even brighter in person than they appear in this picture.  I love the green/white pumpkins, so I painted one of them with several different colors and attached it to a grapevine wreath that I already had.  I added some flowers, berries, leaves and ribbon and came up with this for the wall next to my front door:

I liked the way the painted pumpkin turned out,  so now I need to decided if I want to paint the other two above just like this one in the wreath...I suppose I could try to make the orange look a little more primitive instead...I'm not sure what I will do, but here is a picture of the finished wreath:

I'm very happy with the wreath, and think it adds a great Fall touch to my front porch!  All I need now are a few real pumpkins sitting by the door to finish the look.

Graybee watched the process and I think he was impressed, too.  I think he is smiling!  He is such a handsome boy!

Autumn Decorating Fun

I finally started dragging all my Fall decor out and began to decorate for Autumn.  It is my favorite time of year, and I do love to put out all the fun things that I have collected.  One of the best things that I decorate with are fabric pumpkins, fruits and vegetables, and candy corn.  They are all sewn with very primitive fabrics and look great together.  The picture above is from last year's centerpiece with my favorite 17" diameter wood bowl.  It is a large look!

I decided to try this look this year with a rather large wire basket filled with the fabric items.  The basket is 20" wide by 14" by 10" high.  The wire photographed a little greyer than it looks in person.  I love the basket, but I'm still deciding whether I like the look better than the wood bowl.  I'll live with it for a few days to see if I want to leave it or change it.

The long wire basket with the handmade pears was an instantly loved item found at a local antique shop.  Wire baskets can look so rustic and primitive, and this one really spoke to me! It measures 23" long by 4 1/4" by 3 1/4" high.  I can think of so many ways to decorate it.  Small pumpkin shaped gourds would look great lined up in a row inside.  Bittersweet branches tucked inside the full length would be another great look!  I've collected fabric pears for awhile and have quite a few, so they were the first things that came to mind for filling the basket.

I'm still working on the pumpkin/cat rug and am getting close to finishing the background.  I've had a few delays this week, so it is not progressing as fast as I had hoped.

Have a great week!
Linda

GOD BLESS AMERICA
NEVER FORGET 9/11/2001

I've been making progress on my newest rug, but still have a bit to go before I can call it finished!  The border needs a little pizazz, so I'm planning to add some element to it as soon as I decide what that will be :0)


Hope you all had a great Labor Day.  My husband had to work (on LABOR DAY), so my daughter and I took Jess to an area park for a walk.  The park is very large with several lakes and wooded hiking trails, so we took our favorite trail which includes woods, a creek, meadows and lots of wildlife.  We've seen lots of deer in the past but none on Monday.  It is usually not very busy, and Monday we saw no one on the trail, and only a photographer taking pictures at the very beginning.  It was cool and crisp here, so we really enjoyed the walk.  Jess was so excited that she pretty much dragged us along at her pace, stopping frequently (thank goodness!) to sniff  some new scent she wanted to investigate.


I spent yesterday with my two and a half year old grandson, Kale.  He is talking a lot more lately and he is so cute!  My mother and sister came over to see him, too, and I had to leave for a couple of hours to get a desperately needed haircut, so I didn't do much hooking yesterday.  I hope to get the background finished in the next few days and then on  to the border!


Hope you have a great week!
Linda