Felt Like Knitting

Fall decorating

Fall is my favorite season and I love decorating for it.  It's great - you can put up the decorations in September and they're good through the end of November!  Nester is having a Fall Mantel Party and I thought I'd share my mantel with you.  Check out her blog because there are so many creative ideas!

Now that I look at it, it seems a bit plain and I'm not sure about those three little pumpkins.  It seems to have more presence in real life.  Maybe I need some wheat behind the pumpkins?  The candles on the right are from Pier 1 and are called Spiced Cake - they smell so good!  (They're on sale right now if you have a need for orange candles.)  I have deeper orange candles that I wanted to use but I couldn't find the third one.

Do you like fall?  How do you decorate?

 
 

Today's Thrifty Treasures

I've found some other decorating blogs that I like and one of them is Southern Hospitality.  On Mondays, Rhoda hosts a blog party called Today's Thrifty Treasures.  

I've had lots of fun looking through everyone's finds from thrift stores, garage sales, etc. Check it out when you have a chance!  Last week I was able to do a little thrifting of my own and I got lots of great stuff!  I was proud of myself for only buying things I will use (mostly!).  Wanna see what I bought?

A shirt, a skirt and a pattern.  I haven't tried on the shirt yet but I wore the skirt already and I love it!  The pattern will go into my stash of patterns I intend to sew.

Glassware.  The bowl is washed and sitting on a shelf, awaiting something to make it a centerpiece for our kitchen table.  I may just buy some fruit for it for now.  The taller ceramic piece will be spray painted with this in Heirloom White (once I find it at the store).  I'll use it as a planter.  The white ceramic piece already has a fern planted in it and it sitting in the family room.

I've never had one of these candle holders and couldn't resist buying it for less than $2.  Last night I spray painted it black and today I will give it a coat of Oil Rubbed Bronze (ORB) spray paint.  I'm going to try the same treatment on the napkin rings.

I have a large silver plated tray that I use to hold beverage glasses for parties.  This tray is smaller and I thought it would be nice for smaller parties.  It shined up nicely!

Aside from the pattern, this is the only thing I purchased that I don't have an immediate use for.  The other day I saw these cool decorative balls at Pier 1 that were made from recycled paper.  When I looked for them on the website I saw this magazine basket.  It's made from a different technique than the decorative balls but the look is similar.  When I find some "spare time" I hope to modify this basket with paper from old magazines.  For $1.81 I have very little to lose.

Do you like to hit the thrift stores or stop by garage sales?  What's the best thing you've ever found?

Don't forget!

With our hectic schedule around here, things have gotten a little cluttered.  A little as in "I don't have room to put a note on the island."  So I started putting Post-it reminders on the door going to our garage.  Then I saw a cork board in the clearance section of T.J.Maxx.  I don't consider $15.00 to be a deep clearance but the price wasn't high enough to keep me from buying it.

I taped off the edges of the cork.

The paint is 50:50 Barn Red (Delta Ceramcoat) and Maple Syrup (FolkArt).  You can see here how it's important to keep the final brush strokes going in the same direction.  (Sorry about the poor focus.)

I thought I would like the rustic look of having one coat of paint, but I didn't.  Even after two coats, it's not a flawless finish.  But I think it's okay for now.

One thing I learned...When using a Chinese take out lid, check to be sure there is no hole in it or this happens:

 I hung the cork board, made a few covered push pins and called it done.

If I don't like it, I can repaint it.  I'm already considering that ORB spray paint I mentioned yesterday!

Note:  The board is hanging from a screw.  To keep it from swinging around, I used some museum putty to stick the bottom to the door.
 

Long ago

Long ago I was really into decorating.  At first my projects were very thrifty (not in a good way) and involved contact paper and stone spray paint.  Being newly married and living far from home, Steve and I didn't have lots of money to spend.  Our TV stand was a large moving box covered with contact paper.  See what I mean about being thrifty in a not-so-good way?  But it worked.  The biggest project we tackled in our apartment was to "upholster" a wall.  There was an ugly fireplace that I wanted to hide so we gathered large sheets (mauve was the "in" color back then) and hung them on the wall.  I dug up a picture of that for you.

We moved from apartment to rental house to purchased house and I was still into decorating.  We painted inside and out, put in new carpet, wallpapered, and really fixed up the house.  When the house went on the market, it sold in less than 24 hours.  All the expense and hard work paid off.

We moved and had Emma a couple of years later.  We had a deck at this house and it was lots of fun to decorate with container plants and old wooden chairs.  When we had Emma, we both enjoyed getting her room ready.

Then we moved to Georgia.  I guess this is when I lost the decorating bug.  We got our house for a good price because it needed work (roof, gutters, water heater, etc.).  At this time we were the most strapped for cash that we had ever been.  There was no money for anything like decorating magazines, no time for projects because Emma was a toddler, and Steve was working long, long hours.  It was not the best time in my life.

Over the past couple of years we've done some remodeling projects because the major "no-fun" work was done.  But I haven't decorated more than putting up curtains and buying some rugs and throw pillows.  I've been afraid to hang pictures because I don't want to make mistakes and put holes in our newly painted walls.  I've gotten out of the habit of decorating.

But this has started to change in the last week or so.  I've started reading The Nester whose motto is "It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful."  Thank you for that philosophy!  It's finally sinking in that I should jump in and do this.  If I make a mistake, I can fix it.  And I have lots of stuff sitting around that I can use to make our home look more inviting.

So I'll be pulling things out of hiding, making more regular trips to thrift stores, getting out the spray paint (Oil Rubbed Bronze this time around), and having fun along the way.  Tomorrow I'll show you my first project - a cork board we'll be using for last minute reminders like "Buy gas!"