Autumn Wreath Revamp

One way to love my home is by creating a happy front door. I made this wreath a few years ago, but I was never completely thrilled with it. I liked it, but didn't love it. It needed something a bit more.

Have you seen these half pumpkins at Michaels? This was the perfect thing to use for my wreath because it wasn't going to stick out from the door,. It was also going to create a focal point, but now I had figure out how to attach it to the wreath.

Thankfully it wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be. I was able to use a knife to make a small hole to push through a wire.

The wire easily wrapped around the wreath to attach it! YEAH!

My wreath has a fresh new look and now I love it! This was an easy and cheap way to use what I already had. This revamp project was less than $5. That is my kind of deal for a girl on a budget. Even though it was a small project, I took something I didn't like and made it into something that I love!

Homemade Pumpkin Puree

So I haven't been doing a great job at keeping up with the 31-day challenge. I hadn't prepared as well as I thought and I was in a little bit of a funk last week. Everything suffered from that, including my blog. But I am back at it today with an easy way to stock your pantry with a seasonal favorite - pureed pumpkin!

This recipe came from Portuguese Girl Cooks. It is super easy and is definitely quite a bit cheaper than buying the canned stuff. Even if the can says that it only contains pumpkin, I know for sure that this is 100% pumpkin and nothing else.

I bought my pie pumpkins from a local pumpkin farm. They were 50 cents a piece, so much cheaper than the canned version. The first step is getting all the guts out of the pumpkins.

Then off into the oven, they go! The recommended baking time is 60-90 minutes. I went right in between. Since I had 2 cookies sheets in the oven at once, I rotated them around the halfway mark.

After the pumpkins are finished baking, the flesh is scooped out and then pureed in the food processor. Super quite and easy! And you are left with beautiful pumpkin puree.

Draining the pumpkin is really important. As you can see there is quite a bit of liquid that drained from the pumpkin. I let it sit for about an hour.

I can't wait to use this puree.

From my 4 pie pumpkins, I was able to get about 4 and a half cups of pumpkin puree.  I kept the half cup in the fridge and put the rest in the freezer to use in the future. To swap out a 15 ounce can of pumpkin puree with the homemade version, use about 1 3/4 cups.

The next step is to use this puree. I am thinking cookies!

Welcoming Autumn

I finally have a front porch that I can decorate! In my last apartment, I had a little landing that I would decorate. It is nice to walk up to the front door and see pieces of autumn welcoming me home.

I made my wreath last year. The ribbon is from Hobby Lobby. I saw it around Memorial Day of last year and knew that I had to do something with it. It became the foundation point for my wreath. The leaves and sunflowers are randomly placed around the bow. One problem I am having this year is that my storm door smushes my bow. I tried to fluff it up a bit for the picture.

I bought mums at the farmer's market last weekend. They are huge and were only $5! A great buy. The container they are in left a little to be desired. I really wanted an apple basket or something simple to put the flowers in. Thankfully, Michaels had the perfect options. These cute baskets are the perfect size. One says Autumn and the other says Welcome, so I can use it all year long.

My pumpkins are making a statement on the porch as well. The bigger one sits by the pillar by the step so it can be seen from the driveway.

The other is sitting next to my Welcome ladder in the corner. I didn't get a good picture of it, but it is because I really need to sweep my porch and that spot is particularly messy. :)

I am really looking forward to decorating my porch for all the holidays and seasons. How are you decorating your porch?

Painting Pumpkins

One way to help keep my decorating budget low is to do some DIY. Today I am sharing my painted pumpkins. This isn't an original idea, but it is cheap and easy. It also adds a little sparkle to plain orange pumpkins.

First, the pumpkins. My mom and I visited Gust Brothers Pumpkin Farm on Saturday and they had so many pumpkins. It was a lot of fun to walk about and pick out what we wanted. It would be so easy to go pumpkin crazy.

While my purchased pumpkins were sitting on the porch, a critter munched on them. I have a few neighborhood cats that wander about and I suspect one of them had a little snack sometime during the night.

Picking colors to paint my pumpkins was actually a little more difficult than I thought. I wanted colors that would stand out against the orange, but still needed to have an autumnal quality to them.

The colors I chose were rust, pearl and gold glitter. I love all things glitter! I really liked the color combination and how they looked against the orange.

I used my handy dandy round sponge brushes to make my little circles. I just punched them on the pumpkins.

The round brushes made it so easy to make quick dots, which is the look I wanted. There was no rhyme or reason to the design.

I was happy with the rust and white colors, but the gold did a weird bubbly thing. I am not sure why, but it still looks okay. These pumpkins were not going to be in any museum as works of art.

The finished product! I am happy with how they turned out. This project took all of about 15 minutes from start to finish. Also, the mess was kept to a complete minimum. Tomorrow I will share where I am using my jazzed-up pumpkins.

Snapshots Into My Life

What I am seeing through my lens this week.

I actually found white pumpkins last week. I think they are so pretty! It was a little too early in the season for me to buy them, but fingers crossed that they will be there in a few weeks.

I received this tea pot for Christmas, but I was only just able to use it. I was so happy to hear the whistle letting me know my water was boiling away.

My cousin sent me a surprise this week in the mail. It was such a nice thing! This candle smells absolutely divine!

I broke out the Crock Pot to make dinner this week. I made this pot roast. It was so yummy! I highly recommend trying it out.

Pumpkin Palooza

I love pumpkins! Even the orange pumpkin color represents fall. Although now I am obsessed with white pumpkins. They are so pretty! The traditional with a touch of modern.

I found these ceramic white pumpkins at Hobby Lobby over the summer. I HAD to have them. I didn't know where I would put them, but I loved them. When I went to finally buy them, they were no where to be found and my heart sank just a tiny bit. But they were hidden in a display that I very carefully dismantled to get my pumpkins. Right now they are on my dining room table in a little display. They are going to be my favorite fall decoration to uncover each year.

I have a few other pumpkins around my apartment. I have metal pumpkins that I got about 10 years ago. Even after all these years, I love seeing them. It reminds me that it is fall even if the temperature outside is 80 degrees.

I had great plans of this post being about a cute little pumpkin decorating idea that I originally saw in HGTV magazine from one of my absolute favorite designers, Sarah Richardson. I am not really into pumpkin carving, but this idea is great to use if you are tight on space in a glass vase. You wrap ribbon around the pumpkin. That is it!

Another similar idea found on Pinterest is to tie ribbon around the stem of the pumpkin. You could do this with big or small pumpkins. I stopped in the grocery store last night to look at their pumpkins, but I wasn't ready to commit to doing this yet. Maybe I will do this a little closer to Thanksgiving.

Do you like decorating with pumpkins?