It's Fall Ya'll!

It's been quite a while since my last post, grad school is keeping me busy! 

But Fall is finally here, and I could not be happier! Every time a new season rolls around I find myself saying, "I just love (insert season here), it's my favorite time of the year!" I guess that's because just as one season ends, I am totally and completely ready for the next one to begin. A wonderful Creator knew just what we needed down here on earth :) 

So with September winding down, my sisters and I decided to officially kick-off the season of bonfires, BYU football, pumpkins and colored leaves by sprucing up our fall decorations. 

At BYU, I absolutely LOVED decorating my little apartment for each of the holidays throughout the year. My freshman year, my family mailed me a package of Halloween dish towels, candy dishes, window clings, and a little battery operated Jack-O-Lantern--and I was hooked! I loved making paper crafts for Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter--I love them all! Most of the time I enlisted my lovely roommates, and we had a lot of fun making our apartment cozy and festive for whatever holiday we were celebrating. 

Looking back, my Mom has always had a way of making each holiday fun and special, and I can see now that I acquired my affinity for holiday decorating from her. With my discovery of Pinterest sophomore year of college, the possibilities became endless! So little by little, I DIY-ed, re-purposed, clearance-shopped, and collected my way to my own little set of decorations. Now that I am back home, I haven't been cured of the 'Pinterest bug', and with two sisters who love Pinterest (as much or more than I do), we were pumped for a crafting day. 

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Saturday morning, we headed straight for our local A.C Moore, and a rainy Saturday created quite the crowd. We settled on making fall topiaries for the mantle, cereal-box mummies, and a wreath for the front door. The grapevine wreaths were sold out, but we found everything else that we needed and headed home to let the crafting begin!

First we tackled the topiaries. I found the image below with accompanying directions on the blog Crafts 'n Coffee.The trees on this blog followed a 'candy corn' theme, and were stacked with buttons (super cute). 

 

Using the above blog for a foundation, we decided to put our own little spin on the project.

We left two topiaries flat on the mantle, and raised one on a candle stand that we already owned. We made the tops of the topiaries into points (instead of leaving them flat and stacking buttons on top), and coordinated the colors with our living room rather than sticking to the candy corn theme. The white fall-ish garland that you see in the photo was also found at A.C. Moore (Originally $20 a strand, but on sale for 50% off). We also purchased four little orange berry stems ($0.50 each) to add into the garland for a little extra color. Last of all, we dug up a few candles from the storage room. In the end we created a brand new, custom look for the living room mantle for just under $20. 

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  Next we moved on to the mummy cereal boxes, which turned out to be SUPER cute and easy to make. If you have little kids, this would be a great project for them to help out with. I saw pictures of this project all over Pinterest, so we created our own based on the pictures we saw. 

All you need is a cereal box, match box, or cracker box (or all three, which is what we used), white crepe paper, tape/glue, and googly eyes. We also covered the boxes in white computer paper to make sure that the colors of the boxes didn't shine through. Just wrap up the boxes with the crepe paper and  stick on a pair of cute little googly eyes. 

Wouldn't it be precious to make a mummy for each member of the family??? I also think that different sized googly eyes would be a lot of fun too. 

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The last project was my first completely original creation, so let me know what you think! I love to do homemake-y stuff, but usually modify ideas that I have already seen. This last craft however, was all mine. I wanted to use mason jars for something, but didn't want the mess/wait time of painting, and didn't like the cheap look of wrapping the jars in paper...and with that, my idea was born...

Introducing "Halloween Jar Heads"

 Although you can modify your materials based on what you would like to make, here's what we used:

 

• Clean, empty mason jars with lids. As you can see, we used a variety of sizes.
• Food coloring
• Water
• Card Stock (or construction paper)
• Scissors (we used our Cricut to cut out most of the small shapes, but scissors work too)
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Green pipe cleaners, ribbon, a pencil, or any other materials to make "accessories" for your 'Halloween Jar Heads'

Alrighty, here we go!

After finding clean jars (with lids), drop 1 drop of food coloring into the jar and fill to the rim with water. If you are mixing 2 or more food colors (such as red and blue to make purple), you may want to add 1 drop of each, fill with water, and then pour out water and re-add new water until you get a color that is nice and bright. Basically, a little food coloring goes a LONG way. 

As a lovely side note, another 'first' occurred for me during this project when I finished working with the food coloring and managed NOT to get any on my fingers :) Success? Um, yes.

Okay, next step...

 

After filling the jars, tightly screw on the lids. For the pumpkin Jar Head, I added a curled pipe cleaner (to create the curl, I wrapped it around a pencil) and green ribbon around the rim to create the "vine". For Frankenstein, I measured around the rim with a piece of black card stock a cut a jagged pattern with scissors around the top of the strip of paper for hair, and then glued it around the rim.  

And onto more accessories...

 

My sister Kate created the "Mad Scientist" Jar Head, and my littlest sister Jen designed the Witch. I didn't take pictures of all of the accessory steps, but for the Mad Scientist's hair, Kate cut slits in a strip of paper, ruffled them up, and glued it around the rim. 

For the witch, Jen cut out a circle with the Cricut, and rolled a small piece of paper into a cone shape. She then glued the cone to the paper circle,  and attached it onto the top of the jar. To spruce it up a little, she glued on little paper shapes. I think glitter would also be a great addition to the witch's hat. 

Frank was my favorite :)

To create the 'bolts' in Frank's neck, I rolled two, 2'' pieces of black construction paper tightly around a pencil and then glued one to either side of his neck. 

For the eyes, nose, and mouth, we just used basic shapes from the Cricut and assembled them with hot glue. If I were at college (and without a Cricut), I would have traced shapes on paper because I am definitely type-A...and I love for things to be perfectly symmetric. But do what works for you, even stickers could be a great and simple way to create faces on the Jar Heads.

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Aren't they all cute? I hope that you have as much fun making them as we did. Good luck creating your own Halloween Jar Heads! Let me know if you have any questions, I'd love to see what ya'll come up with!

PS--Add a strand of white Christmas lights and dim the lights for the full effect. In our house we love fall, and basically any excuse to put up a few decorations :)

Happy Fall Ya'll!