Pumpkin Painting Party - Halloween 2011

For the past 3 years I've held a Pumpkin Painting Party at my house and it's been a blast! This year was our biggest ever - with 11 girls attending and many pumpkins to be sprayed, bedazzled and dried while we chow down on Halloween snacks!  It's always so fun to look at all of the creative ideas each person comes up with! This year one girl got smart and did a fake pumpkin so hers will live forever while the rest rot! But I think it's fun to make a work of art that is only temporary...let's just hope the neighbor boys dont smash mine! Look next week for my tutorial on my Peacock Halloween Costume - so many feathers all over my house right now! :)

The Goods!

Green Drink with floating eyeballs and brownies!

Cupcakes

Dining Room all spooked out!

Some of the Pumpkins before we started.

Spraying the pumpkins.

Pumpkin dry time.

Family room Group

Dining Room Group

Green Pumpkin before...buttons seemed like such a fun idea.

300 buttons later, not so fun!

Black and silver with some sparkle ribbon polkadots!

Browns with a bow and rhinestones!

Cut little pumpkins!

Spiderweb pumpkin with prop :)

Buttons, dripping orange with dots, and crazy fun splatter paint!

Classy pumpkins with sparkles, feathers, and real leaves!

Turquoise dots, and fuzzy ribbon!

The whole group showing off the goods!

Closet Clutter! Welcome to Clothes Mountain!

Yikes!

Ever since I can remember "cleaning" to me meant shoving things away so you couldn't see them. This is NOT something my Mother taught me to do nor is it something she is very proud of in me, however I've developed quite the talent for it. From a young age there were grapes in the closet, chicken bones under the bed...just enough space under the dresser to hide all of my socks. Drawers became like treasure chests for items never to be found again.  As I've aged I've learned this is not appropriate for common areas, places were people might open a "junk drawer" and find mysterious objects from who knows where? So i've adapted, like most messy animals do, and confined my messy ways to only my bedroom...specifically my closet.  The part I haven't mentioned yet, is that I, like most females, truly enjoy shopping, and by shopping I might mean a small case of hoarding.  So long story short, this blog is to document that in 2011 I DID CLEAN MY CLOSET, and at this point it is still organized...might be a good goal heading into 2012 to keep it that way!

And so it begins...

The process began with slowly yet surely moving all items from the closet onto hangers and hanging those on the door.  Once I ran out of hangers the "pile" moved to the bed...

Welcome to "Clothes Mountain"

Forming floor piles...

After the pile on the bed was sturdy enough to hold itself up, I moved on to making piles on the dresser and the floor.  Keep, dont keep...keep, dont keep. Progress was slow, and after 6 hours I quit to take a break.

Who knew...Hardwood floors in there?!

There were still tons of  clothes to be put away, so I bought some more hangers, and recruited a friend to help with operation closet clean out 2011. After all was said and done, 3am was far too late to be cleaning.  We loaded up the laundry and shut out the lights for the night! Till next year I guess :).

Now, who's going to do this laundry?

TV cabinet repurposed into sweatshirt storage!

So fresh and so clean!

Don't laugh at my 80's furniture - my mom and I risked our lives to get this stuff!

Kelli is pooped! 3am never felt so good!

Fun new shade to dress it up, and everything is nice and clean!

Dumpster Dive - Door Decor

Door to start. Old dirty and damaged!

It's been quite a few years since I've physically thrown myself into a dumpster in order to rescue a "great find".  In my youth I had been known to pack my car full of miscellaneous items and have friends sit, arms outstretched, holding the car doors together as we got the goods home to refinish.  There also may or may not have been a 6 ft long dinosaur dumpster recue in the late 90's that resulted in the carnival sized prize animal, being strapped to my car top, head outstretched for the car ride home.... followed only later by it being decapitated from a low hanging tree and flung to the side of the road in my daring attempt to recreate the extinction of T-Rex... Through it all I've always maintained my love for old things, and making them new again.  Cheap is great - but free is fabulous! Follow below while I make my neighbors old wood door (used for target practice) into a flower box for my newly landscaped back yard!

Target Practice

First things first - get your neighbors to rent a dumpster and clean out all their old crap so you can steal it! Next I scoured for some cool wall mountable baskets for flowers and found this old iron sun in the garage from the home's previous owners!

The door needed to be prepped so I got out my favorite manly secret weapon "BONDO" and started patching and sanding to get a smoother surface while still maintaing the aged look of the door.

BONDO

Mix the hardener.

Mixing...

Spread on with spatula. Hurry it dries fast!

Make-shift table!

After the door was BONDO'D and my house smelled like crazy fumes...I got out the palm sander and got to work sanding down the door. Once sanded it took about 3 layers of paint to even out where I had bondo'd and where the original door wood was.  You can prevent this many layers by doing a primer..but I'm cheap and just used what I had!

Here we go!

All finished...with painting that is!

So after the paint had dried the door sat for about 3 weeks just begging for me to pick back up the project I'd started and get it finished! I ended up flipping the door upside down, so there was more space to center the basket, and the flowers would hang higher in the backyard against the house. Note to self : have your drill charged because once you get the motivation to work, and the drill won't go..it makes it really hard to sit and wait!

Screws in place.

Basket hung.

Now that the basket was hung all I had to do was plant the flowers and set the door in place.  See below for the pictures of what the area behind my house looked like before some extensive landscaping.  That project will be in a later post - Enjoy!

Dead grass, old bench, worn out plants...

Laying out the curve for the pavers to be placed.

All done except the door!

Door in place! So pretty!

Love my little green bird!

So much sun in this spot it's hard to catch the right light!

Now what to do with the other basket...

Before

After!