How to Get the Most Out of Your Fall Pumpkins

This week I've been helping my kiddos paint their pumpkins.  It's a yearly tradition that we do instead of carving them, partly because we don't really celebrate Halloween so carving them into scary faces is kind of pointless.  We like to do happier and more creative things with them.  But also because the pumpkins last a whole lot longer this way.  Once they're carved they start rotting and only last a few days and that seems like a waste of money to me.  Keeping them whole makes them last quite a long time.

So, I got to thinking about what we did with ours last year and how I got my money's worth out of them and I decided some of you might like these ideas, too.

So here's what we did last year.

Sometime in October we have a family night and we break out the paints and brushes and go to town creating faces (or in the case of the 3 year old's pumpkin, lots of random colors mixed everywhere).  : ) The kids loved my Mike Wyzowski pumpkin and that inspired them to want to do a whole set of Despicable Me characters this year.

Three out of the 4 pumpkins were still good by Thanksgiving time in November so I spray painted one of them white and we toted it along on our trip to visit family.

I took a permanent marker and set it up in my mom's living room and it became our "thankful pumpkin."  Throughout the day everyone wrote something they were thankful for and signed their name.  It was really fun to turn it around and around and read what everyone added.  I made sure to take a picture of each side to help us remember.

By December we were down to 2 pumpkins that were still good so I let the kids paint them again and this time they turned them into "snowmen."

The 3 year old's looked a little more like a melting snowman, lol!  : )

If we had enough pumpkins that were still good we may have tried this stacked snowman from Sweet Pepper Rose.  Isn't he adorable?

Here's another cute Christmas pumpkin idea from Club Chica Circle that I like. 

 (They also have a cute idea in that same post about using "snow" paint to do a snowman pumpkin.  We might try that one this year.)

You could even do the ornaments first for December and if your pumpkins are still going strong you could do the snowmen for January.  

So there ya have it.  Just a quick post to give you some ideas on how to get the most out of your fall pumpkins.  Not only are you getting your money's worth out of them, but it makes the fun last that much longer, too.  

Do you guys have any additional creative ideas on how to repurpose your fall pumpkins?  

I'd love to hear about it!

                                                               

Farmhouse Fall Decor

Well, I figured it was about time I got around to sharing my fall decor with y'all.  If I don't do it now it'll be time for Christmas decor before I ever get it around to it.  

I didn't spend nearly as much time on it this year as I normally do.  Usually my method is to open up my tubs of decor and spread it all around to see what I have and then I work on it bit by bit over the course of an entire week trying to get it just right.  But this year was different.  For starters I now only have one tub of stuff versus the three I used to have.  Before we moved from Ohio I did a major purge and consolidated it down to only one large Rubbermaid tub.  So I didn't have as much to work with, but also I just didn't feel like agonizing over it for a whole week.  I pretty well just reused some of the same ideas I've done in the past, just changing them slightly, and didn't bother with a whole lot of second guessing myself and I had it done in 2 days.  Like it or lump it, but it's finished.  : )

Another Sharpie Mug Project

I just wanted to pop in and share a quick post of something I've been up to this week.

If you've been around my blog for awhile then you might remember the BFF Sharpie mug project I did last year for my friend in Ohio. 

That tutorial post became quite popular and it's still my top viewed post every week with well over 100,000 views total.  

But that was the only one I had ever made....until this week. 

 One of the teen girls at church had a birthday this week and I wanted to do something special for her without having to spend money we didn't really have.  Then it dawned on me I had some plain white Corelle mugs I had bought at the thrift store for .25 each just waiting for such an occasion.  I used the same technique as I did with the last one, printing out the design, shading the back, and then tracing it onto the mug (more detailed directions here).  Then I painted over the design with an oil based Sharpie paint pen.  Once the black paint was dry I came back and used white paint to do the polka dots.  It looked kind of gray, so once they were dry I put a second coat of white on them.  Then I baked it at 425 just like I did the last time.