Since I can’t decorate with a bunch of real pumpkins around the inside and outside of the house I have made some and you can check them out here.  This year I was going to buy some of the carve-able pumpkins that they sell at the craft store; that is until I saw the prices!  The ones I wanted were $24.99 each!  Even with a coupon I could not justify spending that much on 3 pumpkins.  Well the hunt was now on for ideas on how I could make pumpkins that looked semi “real”.  I found this wonderful post from Instructables here.  I figured it was worth a shot:)  I went to the dollar store and got the punchy balloons, and bought two newspapers, I already had flour and twine at home.  Here is how I made mine:

First I got all the supplies together and started cutting the newspaper into strips

I put the flour in the bowl and added water to make my “glue”.  Don’t add too much or it will be too thin and runny, I made mine to be the consistency of Mod Podge.

Then you want to blow up your balloons, but don’t tie yet.

I used a binder clip to hold the air in so I could wrap the twine around the balloon

Tie the twine to the end that has the rubber band that is used for punching the balloon.

I then cut off the rubber band because it got in the way when trying to wrap the twine around the balloon.

Then wrap around opposite end where the binder clip is and come back up the other side.

This is how it will look when you are done.

Now hold the balloon opening and remove the binder clip and blow up some more and this will give it the pumpkin indentations.

I put the balloon on top of a bowl so it wouldn’t roll around while I was working on it.  Now put strips in the “glue” and I started out by going over the twine first.

It is messy!

I wet my hands with the mixture and put a very light coat on the balloon, it seemed to help the strips from sliding.

The end that I tied the balloon off I started making the stem of the pumpkin by wrapping it with the strips.

I kept a little circular spot around the bottom undone so I would be able to pop the balloon and put in a battery operated tea light if I carve it.  Just keep going until the balloon is completely covered.

To make doing the bottom easier I just put the top part upside down in a bowl and it didn’t roll around.

I got a hanger and looped the end of the tied off twine over it.

Then it was drying time!  It took two days for mine to dry in my garage.  I am in Florida though so it is quite warm to help with the drying time.  It said in the original post that it takes 3 days.

Onto to the other two I have left:)

Oops!

When it was dry I got out my little sander and gave it a quick once over to smooth it out.

I then painted them pumpkin orange and added some black and painted another coat of orange.

After that I got out my Old English scratch remover for dark woods and rubbed it on and it got a nice dull orange look.  The one in the front has the Old English and the two in the back don’t, so you can see the difference.

I cut out leaves from burlap and soaked in liquid starch.

I wrung out the excess and put on small pieces or foil so I could get some bend in them like real leaves do.

Once they were dry I wrapped the stems in twine and attached 2 leaves to each pumpkin.

Here it is outside next to my “redone” plastic pumpkins that I redid using the same painting technigue as I used on these ones.  You can see the slight dimension that the twine left.

Here is a pic of the one I drilled holes in, I added a small strand of lights inside.

I put one on top of my fridge.

I am going to “carve” this one when my boys carve their real pumpkins.  I will post a pic when I do:)  Sorry this pic is so dark…I so need a new camera…or maybe some photo taking abilities;-)

Thank you so much for stopping by and checking out my blog!  ~Angi

This is right in front of the door.  It was still damp sorry about the picture.  I think the mixture would work well in a less high traffic area for me and I am going to give it a go in another room to try it.  I decided to go back to what I have used in the past.  I copped a squat on the floor, turned the radio up and me and my secret ingredient got to work;)  Here is my finished kitchen floor:

What did I use?  Soft Scrub with bleach, a bucket of vinegar and water.  I squirted a little bit of Soft Scrub on the grout, wet my grout brush and gave it a light scrub.  Let it sit for a few minutes and went over with my scrub brush with a long handle, I wanted to scrub all my tile also.  I then mopped up the residue and went over it with my Hoover Floor Mate filled with vinegar and water and this is what my grout looks like.  Here are some before and afters next to each other:

 My floor not only looks clean but over all the kitchen feels cleaner.  I do have to say looking at the before and afters makes me feel yucky!  I want to show some pictures of the last time I did this just to show some more shots of the results I have gained by this.  I have a 3500 square foot 2 story home and I did my complete homes tiles like this in 2 days.  This is the before, it was before I got into blogging and taking pictures of everything.  These were taken with my Blackberry and these were taken in my kitchen nook:

Do you have any recipes for success with grout?  Please share if you do!  I am so wishing I would have sealed my grout back when I did it the first time!  Also I was in Publix yesterday and Soft Scrub was on sale 2/$5.00 and I also saw they have it with baking soda!  I may need to give that a try.  Thank you so much for reading and visiting my blog.  ~Angi

I have linked up to these awesome blogs:

















Creative Jewish Moms – Craft Schooling Sunday!

This is the left side of my face.

 Okay here we go this is what I did and my results:


I have heard since I was little the wonders of baking soda for all sorts of things.  I came across this diy microdermabrasion recipe and wanted to try it.  I made the paste of baking soda and water and massaged it onto my face.   I found this blog Shwin & Shwin and they had an awesome Aromatherapy facial steam tutorial and I had pinned it a while back.  While I was massaging my face with the paste, I had 4 cups of distilled water coming to a boil with a 1/4 cup of dried lavender as they say to do in the steam recipe.  After it came to a boil I poured it into a heat proof bowl and added 3 drops of lavender essential oil. 

 I set my timer for 10 minutes, had a seat at my table, made a tent with a towel and allowed my face to steam with the paste still on my face.  It smelled so amazing!  I felt stress free that is for sure;)  When the timer went off I rinsed my face and it felt like my face was wonderfully exfoliated and my pores were open and ready for some intense treatment.


I read this blog post about a acne scars be gone face mask and after reading I was definitely going to give it a try!  It has cinnamon, nutmeg, honey and lemon juice and she includes what the different things each does for your skin.  I only had bottled lemon juice so I used that.

Abby from My Yellowsand Box looks great even with the mask on!!  Me not so much!  LOL!

It burns for the first few minutes but after that its feel great!  I left this on for 30 minutes.  

Linking here:

Finding New Friends Weekend Blog Hop

I have taken the scary plunge of opening an Etsy shop!  I am so excited and also so nervous.  I love crafting and sewing things and this just seemed like the next step.  Besides the fact I can only give my family and friends so many things:)  Here are some items I have listed so far:

<

Awesome blogs I am linking to:

This is a pic before I stripped it.  That is my little guy eyeing up some cake:)

This is after I stripped the table top down to bare wood.  My house now has darker woods and more of a country feel and I wanted to keep this table and decided to refinish it instead of buying another one.

The legs were already an off white.  I just went over them in the same color I was doing the chairs so they would match and then distressed them.

The seat covers were originally white….yeah not so good for  a family with children…LOL  I redid the covers with some cute fabric with stars on it back in 2007.  I ripped out the horrible very light cream colored carpet that was very worn and had stains that just kept coming back, even after being cleaned.  The tile has also been removed. This is after it was stained a couple of times so I could get the deepness of the color I wanted. This is the finished product!  I distressed the chairs and table legs.  I let my husband pic out the fabric for the chair seats.  He chose a leather like material so it would be easy to clean if something spills.  He has a poker table top and wants to have the guys over for card night so the material choice will be perfect;)  This room has been completely re-done and I have also refinished a hutch to match the table and chairs.  I will do a post on that soon.  I love how it has turned out.  What do you think?   Thanks for for reading!  ~Angi I was featured on: Amazing blogs I have linked to: