More Autumn Harvest Decos :)

So today I completed two more autumn harvest decorations for Peyton’s 1st birthday party. 

I started with the large pumpkin that was initially while….painted it Valspar Metallic and then went to my silhouette.  This pumpkin is big so I wanted to use it as a welcome sign when guests arrive.  I printed  “welcome” with my SIL on vinyl and put it on the front of the pumpkin (Verdana font) .  I put “Autumn” and “Harvest” on the three stacked pumpkins as demonstrated by my lovely assistant (my hubby).  I’ll get to those in a bit.  From here I went to Michaels and found 5 different ribbons that I liked…different thicknesses…and cut them between 6 and 8 inches long each.  I batched them up in 5’s  and tied them together at the top.  Next I hot glued them toe the stem of the pumpkin.  One of the ribbons had wire so  I twisted it and when I got the look I wanted I used some tacky glue (scrapbooking stash) to hold it down.  Lastly, I used cute orange buttons on the stem to hide the hot glued part of the ribbon. 

Kinda cute, right?!?!

These dollar store beauties, again were transformed from drab to fab using my friend Valspar Metallic and the SIL…added the words “autumn” and “harvest”…wrapped these cute beads-on-a-vine (as seen in my previous post) around them and Ta Da!

These guys are perfect for my daughter’s Autumn Harvest 1st birthday party theme!!

Thrifty Autumn Centerpieces

So my daughter’s 1st birthday is next week and we are having a Autumn Harvest party for her….I know, I know, you’re thinking I should be doing Sesame Street or Yo Gabba Gabba…but the way I see it is there will be MANY more years for her to choose her birthday party theme- this one is mine :)  We’ll be serving fall-ish food- Carrot Soup, Chili, Turkey/Stuffing/Cranberry-mayo sub…I’m salivating just thinking about it :)  I will post pictures of all the decor and ideas I’ve put together after the party, but for now, here are the centerpieces I put together for the tables.
So off to the dollar tree I went, unsure of what exactly I was looking for.  I picked up these hideous looking styrofoam pumpkins and these even nicer fake flowers in the fancy flower pots (sense the sarcasm?)

I know they don’t look like much now but with the help of my new favorite love- Valspar - They started to look MUCH better!  But first things first.  I cut the a whole out of the top of each pumpkin just big enough for the pot to fit inside.  Then came the spray paint.  I used Valspar Metallic on these pumpkins.  I also used a gloss spray paint for the flowers to give them a little pizzazz.  These dried really quick. I’m not sure if it was because the styrofoam soaks it in quickly or because of the warm day…or both, but these were sprayed several times and dried in about an hours time.  Next came the embellishments (my favorite part)!  I cut strips of ribbon just long enough to go from the top of the opening to the center of the bottom of the pumpkin.  There were 10 ridges in the pumpkin so I cut 10 pieces of ribbon.  I used double sided tape hot glue to get them to stick.  The next step was putting the flower pots- with the styrofoam still in it but without the flowers into the pumpkin.  I had found some Spanish moss at the dollar tree awhile back and had planned on using it for a wreath but got an idea to use it on these cuties…colored the top of the styrofoam black (“dirt”) and began my floral arrangement.  I didn’t use the bunch of flowers in their entirety.  I actually pulled off the bigger-nicer- flowers  off and used those in the center. I then embellished with these pretty leaves I got at Michaels on sale for $2.99.  The end product came out pretty sweet if I do say so myself :)  We’ll be having 5 tables of 8 so I made 5 of these bad boys. 

I had painted and glued ribbon to 3 more pumpkins than I actually needed so decided to make a cute topiary with some extra silk hydrangeas I had lying around and some beads on a vine that I had bought from Michaels (also intended for another project lol).  For this, I just glued the pumpkins one on top of the other and then stuck an extra flower pot with styrofoam minus the flowers in the top pumpkin…added the hydrangeas…hot glued the beaded vine around each center and voila! Magnifico! :)

           
I’ll be adding my other decorations and ideas as I finish them.  Can’t wait for her party :)

Getting Creative at the Dollar Store

I’m still here!!! I’ve been working on a lot of Christmas gifts so I haven’t been posting much…can’t let the cat out of the bag just yet! But I did finish up these so I’ll share. 
Awhile back I saw this post on According to Kelly and wanted to try it for myself.  This was one of my first experiences with spray paint.  Love the colors I picked but I’m not completely happy with how they turned out.
  
Just like According to Kelly, I used dollar store trays and candlesticks.  I wasn’t as successful with the dollar store glue and I think the hardest part of this project was getting the candlesticks exactly in the center of the trays and inline with the one below it.  I messed up on that a few times as you can kinda tell with the tray in the upper left.  Because of this, I came up with an idea to cover my goof and embellish the trays at the same time.  I went to Michaels and bought these beads…put them around the base of the candlesticks and voilà!

Remember, you need doilies with these, you really don’t want your food sitting on the spray paint!