Hanging Flower Basket Light

September 24, 2015September 23, 201520 Comments

Hello again! Happy Fall officially! I can hardly believe it is that time already. Of course, if you spend time on the blogosphere, it has seemed like fall for a month now! I will be joining the ranks with my own Fall Home Tour on Monday, so be sure to come back for a visit!

Today I have a little and fairly simple project that I put together. I bought these hanging flower baskets at a yard sale several years ago. I have used them for various things, buy they have been sitting for awhile now. I also have had the green lights, which are firefly lights for several years. They slowly fade in and out like flreflies. We don’t have real fireflies here, so I had to go with faux ones! Anyways, I never have found a good place to use them. So I decided to combine them with some Christmas lights I found at Goodwill.

The first thing I did was wire the two baskets together on one side to make sort of a hinge. This made it a little easier to put the whole thing together without it coming apart each time I moved it around.

Next I added in the firefly lights. I wired them in various spots so they would hang all around inside the baskets. This was followed by the Christmas lights. I added a piece of wire every couple of lights or so. I first went around the inside of one basket and then around the other.

When I finished wiring all the lights in, I wired the two baskets completely together. Now all there was to do, was find a place to hang it and plug it in! I decided to add it to my fall front porch, to make a nice welcoming light.

I love how this looks in the twilight!

Pretty simple and will look great on the back patio next summer too! Be sure to come back and visit on Monday for my Fall Home Tour!

Pumpkins, and Leaves and Acorns, Oh My!

September 21, 2015September 21, 20157 Comments

Happy Fall! Only two more days and we are officially in Autumn! Of course, it is still 90 degrees here! We really don’t get much of a fall and it usually doesn’t start getting cooler until Halloween. The leaves are changing color and falling at Christmas. Go figure! But my front porch is ready! No matter the weather!

I don’t think I have ever shown my front porch on the blog before, so let me introduce you! It’s very small and compact, but perfect for decorating.

I first added my wicker chair and covered the chair cushion with a piece of muslin. Then I found a brightly colored striped pillow in my ‘collection’ with the perfect fall colors.

I placed the matching wicker table next to it and then added lots of fall decorations! I filled the white wooden basket with burlap, pumpkins, and filler flowers. I also added a clipboard with a fall printable. I have a toilet paper pumpkin that one of the girls made many years ago, a white pumpkin Lauren carved with 4-H on it from her time in 4-H, a solar light, some driftwood, and a ruler pumpkin.

I brought out one of my crates and placed a wooden tool box, also made by Lauren in 4-H, and filled it with more burlap, candle holders, and sweater acorns.

Aren’t these acorns adorable? I found the instructions here.

Leaning against the crate is my oval chalkboard with the word ‘Thankful.’

I have another tall chalkboard, from this project, leaning in the corner with the word ‘Fall’ printed on it. This is my last piece of board from that puppet theater.

I have a faux chrysanthemum near the door. Faux because of our high temps and high drought. This is just going to have to do for now!

My last item is the wreath on the door. Lots of fall leaves and a big turquoise ‘S’ in the middle. Got to have my turquoise!

Did you spot the little guy nestled in the bottom? He’s a cutie!

I hope you enjoyed your little tour! Happy Autumn!

The Corner News-September 18, 2015

September 18, 2015September 18, 20158 Comments

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of The Corner News! Here is what went on these past two weeks.

Number 1: Sorry that this post is late…ooppss…

Number 2: I got a promotion at work! Hooray! I am now in a supervising position where I am a Team Leader. I have to work at the other location than where I was originally, but I started this past Wednesday and I am still very new to it. Thankfully, the other Team Leaders are very nice and have helped me with the differences.

Number 3: Mom and I went to build some rustic pumpkins stand thingies…We had quite a bit of fun doing it.

First, we took a selfie!

Then we hammered the nails in that we needed to build the box.

Next we drew our designs to cut them out. I didn’t want to be traditional and decided to draw out a cat instead of a pumpkin.

Here is my cat.

And here is mom’s pumpkin.

They aren’t done obviously, but this is how far we got. And this is the exciting things that have happened these past weeks. Hope you have a great weekend!

A Mini Vacation to Lodi

September 17, 2015September 16, 20154 Comments

So, I am a very busy person. I go to school 2 days a week and work the other 5. URGH! I have no time to myself!

But, before life took over, I was able to take a mini vacation to see a friend of mine.

This summer, my friend Sara had invited me to Lodi to take a mini vacation. So, we picked a weekend that I would drive to Lodi and visit her and her family. So on September 11th, after work and school, I drove 2 1/2 hours to Sara’s house. When I arrived, all we did was relaxed the night away. I was tired, so it was awesome for me.

But the next day was full of activity. We woke up early and drove from Lodi to Sacramento to go shopping! We visited Arden Fair mall and spent about 2 hours there. And yes, I did buy some things: Tsum Tsums for my nieces, Disney bows for myself, and two pairs of shorts from Torrid that were on sale. Hooray!

The next thing that we did was go to lunch at a place called The Squeeze. It was a lot of food, but it definitely was delicious.

Next, Sara and I went to the Stockton Fairgrounds where her mom and dad were serving beer at the horse races. Now, we were more interested in watching the races and wondering if the pretty one was going to win, but we still had a lot of fun out there. Also, beer is disgusting…

Finally, we went to a local winery and went wine tasting. The place was very nice and the people there were very sweet. And, the wine was good. Maybe a bit too bitter for me, but I will admit that I am a bit of a lightweight when it comes to alcohol.

The next day we went to the local zoo. To be honest, the zoo wasn’t that great. A lot of birds and lemurs and monkeys, and a snow leopard. A snow leopard without snow…

And the last thing that we did was do some more shopping in Stockton. We didn’t buy anything, but it was still fun.

And this was the end of the vacation. It was sad to leave, but at the same time I was ready to go home. I wanted to sleep in my own bed and relax, but I didn’t want to get back to the normality of life.

So thanks to Sara and her family for letting me stay with them. Thanks for giving me a great weekend off from life. But now, back to the hustle and bustle of school and work. Yeah….

Dollar Tree Fall Rake Makeover

September 14, 2015September 13, 201530 Comments

Good morning! It’s another hot week here in Central California. It’s hard to get into the fall spirit when it’s almost 100 degrees! It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, if we even remember what that is. I will probably take my kids out to play in it if it does!

Even though it is hard to get into fall, I have made another fall craft using Dollar Tree floral, bells and ribbon. I had my husband keep this rake after the wooden handle broke. I’m sure he thought I was crazy :). I sort of forgot about it, until I saw something similar on Pinterest. I dug it out of the shed and went to Dollar Tree to by some fun little goodies. Here is what I bought: 5 stems of feathers and flowers, a string of acorn bells and a roll of ribbon.

The first thing I did was to push the leaves up to the flower and then clip apart the flowers from the big plastic stem. I used wire cutters for this.

Here is everything all separated and ready to be glued on.

I started with the long grassy leaves. I laid them out on the black part of the rake and then hot glued them on. They don’t have to be too close together or perfect.

Next I filled in more of the empty places the pieces that had the feathers in them. Again, nothing has to be perfectly placed.

These feathers are so pretty!

Then I took the larger flowers and started filling in on the top to cover the black plastic part of the rake. I cut some of the flower stems closer to the leaves so they would lay more flat and the others I left the longer stem. Then I glued them on randomly. Some I placed higher up and some down lower. I also added some of the filler flower in between some of the empty spaces.

After all the flowers were attached I glued the bells onto the black part and then added a big bow to the top. I don’t have pictures of making the bow. I don’t seem to have enough hands! 🙂

I love how this looks on the wooden fence!