Yummy Fall Food

I made my first ever fall-themed meal this past weekend (with the much needed help of my sister.) I had to do something to take my mind off of the Chocolate Covered Raisin Incident of 2009. (Our pup is fine now, just to let you know.) The next night my husband and I had the leftovers for dinner and it was still delicious!


The extent of my fall decor is that fall colored bow with the hurricane and candle. But say hello to Pork Chops with Sweet Potato Chutney and Gingered Pumpkin Soup!

I found the recipes on Better Homes and Gardens' website. Mmmm, it was good! I preferred my soup a bit sweeter than the recipe made it, but adding more brown sugar was an easy fix. You can't go wrong with brown sugar! And I got a little fancy with my pumpkin seed garnish. **insert giggle here**


Try the recipes out if you'd like. If someone as special needs as I am when it comes to cooking can do it fairly easily, I promise you can too. (Ask my sister or husband about watching me cook. It's painful. I have a stab wound scar on my index finger to prove it.)

Pork Chops with Sweet Potato Chutney
Gingered Pumpkin Soup

A Success at Last

As I told you earlier, the bat project I set out to do was kind of a catastrophe. (See my bright idea here, and my subsequent epic fail here.) But I worked out a Plan B and ta-dah! The bats aren't going anywhere!


All I did was make a big stitch with black thread in the middle of the bats, sewing the duck tape to the bat. And just so I didn't have to knot the thread on each bat, I just taped the ends of the thread together. Yay!



I also got a few yard of gauze to hang up in the entryway. It was really easy to rip holes in and tatter. I'd love to have more next year to drape over bushes and trees.


Oh, the gauze was also fun to play in. :o) Am I cute, or am I cute? You like it.

Today, I added my last Halloween touch for the year, the scaredy-cat:


Hmm... a mosaic would really add some "oomph" to the front porch. All in good time...


It's not a lot, but pretty good and budget-friendly for our first Halloween here. Only a few days till Halloween! What are YOU going to dress up as?

I linked this post of to A Soft Place to Land's DIY day and at Posh Pieces. Check it out!

My Sweet Millie

My heart is just breaking right now for my puppy, Millie. Like a fool, I left my purse on our lounge, unzipped with candy inside. Not just any candy-- chocolate covered raisins to be specific. It may sound like no biggie, but raisins can cause kidney failure in dogs. There's no way to tell how much will be deadly. I read that as few as seven raisins can cause serious damage if not caught.

Celebrating her one year birthday.

We rushed Millie to the emergency vet tonight. We got her there within 15 minutes of her eating them. They induced vomiting and are keeping her for two days to monitor her. I wonder if she is scared as they hook her up to IV fluids and draw blood from her...



They said the prognosis was good and that she would probably be fine. I don't know what I will do if she isn't though. Even a few hours in this house without her is unsettling to me. I find myself peeking my head up from what I'm doing, just to see where she is, what she's doing, and she's not there. I expect to hear her collar tags jingle behind me as I move room to room, but nothing. I love her so much and I failed her. It was my job to keep her safe.

My Millie is a spot-stealer...

A trouble-maker...

And a constant companion.

And I love you so.

Epic Fail

Let me just say: **sigh**

My bat project did not go as planned. And things rarely do around here. I got up today and carried all my supplies to the front yard. I taped all the bats and arranged them in an aesthetically pleasing fashion across the garage door. But today, as Winnie the Pooh would call it, is a very blustery day. The wind was whipping the bats' wings all around and I could faintly hear the felt and tape separating. This was not good. So on the bigger bats that I cut, I put some more tape on the wings to minimize the flapping. In a matter of minutes bats were flying off of my garage door and into the driveway or bushes. Ugh. So I threw a little fit and took the bats off the door and went inside to pout. It DID look like this:



But now it is blank again. I'm not sure what to do. The problem is that the garage door is so exposed to the elements. The project would do fabulously in an entry way that was somewhat enclosed, and ours is, but it's too small for something like this. Hmph. The gears are grinding and I'm trying to come up with a Plan B, but I don't know how much work the project is worth just one week before Halloween. :o(

I may be being a baby, but I was really discouraged with how this went. Do you ever feel like everything you attempt goes wrong? I have all these big plans for our home, but if everything I try ends up falling apart...

It's just felt bats, Olivia. Just felt bats.

Just Plain Batty!

Well, I have been working my tush off to get this Halloween project done so that I can at least enjoy it for a little over a week before Halloween bids us farewell. I am afraid though since it is raining today that I may not be able to put it up for display just yet. I'm so excited about it anyway that I just can't wait to show it to you!


I saw this picture on Country Living's website and loved it! Then I saw Karla do it for her home and was comforted that someone could actually pull this off-- it's not just magazine photo magic. So I decided to try my hand at it.


All you need is heavy, stiffened felt, and duct tape (if you are doing it outdoors like me). This project would have cost me about $8 if I had had duct tape beforehand. Most people have duct tape in their toolbox already; I however did not.


Country Living has a bat template available to print on their site so that you can use a photocopier to size it up or down. I'm lazy artistic so I just looked at it and drew three different sized bats freehand. They recommended using chalk to trace the template onto the felt. I don't have chalk so I planned on using my silver Sharpie. Well, it wouldn't be a day if I couldn't find something I needed, so naturally my Sharpie was MIA. I just used pencil and looked closely for the faint pencil lines.

After that, I just started cutting and didn't stop till I was out of felt! It was so easy, I'm pretty sure a child could do it.

So there is a swarm of bats folded in half with their wings popping up, just waiting to take flight! Hopefully the weather will calm down and my garage door will be dry long enough for me to introduce them to the neighborhood!

Tara's Vintage Kitchen Giveaway!

Karla at It's The Little Things That Make A House A Home is doing a sweet giveaway for a $25 gift certificate to Tara's Vintage Kitchen shop on Etsy. If you stop by her shop, you will find beauties like this:



How pretty! And her photography is amazing. Lord knows these things would not look near as gorgeous on a dusty thrift store shelf as they do in her photos. Here's how to enter:

1. Visit Tara's Vintage Kitchen.

2. Leave a comment letting Karla know
which item you would love to call your own
if you were the winner of the $25 Gift Certificate.

There is also a way to get your name entered into the drawing a second and third time! Go here to find out how! Have fun!

A Bathing Beauty Bathroom?

Okay, I've never been a huge fan of beach-themed bathrooms. When I think of beach-themed rooms, I think of pastel peach and blue, seashell wallpaper and cheapy seashell graphics in frames, embroidered on towels, etc.



Yikes. But I saw the below picture on Pottery Barn's website and now I'm thinking that maybe beach-themes don't have to be this way. I love that old glass buoy and the pieces of driftwood below the sink!

We got most of the basics of our guest bathroom when we registered for gifts, but there still isn't much as far as decorations and personality goes. So here is what I'm thinking...

Bouys

I love the colored glass and the old frayed rope. They could hang from towel hooks, sit in bowls like orbs, or hang from the ceiling. I saw a TON at an antique mall once and I am kicking myself for not grabbing a few!

Bathing Beauties

Between eBay and Etsy, there are a ton of precious 1920/30s bathing beauty postcards. I picture a few hung in some weathered frames. How beautiful are they?!




Ah, back when beauty was pure and natural. What happened?

Other Randomness

Sprinklings of seashells and sand, seaglass, corals, seasponge...




I have hope that beachy decor can be pulled off without the room just screaming "Put on your wetsuit and explore the faux coral reef!!!" upon someone entering it. But I do wonder, can you pull off beachy elements in one room while having a house that is not beachy anywhere else? Can you have seashells in one room, peacock curtains in another and these awesome froggy drawer pulls in another? (I don't actually own them yet but I think they would be sweet as my kitchen cabinet knobs! Totally off topic, but I wanted to share them.) Is that what the art of eclectic style is? What do you think?