My Berries and Burlap Wreath

Want to decorate your door for Fall?

If you are going for an elegant, sophisticated, complex wreath might I suggest you try here, here, and here.

You are not going to get it here.

Ready to keep it simple today? Good. Welcome!

My Berries and Burlap Wreath

Let's do this!

1. Get a grapevine wreath in the size of your choice. I used my 24" wreath that I "demoted" from my mantel. Perfect size for my door. Kudos if you get it at Hobby Lobby during the week they are all on sale.

2. Go get a few berry picks. I bought three at Walmart for 94 cents a piece. I cut them up into smaller pieces and stuck 'em in wherever they looked good. It's not a scientific process. We're not stressing out about this, remember? Let's not make this more complicated than it is.

3. Add ribbon. Burlap = Fall to me, so there's my suggestion. Go with what you have.

4. Hang.

It's not the most sophisticated, elegant wreath ever.

But it's one of those simple wreaths that greet you when you arrive home, saying, "Welcome home! Happy Fall!"

Don't forget Saturday starts the 31 Days of Fall Fun series here at The Happy Tulip. I hope you will join me!

Linking up to Southern Hospitality's Door Decor Link Party!

My Fall "Mantel"

It's not a real mantel. It's actually the top of the built-in bookshelf in our office, but it has the same dimensions of a very wide mantel. I like to pretend it's the real thing.

There's my wheat bouquet I made a little while ago.

The wreath is quite large because I wanted a statement piece in the middle. I brought home a 24" grapevine wreath at first. It looked huge in the store, but as soon as it made it home, it must have shrunk. It did not make the statement I wanted. So it was "demoted" to the front door and back to the store I went for the 32" big mama at Hobby Lobby. (So glad they were 50% off!)

I didn't want to do the typical red, orange, yellow color scheme this year. So I went out on a limb and picked up some deep purple, yellow, and coral floral picks. I love how it turned out. Those colors along with the wheat and the white pumpkins, say "Fall" but still seem fresh and bright.

Then I added a trio of autumn spice candles and a little frame on the other side for balance.

Honey & Fitz shared a great resource a while back: How to Decorate a Mantel. You should check it out for more inspiration and a few guidelines to help bring your mantel all together.

Linking up to Home Stories A to Z's Tutorials and Tips Link Party and Hooked on House's Fall Decorating Link Party!

Autumn Is Here

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I just wanted to say

I love the Fall season.

The beautiful colors

Pumpkin spice candles

The breeze coming through an open window

Cinnamon pine cones

What do you love most about Fall?

Coming Soon in October: 31 Days of Fall Fun

Last year a group of amazing bloggers hosted an incredible series of posts in October, called the "31 Days of Change". This year they are continuing their tradition and challenging others to join them.

Here's the line up of this year's themes:

• 31 Days to Balancing Both Beauty and a Budget at Beauty and Bedlam
• 31 Days of Memory Keeping at The Mom Creative
• 31 Days: Inspired Holidays at The Inspired Room
• 31 Days of Warm Connections at The Reluctant Entertainer
• 31 Days of Photo Tips at My 3 Boybarians
• 31 Days to Change the World at Chatting at the Sky
• 31 Days of the Little Things at Remodeling This Life
• 31 Days of Charming Imperfection at Nesting Place

I'm so excited! What an awesome group of talented women. As for their challenge? A post every day for 31 days in October? Craziness.

However, in my best Barney Stinson voice: Challenge accepted!

My theme for the series will be:

I'm a little nervous, but it'll be really good. I'll definitely have to be thinking a little bit ahead and not procrastinate in coming up with post ideas. Not going to lie, sometimes procrastinating is a problem of mine. (Yes, Mom, I know you're nodding your head at that)


So be sure to tune in every day starting on October 1st for 31 Days of Fall Fun!

Pinterest Has My Interest (Again)

A few random, pretty, and/or useful things I have recently pinned on my Pinterest boards:

1. Fall bucket list from Pinterest 2. Map lampshade from Release Me Create 

3. DIY light box from Madigan Made 4. Pumpkin pie spice from Smells Like Home

5. Pinwheel tutorial from Beautiful Inspirations 6. Chalkboard tags from Marta Writes

7. Wheat from Real LC 8. How to wrap with ribbon from One Charming Party

Happy Tuesday!

If you're on Pinterest, I'd like to see a few of your favorite pins. Tell me all about it in the comments section!

Weekend Links * 9.18.2011

• Woah, Centsational Girl made her own wooden cutting boards. They are beautiful!

• Fall Paint Chip Garland from Ten June. So cute!

• The Inspired Room held her Fall Nesting Party on Friday. Lots of great Fall decorating ideas. You should check it out!

• I love these chalkboard tags. Available on Etsy, but I think they could easily be crafted.

Decorating with Wheat

I was browsing on Pinterest the other day for some Fall decor inspiration. And I found this beautiful wheat bouquet.

And I needed to make my own.

Dried wheat just happens to be on sale at Hobby Lobby, by the way. I also picked up some dried grass to add a little variety.

What you need: two bundles of wheat and one bundle of grass

I started by cutting the longest pieces that would be in the center so I could build around that.

Wheat is a little harder to arrange than flowers, mostly because it shreds into pieces if you don't use sharp scissors. 

Note to self: sharpen scissors. 

Once you have it in the shape you more or less want, put a twist tie around the whole thing to keep it together.

Add a pretty ribbon and you're done.

And that's the start of my Fall decor!

Update: Check out the wheat bouquet's reappearance as a part of my newly decorated Fall mantel.

Linking to Inspired Room's Fall Nesting Party, Serenity Now's Weekend Bloggy Reading Link Party, and It's A Blog Party's Fall Fest.

9.11

Weekend Links * 9.10.2011

• What type are you? This is a just-for-fun quiz that pairs your personality with a font. Apparently I'm Baskerville Italic.

• Lawn Jenga via HGTV blog. This would be amazing to play on a nice fall evening. I would imagine it would be pretty easy to make too.

• Do's and Don'ts of Decorating from Fresh Home blog.

• Gold thumbtack wreath by Madigan Made. Who knew thumbtacks could be so pretty?

Enjoy your weekend!

Something Old, New, and Blue

The painting is done and I'm thrilled.

Here's the "before"

The walls were a yellowish cream color and half the trim was white and half the trim was the natural wood. It was not the ugliest thing, but it was so bland. I love yellow, but this buttery hue was not good.

You might notice that we're missing a lamp. . .

It was 6 am one morning. It was dark. I was still half asleep. I stumbled and totally took out the lamp. Oops.

. . . and the "after"

So much better! 

The walls show a little more black in the pictures than they are in person. The blue is really dark and I love the contrast with the white trim.

Josh said that the color makes the room look like a "grown up, rich person's room". Ha ha. Maybe if the rich person had a 10'x11' bedroom. Not likely. But I get what he's saying.

Now we just need to add art, make another lamp, make an upholstered headboard, and get some window treatments. 

But we made progress! Woo hoo!

Painting Progress

Someday I will show you what the new color in our bedroom looks like. It feels like the never-ending project. We didn't get all the trim painted before the weekend was up, so I finished it tonight when I got home from work. So now I'm literally waiting for paint to dry. Then we can move back into our bedroom!

We've been camping out in the living room for the past couple of nights. We plopped our mattress in the middle of the floor. Kitty loves it. He's such a cuddler.

But I'll also have to wait for decent light to take pictures to show you. It doesn't photograph well at night. The dark blue looks completely black and it's just miserable looking. In person though, it's gorgeous. Such a rich color.

If you all hadn't heard, we picked Behr Poppy Seed. In my browser, that link shows the color to be a little more gray than it does in person.

Anyway, since it's been getting darker sooner these days, it'll be a little challenging to get home from work and take a picture with good light anytime soon. But I'll try my best.

'Cause you really need to see it.

In other news, the Happy Tulip has now made its debut on Facebook.

So here's some friendly encouragement to please "like" me. (That sounds so pathetically lonely, doesn't it?)

Let me rephrase . . . Will you be my friend?

Sounds the same, huh.

:)

the Nester

While you're waiting to see my painting project, you should stop on over at the Nesting Place for her recent wreath linky party, if you haven't already. You will learn how to make her beautiful book page wreath pictured above along with 275+ other wreaths. Woah!

Happy Tuesday!

Weekend Links * 9.3.2011

• If you're a Pioneer Woman fan, be sure to read her post on the filming of her new show on the Food Network. I'm so disappointed that I missed the first episode last week, but it's now set to record tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. Central time.

• I never realized just how simple it is to make pinwheels. Check out this tutorial from Beautiful Inspirations to see how.

• The Inspired Room's post in which she compares seasonal decor to mullets. Ha ha.

Off to do some more painting . . . :)

Anxiously Awaiting the Weekend

Josh took me to Home Depot last night. He knew that I've been wanting to paint our bedroom for a while, so he thought the long weekend we will be having would be a good opportunity to get it done. Plus it's supposed to be in the seventies this weekend at some point, so we will be able to open a few windows! So excited about that after too many days this week being in the triple digits.

We've been thinking about going dark on our bedroom walls. Really dark. Probably an inky dark blue.

Like this:

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or this:

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or this:

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or this:

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or this:

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We brought home two paint samples to try out on the walls. They'll probably go on in a few minutes, so that we can live with it for a little bit and see the colors at different times of day before we make our final decision.

It's almost the weekend! Happy Thursday.