Fall Decor from recycled materials

As I was putting away my fall decorations, I looked at one of my favorite decorations and realized that it was entirely made from remnants of other projects. The fabric was leftover material from a muu muu I made. The stem was a small branch. The leaves from silk pansies I used for a party. The stuffing is dry beans. The curling tendril is a leftover plastic stem from flower that I had needed to be stemless. It was easy and cheap (it cost nothing). I think it is awfully cute, especially in combination with fall leaves or a scarecrow statue.

Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Turkey

I came across this on the web and loved it. So I went shopping and found not one candy corn in the multitude of stores... convenience stores, grocery stores, drugstores and Walmart in the one square mile of my domicile. So I ended up making this...




He consists of a vanilla wafer, a chocolate backed shortbread cookie, Reeses peanut butter cups and...
Brachs maple chews softened in the microwave and cut and shaped by hand. I glued it together with canned chocolate frosting.

I was preparing him and his friends to give away, so this is the finished project.



Tom and his friends are much cuter in real life than in my photos. I am not a good photographer. (My definition of a good photographer is one who can make someone look better in photos than they do in person.) But you do get an idea of what he looks like from these. Here he is with some of his friends.

Another Fall Pillow

While I had all the stuff out and since I had another pillow from Walmart, I made another pillow and dare I say I like it better?



Did you see this little fellow? He contains the last of the fabric from my Deseret Industries Exchange find. I made a stuffed bird, a stuffed owl, and 4 of these little owls and remade the shirt for my granddaughter.



Here are the two pillows I made together.

Fall Pillow

What happens when you take this conglomeration of scraps,



and this pillow that was being clearanced at Walmart for $5,



and this tutorial?

You get this.



Do you see the owl that I highlighted in an earlier post and promised another craft using it? It is sitting on the branch.

I liked this sewing project and was able to do it from start to finish in about 3 hours.

Fall Wreath

Each year our Queen's Wreath vine takes over my chain link fence in the summer and fall season. As I prepare to plant my vegetable garden, I must cut this vine back to the ground so it doesn't interfere with the light needed for the garden. Most times I pull it back after it is dead, but last year I didn't and I realized that it might make a good base for a wreath. It was too late though, I already had tossed most of it by then. This year on Conference weekend, I pulled the still green vines away from the fence and formed them into 3 wreaths, not knowing if it would work or not. I let them dry. Here is one of the resulting wreaths.



I went to Michael's last night and found that their fall products were 80% off and I bought 2 vines for around $5 total. I wired one to the wreath and cut up the other and hot glued the leaves to the wreath. Voila! Instant cheap wreath! I am not a great arranger, but I think this turned out decently.

A Christmas Wreath

I found this cute wreath on line here made from dollar store Christmas bulbs. I liked it and so I made one. Here is the link she took it from.



There were some issues making this wreath. You may notice that the wire hanger shows through. I found that with the tops to the bulbs made of plastic (instead of metal and wire,) the pressure of moving the bulbs around would fairly quickly cut through the tops and I would lose the bulb. I ended up spending about $9 on bulbs and could have used a few more.





It was a fun project and didn't take too long. Enjoy!

Primary Program

Today was our ward's Primary Program. I was so proud of the children! We have approximately 25 active children total and yet they knew and sang those songs so well.

In our very small ward, we use a lot of music to fill in the program. We taught the children all the verses on virtually every song and had 13 songs in the program.

I made it very difficult for them. They had to sing "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam" without all the jumping that they usually do. They did pretty well. I helped them along by making them hold out all the usual words that they jump at... "Jesus wants me for a sunbeeeeeeammmmmm. To shine for him each daaaaaaaaaaaaay." etc.

One of the songs was sung by my granddaughter. She is very young and when she saw everyone watching her, her courage almost escaped her. She turned red, stared down, and she said that her eyes were tearing, but she did it and I was very proud.

It suddenly dawned on me during the week that I needed to do something about singing time and so I called the counselor in charge of me. She told me that they had plans for the whole meeting, so I wouldn't need to prepare anything. I asked if I could go to Relief Society and was assured that I could. I even went so far as to tell the current Relief Society President that I would be there.

After the program and my singing time in Nursery, the counselor came to me and apologized and told me that the movie that they planned on watching was only 20 minutes long. I would need to fill the rest of the time. Thankfully the Spirit works full time and I was able to come up with a game that the children would enjoy and no singing would be necessary (my voice, at least, needed the reprieve).

I still went to Relief Society and 6 months after my release as Relief Society President, the Relief Society President got up and thanked my counselor and I for our service and gave us both framed quotes. Mine was the quote by Lucy Mack Smith, the first Relief Society President in the Church. "We must cherish one another, watch over one another, and comfort one another... that we may all sit down in heaven together" She also gave us cards signed by many of the sisters in the ward. It was very nice and I appreciated it a great deal.

I left Relief Society and went back in to Primary to play the game. It was very easy and very popular with the children. I had word/picture 8x 10 pages for all the songs that the children sang in the Primary Sacrament Program. I had used these pages to remind the children of the song they were about to sing and to help them with the words, as needed. After the program, these pages were a mess and I knew that I was going to have problems sorting them out. When we needed a game, it dawned on me that I could use those pages. I had a child come choose one of the pages. He/she had to tell me what song it was from. If they couldn't, they could choose one person from their team to help. If they guessed correctly then they threw a dice and got points for their team. (It has just dawned on me that this was a take-off of the papyrus game I highlighted earlier in my blog.) It was easy, fast to put together, and very popular.