Just Call me Martha

Even though Clementine has long given up naps, I still find time to get crafty every now and then. I seem to be suffering from the scrapbooking form of writer's-block but still have a TON of materials stashed away. I've been trying to find new uses for all this stuff.

On one of the decorating mom blogs I love, the writer posted about creating fridge magnets that aren't obnoxious. She listed her materials and I realized I had every single item myself, except for the wooden "coins". I picked those up at JoAnn's using my coupon for under $3.00!

I tweaked the instructions a little bit to suit our color scheme--painted the coins purple and green (using paint I had from the BLOOM canvas in Clem's toy room), hot glued the magnet to the back and used round letter stickers (that I already had AND they matched our colors! Dang, I'm coordinated!!).
Ta-da! 20 minutes later, here's what we had! (Yes, it does bug me that some letters are capital and some are lower case. I'm trying to get over it. This does not seem to bother Clementine one bit and, really, that's all that matters.)

It seems like every single crafter's blog I love has pictures of their decorated fall mantels. Our house doesn't have a fireplace or a mantel, unfortunately, so we decorate the tops of our books shelves. Here's mine for fall.

I spray painted ceramic pumpkins (again, from JoAnn's w/ a coupon!) as every other crafter seems to be doing these days. I'm not super thrilled w/ my results. I must have picked all the pumpkins with nicks and dings. Oh well, I'll get over it.

Then I stacked up some black hard-covered books, set a nest and green ceramic bird I had from Emma's "Love Birds" shower I threw last Spring on top. Then Clementine found a rock out back she thought needed to go up there. I set that next to a mini-house that says "Welcome".

My one splurge is this shadow box I keep on the mantel year round (I change out the inside of it seasonally). It's from Pottery Barn a million years ago. Pottery Barn is not a place I shop at frequently, nor is this a price I comfortably pay for a single item but I've had it for years and it's gotten a lot of use.

Again, scrapbooking items: green textured paper I had in my stash + felt pumpkin stickers + super cute picture of Clementine from her very first trip to the pumpkin patch. Voila!