Fun Fall Activities

 

Crafts

~ Blow Bubbles, add food coloring to your bubbles and blow the bubbles on a piece of paper!

~ Chalk on the sidewalk 

~ Nature walks, make a collage from what you find on your walk!

~ Turn your hallway into a virtual museum of your child's artwork.

Things to do

~ Stargaze in your backyard

~ Bonfire's or a firepit and make s'mores

~ Outdoor movie night

~ Photo scavenger hunt

Places to go

~ Farmer's Market

~ Pumpkin patch

~Camping

Homemade lipgloss

I made some  new lip gloss out of Vaseline, Cocoa butter, vanilla flavoring and 3 plum colored lipsticks!

I took everything and put it in a bowl. Mixed it all up and microwaved it for 1 minute so the lipstick melted. By the time it was done it was all liquid, which was great.

Then I pored the liquid gloss into my gloss container and the rest went into the empty Vaseline container to be used later. The Cocoa butter was an extra add in, I used about a table spoon of it to the whole mixture.

After it was poured into their containers I took some half empty glitter glosses and poured them in as well. Mixed them up and my gloss has a sparkle to it. Measurement wise I used half of a container of the Vaseline and just kind of played it by ear with the rest other than the Cocoa butter.

This gloss has a beautiful tint to it and a little goes along way!

Gift wrapping idea's

Guess what? Christmas is around the corner once again! Aside from festive holiday wrapping paper there are so many things you can use to wrap a gift. 

~ Gift bags
~ Tissue Paper
~ Plain parcel paper
~ Newspaper
~ Magazine pages
~ Sheet music
~ Cosmetic bags
~ Gift boxes

There are many things you can use to decorate the gifts as well.

~ Holiday ornaments
~ Bows
~ Sprigs of holly or other seasonal flowers
~ Paper flowers
~ Candy Canes
~ Snowflakes
~ Ribbons

Homemade butter

So I did a thing.... now I'm trying to figure out what to put in it... ​cinnamon or pumpkin spice!

I bought a carton of heavy whipping cream and poured it into a glass jar. 

Then I spent over an hour while watching training video's on the Boss Babes page and shaking the jar the whole time. 

It smelled absolutely wonderful and tasted good on a biscuit.

Just a word of warning though... refrigerate it afterwards because it tends to spoil if not cold.
I usually leave my butter out, but this one needs to be cold.

I found that out the hard way. LOL

Snow!

The Dollar Tree is an amazing place. You can find so many wonderful things there. I always look for things I can paint and have fun with.

I found this candle holder and gave it a coat of shimmer glitter polish.

This polish went on the inside and was topped with mod podge. I rarely use wax candles these days and use the battery operated tea lights in these.

In this photo there are battery operated lights in it. 

4 DiY things I would love to try to do...

I love doing a bit of DiY! I rarely find things that I want to do though, but am going to spend some time on Pinterest and get a board set up with idea's! Here's my list...

~ Make my own candles.. I go through so many candles it's not even funny! I think it would be cheaper for me to make my own and I always save a bunch of my large Yankee Candle jars so those can be reused!

~ Can strawberry jam. I found a few recipes for doing this, but have yet to give it a try. I would like to find on that doesn't need sugar. I'm really trying to cut out all of the sugar from my diet. 

~ Make my own soap. I would love to learn how to make it, though I'm pretty sure it will be an extremely messy task. lol

~ My dad made an Christmas storage box for my mom when I was younger. I have it and I want to fix it up and put my own Halloween and Christmas decor in it. It needs to be sanded and painted. I would love to add feet to it it I possibly could.

Dollar Store Musings

I love going to the Dollar Store. I am there at least three time's a week getting stuff for crafts. I was there today and found something amusing happening... 

I mean really it's not every day you can walk down an isle and see women stuffing tissues in their bra's... might I add.. these were grown adults... 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂

A few Halloween crafts

I did these last year and most unfortunately I lost the photo's so this year I will be doing the same thing as well as a few others. I love doing craft projects with my nieces when they are here and we tend to do a lot of painting.

Last year we painted gourds white and turned them into ghosts. We used acrylic paint for the bodies and large wiggly eyes. I had a decent sized one and carved a hole in the back, scooped out the insides and carved eyes and a mouth and put a battery run tea light in it. It looked fantastic! #Ghosts

We also made spiders that we hung from the ceiling in the living room over the bay window. Take various sized Styrofoam balls and wrap them up with yarn. Then I took some of the yarn and made braids that we used for it's legs. Wiggly eyes were added afterwards. I took some elastic and hug them from the ceiling so the girls could pull down and the spiders would bounce and move. #Spiders

There is one thing I am thinking of doing this year that we didn't do last year is make those popcorn & candy corn hands. I made them while in daycare and the kids in the class loved them.

I had some plastic gloves, not the rubber ones. Popped popcorn and dumped it into a bowl, then I had a bowl of M&M's and another on with the candy corn. The kids sat around the table and filled their gloves with a mixture of the three. I thought of making these for the girls because I'm not handing out candy this year again. #Art



Cake batter fudge

This recipe makes 36 fudge squares
Ingredients
2 cups + 2 Tbsp Betty Crocker Supermoist white or yellow cake mix (or any brand white or yellow cake mix)
2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, cut into 4 pieces
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup rainbow sprinkles

Instructions
Spray 8×8 baking pan with nonstick spray. Set aside.
Mix together cake mix and powdered sugar in a large bowl. Add milk and butter (do not stir them in) and microwave for 2 minutes. Once done, immediately begin mixing everything together. 
The batter will be very thick. Fold in white chocolate and sprinkles. Stir gently. You do not want the sprinkles to leak their color too much!
Spoon into prepared baking pan, making sure it is level and smooth at the top. Chill in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. Cut into squares and enjoy

Spirit Jugs

I'll definitely be making these again, but with orange lights instead of white ones..
 They're a great way to decorate for Halloween using recyclable materials.
* What you'll need: ... Clean plastic gallon milk jugs Black permanent marker Craft knife String of 50 clear low-wattage holiday lights
* How to make it:
1. Draw ghost eyes and mouths on the jugs.
Tip: Leave the caps on while you do this, so the jugs don't dent.
2. Use the craft knife to cut a half-dollar-size hole in the back of each jug.
3. Arrange the ghosts near each other and string the lights between them, stuffing several bulbs into each of the jugs.

http://spoonful.com/halloween/spirit-jugs/1607

Coconut and coffee scrub

I made some great body scrub today. Not only was it quick and very easy, but all I needed were two items that I had in my house! 

I took some used coffee grounds and put them in a bowl. After adding some coconut oil I mixed it all together and then closed it up and then BOOM it's done! I will probably be adding a bit more coffee grounds to it. 

I used it as a lip scrub and also on my hands after washing them. My hands feel very soft and they had a light smell to them afterwards. 

Black cat, black cat...

I bought this little girl from my work, Burlington. she was actually an outdoor garden decoration, but I grabbed her and decided to make her an indoor decoration! Her name is Miss Esme.

I grabbed some black nail polish from the Dollar Tree and painted this girl solid black. It took me two bottles to do this. One bottle per coat of polish. Her inner ears were the only parts painted a different color. I colored them a shimmery purple. 

This little girl received 2 coats of black polish, 2 coats of purple polish in the ears. Then I went over it with one light coat of glitter polish after the second coats dried. She was mod podged at the end and now she's all shimmery under my lights on my desk. I'm debating her eyes, I just don't know what I want to do with them. 

What do you think??

The silver chalice

I bought this wine glass at the Dollar Tree. I use silver washi tape on the stem and them painted the entire outside of the glass with silver glitter polish. I have a jar with lights sitting in the glass that give off a beautiful glow. 

What's great about the $1 store is you can get so many different sized wine glasses. The crafty idea's are endless there!!

Red bird, red bird...

Anyone who knows me knows that I love, love, LOVE painting with nail polish! I always buy my polish for crafts from the dollar stores. 

The Dollar Tree to be precise! This is my favorite store to go to. They have a huge variety of polish for me to choose from. They even have bottles of mod podge at times so that's a huge bonus!

I received this little candle holder bird from my sister, it used to be a pale pink. Now I don't do pink.. yuck.. so I grabbed my polish and painted it a beautiful red.

I took a Clorox wipe and cleaned him off really good. Then I took the polish and began painting him section by section. After the first coat of polish dried I went back over with another. Then once that was dried I covered him with Mod Podge. 

You light up my life...

This is a beautiful candle holder I bought from the Dollar Tree. I wanted to spice it up a bit so I took some purple and glitter polish and painted the inside of it. 

I did the bottom purple first and let it dry. For this I only used 1 coat. The middle row is a blue polish then the final top row is purple. 

After the three coats were dry I went over them with a glitter polish. After all of the polish dried I went over it with a coat of mod podge.

I put a jar in it with a light as you can see from the photo. 

Witch Stones

A few years ago my youngest niece told me about some monsters that were coming into her bedroom through the windows. They were also coming in through the closet door as well. Now I partially took this to be a Monster, Inc... thing because at the time it was her favorite movie and we had watched that about 5 times during the week.

So I after she left I went out and grabbed a handful of medium sized stoned from my yard and brought them into the kitchen where they received a good washing. Then they were painted with nail polish.. the shimmery kind so that they sparkled in the sunlight. Once dried I gave one to her and told her that it was a Witch Stone.

The Witch Stone was made by a witch for her to put on the window ledge in her bedroom, once there it will keep all of the monster from coming through the window.
It worked, no more monster came in through the window and that made her happy and she felt safe, which was why I created the Witch Stone in the first place.
I have a Witch Stone in my bedroom that's blue with glitter painted on it. I keep it on my desk and use it as a paper weight.. Not only are they good at keeping monsters away, but they make a good decoration.  

Nail polish crafts

I was bored so I did a few projects with nail polish. I have a basket full of polish in different colors that I use just for art purposes. I normally buy them at the dollar store if I see any colors that I think my nieces might like. The polish that we use on our nails is kept separately in my make up bag.

I used polish on the bottom of a vase and also on an empty glass candle jar that I use for trail mix. There is a mug in the pic that I’m not sure about so the polish will be removed with nail polish remover and then I’ll re do that one. I found some nice sized cups at Rite Aid for $1 and bought two of them for nail polish decorating.

The process is simple. Take a bowl of water, use a bowl that you don’t need any more because it will be unusable food wise after this project. Drip polish into the water in a circle or two. Run a tooth pick through the polish to spread it around and then dip the cup or vase into the polish. It’s best to dip at an angle unless you just want to do the bottom.

Water bottle flowers!

I discovered a craft project on Pinterest about turning empty water bottles into flowers. You cut the tops off the water bottle and shape them into flowers. I have used old glass paint on the flowers in the photo, but have recently discovered that glitter nail polish works wonderful as well and it dries faster.

I also painted a few empty jars with glitter polish and used a colored hair tie {the kind that are tied on one end} and stretched those around the neck of the jar. Those are used for my paperclips and also as candle holders.

Tonight I painted a wine goblet with clear sparkly glitter. Once that’s dry then I’m going over it with a blue glitter polish and turn it into a candle holder. I usually get my glitter polish at the dollar store so I don’t feel guilty about using it for crafty purposes.

Snowman Tealight Ornament

Pom Pom Teddy Bear Ornament