A Little of This & That… Renovating, Decorating, DIY Projects & Family
A Little of This & That… Renovating, Decorating, DIY Projects & Family

Decorating for Fall: More with Fall Leaves!

There are three trees in our neighborhood that change colors during the fall. Three. In the entire neighborhood. When Liv and I go for walks I stare longingly up at the branches willing those crisp green leaves to take on their yellow and orange shades.

When my mother-in-law was in town this past weekend it happened! Not only did the trees change color but they shed a good portion of those beautiful leaves to the ground. When she came back from taking Liv for a stroll she brought with her a huge bundle of these:

Framed Autumn, Fall Leaves

Naturally I pressed and framed them. I don’t know how long they’ll last but just maybe I can preserve them for the future. Waaaaay better than the fake ones I used over here.

Here they are sitting on a shelf in our dining room:

I first attempted to frame without flattening and the result was a bit sloppy, so my next approach was to organize them on my white sheet of construction paper, attach to paper with a double sided adhesive and then smoosh between two big heavy books.

Then I added the construction paper back into the frame and sealed it up.

I love the colors, especially against the brownish red frame.

I had quite a few leaves left over so I made a very simple garland by stringing the leaves through twine. Here they are on the other bookcase:

I think it’s a nice little fall detail, especially when casually strung up like they are here.

The process to make this guy was so simple and so quick: poke two holes in each leaf and string through – up and over for the first leaf, down and under for the next.

Just like you’re sewing a simple stitch.

Until you’ve finished the whole lot:

They’re perfect for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and I love how they bring just a little bit of the outdoors in!

Blogiversary Week Giveaway Winners

Congratulations to last week’s giveaway winners! Random.org helped to select the following:

*Monday’s EmersonMade giveaway: Sara Cate
*Wednesday’s DIY Pack giveaway: April D.
*Thursday’s Favorite Home Decor giveaway: Sheila G. (and it just happened to be her birthday that day – sweet serendipity)

Look out for an email from me. Thank you to everyone who entered and please continue to support these generous companies!

The Project Gallery is Live!

Very exciting news today! The Project Gallery – that I’ve been working on for such a long time – is live!

Find the direct link to the Gallery in the menu bar just below the header.

The Project Gallery is a database of projects that anyone and everyone can upload their work to. It functions similarly to a giant Link Party (if you’ve participated in one of those), and here’s the super simple idea behind it:

1. Add your own: Upload your project to share with others by using the submission form in the right hand sidebar (give your project a title, add a link to your direct post, choose an image and identify a category and as many tags that apply). An image will appear in the gallery along with a direct link out to your blog post.

OR

2. Search for inspiration: Search through projects by category in the left sidebar and then narrow down your results by tags. You might be hunting for a tutorial on distressing a dresser or on how to make pinwheel cupcake toppers – this gallery can help you find a blog post for either!

The Gallery is small today but I hope that it grows and grows. I’ve asked a few bloggers to help me add initial projects so that she’s not totally empty on launch day: Janell of Isabella & Max Rooms, Jennifer from Seakettle, Cristin from Simplified Bee, Disney of Ruffles and Stuff, and Courtney of Pizzazzerie.

Once monthly I’ll host a round-up on the blog of all projects added, so this is a great way to feature your room and furniture makeovers, parties, crafts, wardrobe boards and recipes! All submitted projects are linked directly back to the original blog post through the image in the gallery.

*******************************************

Spot a bug? Feel free to let me know at: morgan at pepperdesignblog dot com so I and my awesome co-programmer can get right on fixing it.

Speaking of co-programmer, let me introduce you to a very hard working, sharp and kind fellow who as of the latter half of this year has helped me keep up with some of the programming needs on the site. When break-fixing small errors or developing new features (like this one!) became too taxing on my own, I enlisted the help of Tim (who can be found at: technotim@gmail.com) to assist. I highly recommend his work for the smallest (questions like ‘why is my formatting off?’) to the biggest (‘I’d like a shopping cart or custom plugin for my site’) projects because he always goes above and beyond and is incredibly fair with hourly pricing. Every blogger needs a really great programmer in their back pocket.

I do hope you like the new Project Gallery and I hope you find it a useful tool for looking up and searching for projects (from so may different sources of inspiration) quickly :).

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...