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Thursday, September 29, 2011

Wood scrap pumpkins

I saw this idea here for 2x4 wooden pumpkins on Pinterest and thought it would be such an easy fall craft. I told my friend Katie about it and she had seen the exact same craft so the rest was fate.... Anyway, we got together with our supplies and made our version. Oh, and if you want to follow me on Pinterest go here http://pinterest.com/LaForceBeWithU/


You will need:
scrap wood
orange paint (brown paint optional)
wine corks
green ribbon or fabric
glue gun

We used some scrap wood from my garage and some Katie picked up at Lowes for 5 cents. Just go ask for scraps in the lumber dept. The sizes we used were 2x6's and 2x4's. I wanted my pumpkins cut to be 9 inches, 12 inches, and 15 inches tall, Katie did hers a little shorter but you can do whatever size your heart desires.

Sand a  little if necessary and paint the blocks orange. Paint the corks brown or leave them natural and glue them onto the top. Tie your green fabric or ribbon around the cork and you are done!

You can now display your very easy and cheap scrap wood pumpkins with pride. Katie is going to put hers on top of her kitchen cabinets and I put mine on the front porch because I needed another touch of fall outside since inside has a good amount of fall decor.



Linking up at these fun parties:


Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Paint Chip Pumpkins

Looking for a free craft to add to your fall decor? I found this blog post showing how to make paint chip pumpkins and decided to make some of my own.


They are really easy to do and free if you have some basic crafting items.

You need:
Orange, Yellow, and Green Paint sample cards- the longest paint chip cards were found at Lowes
Glue gun
Scissors
Pencil
Ruler


Cut the paint cards for the pumpkin bodies into strips. I did some that were 1 inch, 3/4 inch and 1/2 inch for some variety.


It helps to bend them a little bit using your hands so it is more natural for the paint chips to form a pumpkin shape :)


Start gluing the strip ends together overlapping in perpendicular fashion until you have 8. Then do the same thing with the other end of the strips.





For the pumpkin stems cut out a narrower and shorter strip and fold into a triangle and glue on. Then cut a very narrow strip and wrap it around a pencil until the desired curliness is achieved. Then glue the curl on.


Then you have some awesome decorative and FREE paper pumpkins to display!


I walked out of Lowes with a ginormous stack of paint cards... they are free for the taking but it helped that it was like 9pm and no one was in the paint dept :)  I put mine in a bowl on our coffee table and gave away some to my mom, my godmother Peggy, and her mom.


Linking up at these fun parties:

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Italy Trip Day 9

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8

May 12 - Our first full day in Roma!

We set out that morning to walk to Vatican City with the plan being to do St. Peters and the Vatican Museum. Little did we know that we did not have a map that showed ALL of the streets so the way to get into Vatican City was not accurately reflected on the map. After realizing we were not getting to where we thought on the map, a very nice woman escorted us in the right direction who spoke very good English.... so we had a loooong walk prior to our arrival at Vatican City. That just meant more gelato could be eaten later :)


We waited in line for maybe 20 minutes before entering St. Peters.



It was larger than you imagine and beautiful. We all listened to Rick Steves free audio guide while walking around.

Holy door - opened only every 25 years, last time was 2000.







Mary with Jesus behind glass because this has been vandalized before


We walked down to the tombs underneath the church as well but no pictures were allowed there and then we headed back outside.



After St. Peters we decided we would go back to the apt for lunch due to our later arrival and then come back in the afternoon for more sightseeing. Since we purchased the Roma Pass which included entry to a couple of sights (Colosseum, Forum) and all bus and subway transportation for 3 days, we took a bus from the Vatican City area back to Trastevere area. We had leftover pizza in the apt for lunch.

After lunch we took a bus back up to the Vatican City area. Thank goodness for the public transportation as Rome wasn't as easy to walk to all the sights and honestly our feet were pretty tired at this point in our Italy journey.

Once we figured out how to get to the entrance for the Vatican Museum (it is not as well marked as one would think), we toured the Vatican Museum while listening to Rick Steves audio tour.


It was huge and you could probably spend forever in there but we just wanted to walk through and see the main things without lingering.



Keith must be on Team Edward


I know this is really dark but I like how it shows all the walking.. someone forgot to adjust the aperture
We sat a few times on benches and took a little walking break to people watch and because some crazy lady in a wheelchair wheeled herself into my ankles at one point and didn't even bother to say sorry how rude! so we sat and waited for her to pass by us.


Of course the Sistine Chapel was amazing and it was the last part of our tour... it seemed to take forever to get there too.





After the Vatican Museum we decided "Hey, we haven't walked enough today so we should climb to the top of St. Peters, right?" Well I'm sure we were really thinking "Let's go see the amazing view and take some pictures" and not about all the stairs until we started climbing. At least climbing the Cupola was less stairs that the Duomo in Florence and we were REALLY working up lots of room for gelato.


And of course the views were spectacular.





Despite our very worn out uffizi's (this became a popular term on our trip thanks to Rick Steves), we walked over to Navona Square area for dinner.


When I went to snap the picture of the Navona fountain above, everyone else couldn't move another inch so I captured this candid of exactly how the walking had taken a toll... brutal.


We ate dinner at Ciccia Bomba.



It is amusing that in Italy ordering wine at dinner is cheaper than ordering water or soda. Italy has very good quality house wine.


I had rigatoni with eggplant which was wonderful and good sized portion with the appetizer of bruschetta Eric and I had. Everyone else has various pasta dishes too.




On our way to find the bus stop we passed a wedding dress shop... too bad it wasn't open because that would have been fun to look around. I wonder how expensive wedding dresses in Italy are compared to the US.



Then we took a bus back to the Trastevere neighborhood and grabbed some gelato at Gelateria alla Scala on our walk back to the apartment. Eric and I tried peanut butter and yogurt. We were exhausted from our jam packed day of exploring Roma!
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