We had a creative and fun-filled extra long weekend. Our BFF’s from Illinois, Jeff and Jen, flew in on Thursday.

After years of them playing hosts to us at their gorgeous Wisconsin log cabin and at their beautiful home in Illinois, we were finally able to play hosts to them….for the first time EVER!

I know, that’s crazy, isn’t it?  Well, it was an absolute joy and just makes me wish they would come back at least once a month until we could pay them back for their more than a decade of hospitality.  Even at that rate, it would take us a couple of years to catch up!

On Saturday morning, I held the burlap pumpkin class that I threatened to hold in THIS POST … several of you expressed interest.

Thankfully, Jen and Shelia were two of the participants, because those two girls are super artistic and they were able to help the other participants make some really pretty pumpkins.

Peggy and I showed everyone how to put the pumpkins together, but it was Sheila and Jen who really lead the way, helping one lady after another, bling out their fabric squash creations.

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Do you remember this image from last October?  It is a photo of about a dozen of the velvet and other fabric pumpkins I made. HERE is the post with the tutorial on how to make them yourself.

Well this year, I have tackled the burlap pumpkin. I recycled used coffee-bean sacks to create the pumpkin, the bow, and the flowers.

Then I attached a natural stem and used twine to create the pumpkin ridges.

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There is this quotation I subscribe to –

The quote is often credited to the late great John Lennon. Upon further research, I discovered it actually belongs to the early 1900 author, Marthe Troly-Curtin. No matter, it is true.

While “wasting time” on Pinterest, I found this fantastic site. Blogger, Kristi of creativekristi.com, is a proud Military wife and mother of two, living in Maine.

Because of and thanks to Kristi’s help, you can now have your very own Les Petites Gourmettes “app” on your iPhone or iPad and it will take you directly to my website. OK, it’s not really an app.

You don’t download it from the App Store. Instead, it’s really just a bookmark, but it looks like a little app icon, with a sweet picture of a whisk (an actual photo I chose from my blog photos).  It looks clearer on your phone than it does here. 🙂

To get it – follow these 4 quick and easy steps: (quick – as in – less than a minute and easy – as in – my husband could do it! I’m not being mean, he’s seriously tech challenged – ask our kids!)

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Here is the second pumpkin craft I found on Pinterest. This is the one that took several hours and a steady hand to create. It wasn’t that it was all that difficult, there was just a lot of drying and waiting time involved.  I believe that the original pumpkin I saw on Pinterest was made with a real pumpkin, I used a faux pumpkin because I wanted to have it year after year instead of throwing it away in a few weeks after it rotted out.

Initially I purchased a $24.99 white pumpkin from Hobby Lobby – using a 40% off coupon – paying $14.00 for it. Before I could get to the project, I found an $8.00 white pumpkin at Target and decided to use that one instead.

The creases that run from stem to bottom were much more defined on the $14.00 pumpkin and I may still use it to make another, I think it would turn out a bit prettier and be easier to figure out exactly where to draw the vertical lines. I also wasn’t thrilled with the tan spray paint I picked out. It turned out to be quite metallic, more gold than tan, and also dripped profusely, so I’ll be buying a different paint when I make that second one. We’ll call this one the trial run…Live and learn.

Pumpkin a la Burberry

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There are so many cool fall crafts being posted on Pinterest every minute that it’s getting hard to keep up!  Two distinctively different pumpkin-themed ideas really caught my fancy.  This first one took about 10 minutes to pull together, and oddly enough, out of the two different pumpkin projects I made – Dave liked this one best. The second one, which I’ll put up tomorrow, took quite a bit longer. When I say “quite a bit” – I’m talking several hours longer.  Yeah, ten minutes vs. about four hours… and he likes the 10-minute craft best… Go figure!

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