I’ve been drooling over painted stacked pumpkins for years. I would see them everywhere I went. Each and everyone of them would scream my name. Only, there was one big problem. They all cost more than my Halloween budget allowed.

I thought that I had hit pay dirt when I saw this set of stacked pumpkins from At Home.

However, at $99.00, they still were more than I was willing to spend on Halloween decor.

Then, on a recent shopping trip, at the very back of a Marshall’s store my little eye spied a stack of pumpkins.

No, they weren’t painted in bright Halloween colors, but they were stacked and they were under $30.00.

I couldn’t get them in my basket fast enough!

I was so excited that I didn’t get a “before” picture of them. My bad.

Step 1:

The pumpkins received a few good coats of white multi-surface paint before painting the colorful designs.

Step 2:

The top pumpkin was painted with bright white and orange stripes.

Step 3:

The middle stacked pumpkin was painted a black and white check pattern with tiny gold dots at the intersections.

Step 4:

And the bottom pumpkin?

Yep, you guessed it.

I was still so excited that I didn’t get a picture of it either!

If you look closely at the photo above, you can see that the bottom pumpkin was painted black with large white and orange polk-a-dots.

Step 5:

Before I put the stacked pumpkins on my front porch, I gave the pumpkins a quick spray of clear coat and added a little raffia and ribbon to the pumpkin’s stem.

Even pumpkins need a little bling!

I love how my painted stacked pumpkins turned out!

They are definitely the star of my Halloween porch.

Was it worth the time and expense to paint my own stacked pumpkins?

Absolutely!

I don’t count the many hot minutes it took to paint the pumpkins as I love to paint.

As for the cost, the total cost of the pumpkins was under $38.00.

Definitely in my Halloween budget!

Until next time….

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This months theme on Ten on the 10th is Pumpkins. Which I love! I mean who doesn’t love pumpkins, fall leaves, and cooler weather? Today I’m sharing an easy, low cost way to make a Buffalo Check Pumpkin.

A great big shout out to this months hostess Anne from The Apple Street Cottage. She rocks!

I found this pumpkin and these metal words at the Dollar Tree awhile back.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them, but I picked them up anyway!

The pumpkin was cute, but not quite the look I was going for.

I removed the raffia and the silver leaf.

Once that was done, I flipped it over.

Then I gave it two coats of white acrylic paint.

When the white paint had dried really well, I created vertical stripes using blue tape.

Then, I applied 1 coat of black acrylic paint.

Before the paint completely dried, I gently remove the blue tape.

Once the vertical stripes had dried, it was time to create the horizontal stripes.

Tape off the stripes , then paint.

Ta Da!

Full disclosure, I had planned on covering the pumpkin with buffalo check scrapbook paper.

However, I ran short on time and decided to paint instead of going shopping.

Scrapbook paper would be a great alternative to painting!

Now I wanted a little more definition, so I dry brushed every other square using white acrylic paint.

Next, paint the stem.

I had to do a couple of coats to get great coverage.

To give it a little pop I added a little gold to the stem once it was dry.

Sorry, I thought I had a picture but no!

Once the pumpkin was painted, I added a cute bow and glued the tin “welcome” onto the bottom!

So what did my Buffalo Check pumpkin cost?

Pumpkin $1.00

Welcome sign $.33 ( it was a set of 3 for $1.00)

Paint and ribbon – free! I already had them in my stash.

Total cost: $1.33

Now please join me in visiting my fellow Ten on the 10th bloggers. They are so talented and I can’t wait to see all of their fabulous ideas!

Ann – The Apple Street Cottage
Patti – Pandora’s Box
Terrie – Decorate & More With Tip
Carol – Bluesky at Home
Kathy – Up To Date Interiors

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Happy Fall y’all! I can’t believe that it is officially fall, especially as it is still in the 90’s here. Since it’s the beginning of fall, it’s time to start decorating with pumpkins.

There are as many ways to decorate with pumpkins as there are the different types of pumpkins themselves!

The possibilities are endless.

Today I’m going to share with you a few ways that I’m decorating with pumpkins this year, as well as a few of my favorites in the past.

Over the years, I think that I’ve used just about every pumpkin there is out there.

Here, you see a light up glitter pumpkin on my Halloween mantle.

I’ve even hung pumpkins in the trees!

I love sitting out here in the fall with these fun lanterns swinging int he breeze.

Of course, you will always find pumpkins on my front porch!

Some of my favorite pumpkins are these blue and white decoupage pumpkins!

These are super easy to make!

You all know that there will almost always be painted pumpkins here at the castle!

I can’t remember a time when my fall mantle didn’t have pumpkins of some kind on it!

These “fancy” pumpkins have a special place in my heart and I will be using them again for Halloween!

Pumpkin season here at The Castle lasts from September through mid-November.

This pumpkin was my Thanksgiving center piece a few years ago.

My hands down, all time favorite pumpkins have to be my velvet pumpkins!

As you can see my love of pumpkins is huge.

Whether the are real, faux, painted, sewn or lighted with glitter, pumpkins will always be a staple for fall here at The Castle!

So break out the pumpkins, y’all.

Fall is here!

Until next time…

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A few years ago this was my fall mantle. Lots of rich color, a few feathers and I loved it. However, lately I’ve been wanting to go in a different direction. More of a simple fall mantle that has lighter, brighter colors.

If you’ve been following along, you know that I’ve been adding a lot of navy and orange to my house as my fall color theme.

Since my living room was already orange, navy and white it only make since to keep that theme in the living room.

I started with these cute white faux pumpkins.

While doing a little grocery shopping, I spied these faux pumpkins at my local Kroger.

They had 4 different sizes and were the perfect size to fit on my mantle.

You can’t tell, but they are a medium size pumpkin that would normally be around $15.00 to $20.00 in most stores.

However, I scored with these as they were on sale for $5.00 and $4.00 each!

Before placing them on the mantle, I placed some fall leave stems on the mantle for a base.

Then added a few berries.

Once I had the pumpkins in place, I twisted a bittersweet vine in amongst the pumpkins.

The candle sticks were some I’ve had for years from Southern Living At Home.

At this point I loved the simplicity of the mantle, but it still seemed a little bare.

Mainly because my fireplace wall is HUGE!

So I decided to make a banner.

This was a super simple project that I will share with you later!

I had these lanterns sitting on the hearth.

They’ve been empty awhile while I was looking for something other than candle to go in them.

On a whim, I placed the blue and white vases inside of them and add a cute orange and white bow to tie in the orange and blue theme of the living room.

We are really loving a simple fall mantle!

On a side note, I found these super cute tags at Hob Lob recently.

I’m in LOVE with them.

At first, I thought about making my own, but at $3.99 less 40% I couldn’t resist picking up a set.

Aren’t they cute?

It’s like adding jewelry to a little black dress!

Who doesn’t love a pumpkin that has a little bling?

I’ve enjoyed putting out my fall stuff so much that I’ve decided to head to my sisters house and help her get her fall on!

Stay tuned for that!

Until next time…..

Remember these painted pumpkins? They were the jumping off point for my navy and orange fall porch.

I painted them to match my front door and my new doormat.

Normally, I tend to stay with black as my “neutral” color, then add all the wonderful fall colors from white to a deep orange.

But this year, I felt the need to change things up a bit.

Go with something a little unexpected.

I shared this new fall doormat with you a few weeks ago.

Have I told you how much I love it?

Sorry! But I really do!

Well, this doormat sealed the deal.

Navy and orange were officially my fall front porches colors.

I ordered a new fall garden flag to match my new colors.

Which was harder than it sounds, as not many retailers have navy as a fall color.

This picture doesn’t do this cute little flag justice.

It has lots of textures and the colors just pop off of the navy background.

I put my favorite fall sign up also.

This sign has been on our fall front porch for a few years now.

I’m debating whether or not to paint the black navy so that it will match.

What do you think?

All my fall front porch needed was a wreath on the front door.

I made few of these last month.

The Dollar Tree had these sweet happy harvest truck signs in both red and blue.

I wanted the blue, however my Dollar Tree didn’t have a blue one.

While I was disappointed, I figured that the red would still match my front porch.

Then my sweet friend Darlene called and told me that she found a blue truck for me in Dallas!

Woo hoo! That girl is just the sweetest!

My hunt for mums ended this past Saturday.

Everywhere I went I asked for mums and got “the look”.

You know the one, the one that you get a lot from guys who work at big box stores when you are wanting something outside of the box!

Yeah, that one.

Yes, I know that it’s over 100 degrees, but this girls got a blog and needs to get her mums for the front porch!

While they did not have any white ones, that’s okay.

By October, I will probably need to buy news because, yes it is 100 degrees and mums just aren’t that happy in hot weather.

My navy and orange fall porch is complete and I couldn’t be happier with it.

Until next time….

Hello! Can you believe that we are days away from September? I know not all of you are football fans, but I can’t wait for football season to start. When it’s football season it’s time to decorate for fall. At least it is here at the Castle! Going through my fall stuff I realized that my pumpkins had lost a little of their orange luster and needed an update. I decided to paint some buffalo check pumpkins!

I’ll be honest, I found this idea on one of my binge sessions on Pinterest.

Jennifer from Dimples and Tangles blog shared the cutest hot pink buffalo check pumpkins ever! She calls hers gingham check. So cute!

Step 1: Paint the pumpkins white!

To get great coverage, I did 3 light even coats of Martha Stewarts Multi-surface paint.

I loved Jennifers hot pink pumpkins, but decided that I wanted to go with blue ones.

I love how navy looks with orange!

Since you need two different colors of blue, I simply mixed white and navy together to get a lighter blue.

Step 2: Paint vertical stripes.

I would love to tell you that I mathematically figured out spacing, but we all know that my math skills are severely lacking.

Using a blue pencil, I light marked off where I thought my stripes should be, then started painting.

Once my vertical stripes had dried, I then marked where my horizontal stripes should go.

This time I did want my stripes to be the same size.

It’s hard to see, but I marked the width on a piece of plastic and used that as a guide for my spacing.

Yes, a ruler would have been my first choice, however mine seems to have gone missing!

A girls gotta do what a girls gotta do!

This is what my pumpkin looked like when I was done painting both the horizontal and the vertical stripes.

Time for step 4!

Using the navy paint, I painted the square where the horizontal and vertical lines meet.

Ta Da!!!!

My Buffalo check pumpkin was done.

Time to decorate the front porch.

I love how the navy pumpkin matches the blue of my front door.

It was so much fun painting the buffalo check that I decided to paint another one.

This time with orange polk-a-dots.

Hello pumpkin!

Now to decorate the rest of the porchlette!

On a side note, I am wondering why I always work on the porchlette after the sprinklers have run and the mortar is still wet making it look like icky mold?

I’m filing that under things to improve on!

Hope that you all have a wonderful weekend.

Until next time….

I can’t believe that October is just around the corner. I feel like I just got my pumpkins out and cooler temperatures have barely begun. A few days ago, I pulled out the Halloween decor and started planning where it all would go. All was well, until I got to the kitchen. My pretty little buffalo plaid and orange striped pumpkins make me so happy that the thought of putting them away made me sad. So, I began planning how to keep them. Why couldn’t my kitchen Halloween decor be more fall, less Halloween. Cute not creepy!

Don’t worry, I’ll still keep it a wee bit wicked! Here at the castle we do love our traditional Halloween decor.

It’s officially fall. Finally! I’ve been waiting awhile for it. Here at the castle, we start off with a small amount of fall decor, swing into October with an overload of Halloween, and finally settle in for  a more traditional fall decor for Thanksgiving. Since it’s almost October, I guess it’s time to rip off the band-aid and start the Halloween extravaganza. I’m starting with a simple Halloween Mantle.

Over the years, I’ve gone from a heavily decorated mantle to a more simple understated one. I’ve come to believe that you don’t have to spend a fortune or put everything in the Halloween closet on the mantle!  This philosophy could be because I’ve grown lazy in my old age and don’t want to dust. Nah! I’m going with the simple and understated theory .

I promised that I wouldn’t share any more pumpkins with you this fall. However, I saw some recently and thought “Hey, I could make those”. Then I thought that maybe you would like to make some too.  So today I’m sharing how to make damask pumpkins!

These mini pumpkins were super easy to make and are the perfect decoration in my dining room. 

The Queens, my 7 besties, get together and it’s a free for all. Lots of laughing, lots of sharing and lots of talking. Sometimes, one thing leads to another and one of us is compelled to share about something totally unrelated to the current subject. Which is so confusing. We have decided that when this happens we are required to shout “Random” before we introduce that subject. Today I’m shouting Random, because I’m sharing Random fall decor!

I shared my fall front porch with you last week. I had originally wanted some white mums for the front porch. However, I couldn’t find them anywhere! Until today.

Today I’m sharing with you The Great Pumpkin Part 4. It’s also the last great pumpkin post. Now, I’m not saying that I won’t post more pumpkins. I do seem to have pumpkins on my mind this year. A lot!

Today’s great pumpkin is one that anyone can do. In fact, it would be a great craft project for kids and for those scrapbookers that have a ton of paper hoarded on the craft room. Come on, you know that you do. Or is that just me?  Anyway, The Great Pumpkin part 4 is a demo on how to make paper pumpkins!

I shared a sneak peek of todays pumpkin with my sister. She said it was pretty, but wanted to know if I obsessed with pumpkins? I had to laugh. I guess she missed the part about my series of sharing how to make the perfect pumpkin for your house. The Great Pumpkin part 3!

So without further ado, let me share my latest pumpkin obsession!

Today I’m sharing the great pumpkin part 2 with you. It’s still hot here, but I’m dreaming of cooler weather, fall leaves, football, dragging out the fall decor and making pumpkins.

A few weeks ago I decided that my fall decor needed a little sprucing up. So, I thought that making a few new pumpkins and sharing them with you seemed like a lot of fun!

Last week I shared with you how to paint a pumpkin. If you missed it you can go here.

This week I’m sharing how to glam your pumpkin up!

I started with this beautiful velvet teal pumpkin.

Pretty on it’s own, however a little bling never hurt any pumpkin!

My inspiration for this project came from a few pumpkins I saw at Pier 1.

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I have been obsessed with pumpkins of late. I don’t want to put them out yet, I just want to buy them. You know, so I’ll be ready when I do want to put them out. Then, I had a thought. What if I shared  pumpkins with you? Specifically, how to get the great pumpkin?

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing how to make some fun and interesting pumpkins with you. Today, I’m sharing how to paint a pumpkin. I’ve got a lot of pictures, so grab a drink, sit back and enjoy!

I’ve been trying to bring a little fall to the castle. I started on the inside and have moved out to the front entry. I started by adding a few pumpkins on the porch. With the cooler temperatures, fall is definitely in the air! 

My front porch is not easy to decorate at all! It is small and very tall. A challenge to say the least.

I dream of a big front porch. One that is big enough to have on outdoor living area. Unfortunately, here at the castle, we have a very small front porch. It’s hard to decorate. So when it came time for a fall front porch, well – was a challenge for sure!

I found this really great planter with awesome grasses and mums at our local Wal Mart. You have to remember it is still 90 degrees here in Texas. We are really limited in our plant choices for fall until around Thanksgiving.  I added my light up Candy sign and I am ready for fall and Halloween!

I really wanted to do the whole stack several pumpkin thing in a really awesome planter, but let’s face it – it’s so hot all I would have in about three days is pumpkin soup. So a few pumpkins that I can trade out when I need to work for me!

My front door decor hasn’t changed much the past few years. I have a leaf light up garland that is reminiscent of the fall we don’t have here. The wreath is one of my all time favorites. I just love the color of it against the black front door. I  added a new ribbon and it is set to go through Thanksgiving!

My planter  still has some flowers from summer going strong, so I pulled out the dead ones and added some cabbage and mums. Over time I will get rid of the summer flowers and add pansies when it gets cooler.

So here it is… not a lot of decor on my fall front porch – just enough to give me that fall feeling even if it is still 90 degrees!

Until next time….

                     Tammy

A few weeks ago I shared with you some of my fall decor, all except my dining room table. I gave you hints, but the dining room had so many pictures that I felt like it needed it’s own post to do it justice. Funny thing though, the longer I lived with it the more I took things off of the table. It just felt wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I decided to start over! I finally came up with a fall table that I could live with!

This is the table before. Parts of it were to fussy. Parts were to plain. I just didn’t like it. At all.

The only thing I did like was the pumpkins. Especially the large wooden white one. I recently bought it at HomeGoods and I totally love it. I decided to clear the table and start over.

This is what I came up with. A lot of natural elements, along with some bling.

I decided to scrap all of the colorful fall leaves for a more natural table. I mean, we really don’t have the bright orange and yellow leaves here at this time of the year, darn it!  We DO have flowers in their last stages, acorns, pinecones and pumpkins. So why not go with a more subtle decor?

If I went out into my yard to gather things to decorate with, rather than buy it, these are the things I would find right now. Well, other than the bling. Y’all knew I couldn’t go totally natural. The Queen needs some BLING!

Even the table deserves a little “joory”! I did leave in the really subtle oranges, blues, greens, browns and yellows. But they are just hints of color.

You may have noticed that the table isn’t set. I usually have the chargers, plates, glasses, napkins…the whole nine yards on the table. Not this time. Believe it or not, once I got to this point in my fall table, I was really OK with just the centerpiece. The rest just felt like clutter.

Will it stay this way? Probably not. I know me well enough to know that, just like everything else in my house, this fall table is a work in progress. I promise to share the new changes with you as they occur!

Until next time….

                      Tammy

You can find me at these really cool blog parties:

Redhead Can Decorate

I am addicted! Yeah, I have crossed over into land of crazy! My pumpkin patch is growing.  I can’t stop making them. Black ones, white ones, turquoise ones… I make them for me, I make them for my friends,and I make them for my relatives. About the time I think I am done, I realize that I haven’t made one for my great Aunt Eunice. Wait! Do I even have a great Aunt Eunice?

Thank goodness Michael’s pumpkins are no longer 60% off. They have gone down to a mere 50% off this week. And let me be the first to tell you that it has not slowed my pumpkin buying down at all. I think my husband is ready to hold an intervention for me.

These are my latest creations. I would tell you that they are my favorites of all time, but let’s face it I say that with all of them until I make a new one.

The problem is that they are so dang easy to make.  For these ones I painted the stem gold.

Then using a circular sponge, I painted circles on to the pumpkin. I applied gold glitter before the paint dried to give it a little sparkle!

For my “Boo” pumpkin I drew the lettering onto transfer paper. Flip the paper over and with a pencil color over the lettering. Position the lettering where you want it on the pumpkin and trace over the lettering. The graphite will transfer to the pumpkin where you traced. Then just paint your letters on.

Just add a bow and you are done! So. darn. easy. Some of the pumpkins shown here may or may not be given as gifts.

If I gift pumpkins I will be able to make more! Right? Which makes me wonder – is there a Pumkin makers anonymous?

Until next time…..

                      Tammy

I was at my neighbors recently and her kitchen was full of the cutest pumpkins you have ever seen.  It was such a great reminder that it’s pumpkin time!

My friend is a principal at a local private school and want to give her teachers a bit of fall decor to put in their classrooms. After a visit to Michael’s, I think she came up with the perfect idea to make gifts for her teachers.  Monogramed pumpkins! Didn’t she do a great job?

They were so cute, I asked her if she minded if shared them with you and would she mind if  I made one for myself?

First thing you should know? Pumpkins are 60% off at Michael’s right now. Woo Hoo! Love that. They have several colors, shapes and sizes in pumpkins, I opted for a medium sized tall one. The ribbon was on sale too… I was in “good deal” heaven! If you want to make one for yourself, here is what you are going to need:

Supply list:

1. Pumpkin ( on sale)
2. ribbon of your choice. I used three different patterns and widths. (on sale)
3. Rhinestone monogram – $1.99 ( $1.19 on sale!)
4. Decorative items to add to your ribbon. I got black glitter curly-Q’s – also on sale!
5. Glue gun and glue
6. scissors
7. wire cutters or as the hubs calls them: side cutters

I started by adding my bling to the pumpkin. I put it a little lower than center so that the ribbon wouldn’t hide all that fabulousness!

Next I made the bow. Cut one 10″ piece of ribbon of your choice, you will use this to tie the bow together at the end.

Start making the bow by laying all three ribbons, with the pattern side up, on top of each other.  Make a loop, like you see in the photo.  On the bottom that loop, where the ribbon meets, tightly twist the ribbon 180 degrees. This ensures that the pattern on the ribbon will always show. No one wants to see the tacky back side!

Continue making loops.  The next two loops will be slightly bigger than the center loop -twisting them in the center after you make each loop, just like you did with the center loop. (see photo above) Then make the next two loops, again slightly larger than the last two. Now don’t freak out if it takes a little practice be able to twist and hold all of the ribbon together. You can do it. I promise!

Once you have your five loops completed, cut your ribbon leaving a tail of about five inches. Taking the 10″ piece of ribbon you cut earlier, thread it through the original center loop and tie it around all of the “twists”.  This holds the bow together and will complete your bow.

Now it’s time to “fluff” your bow. I am so thankful for wired ribbon! It makes the ribbon stay in place so nicely.

Next, glue your bow to the top of your pumpkin with hot glue. At this point you can “fluff” the bow again if necessary.

If you wanted to stop here, that would be perfectly fine. But you know I’m gonna give it some bling! I cut 3″ pieces of  tulle and glued them together to form a small bundle. Then glued them randomly to the bow, being sure to hide the glued ends.

I also added those cute black, glitter curly floral picks.  Now that bow just screams “look at me!” My kind of bow.

Honestly, once I got started I could think of a ton of things that I could have done to decorate my pumpkin. Gold or black dots painted on the pumpkin, or dots cut out of vinyl? Michael’s had a ton of blingy stickers – spider webs, curly-Q’s and ghosts that would have looked totally cute as well.  Maybe a witches hat sitting in the bow? Or a glitter spider? Peeps, this could be so addictive!

Thanks to my neighbor for reminding me that it’s pumpkin time and for letting me share her creativity with you!

Until next time…..

                        Tammy