Fall Decorations and a Tutorial!

I absolutely LOVE fall! I love decorating for it, but I don't have a ton of fall decorations. I wanted to share with you some of the things I did and a tutorial for a fall leaves banner.

Pumpkins added to my everyday display on the bookshelf in the living room. I made that lantern back in the 7th grade. I'm very proud of it.

This is sitting on my coffee table. I love the two fabric pumpkins that I bought at Hobby Lobby last year. I added a mini pumpkin for the effect of three.

I made this banner/bunting (whatever this is called) using scrapbook paper. I originally had it hanging off the bar in the kitchen. Then I moved it to the stairs, but the kitties kept knocking it down, so I hung it from the wall in the living room. This is a really easy project to make for any season or party. I'll share a tutorial later this week.

The kitchen bar counter with metal pumpkins from our wedding. Usually I have pillar candles inside of them, but I don't have any at the moment, so I stuck a mini pumpkin in each. The center tray has my button collection. And the pumpkins each have two glass leaf-shaped tea light holders that were also at my wedding reception. It's really beautiful in the evening with candles lit in each. I have some faux leaves that I like to scatter on the counter with everything, but I know the kitties would absolutely love to play with those.

I love my cornucopia (also purchased at Hobby Lobby last year). I filled it with mini pumpkins. I love how the one in the front has a curly cue stem on it. I just need a yummy pie in the cake display and then this would be perfect!

This is my kitchen table display. I feel like it needs something else...maybe a table runner. A project for another day. The pumpkin was given to me by my little, Morganne, back in college. I have the faux leaves that were scattered down the aisle at my wedding inside for some color. It's fun to put candy inside for Halloween.

Here's my fall leaves banner. Super easy to make!

Tutorial for the 

Fall Leaves Banner

Things you'll need:
- scrapbook paper in fall colors. I used a bunch of paper in browns, oranges, reds. I used some patterned paper and some solid colored to give it an interesting look. I used a lot more paper than I was expecting. But it totally depends on how long or short your banner will be. 
- string/twine/ribbon. I looked for brown twine at Michael's, but for the life of me couldn't find any. So I just used some white string that I already had.
- hot glue gun and glue sticks

When I set out to do this project I had an image in my mind and wasn't sure how it would work out. My original idea came out looking pretty dumb, so I had to rework it.

Here's how to recreate my final project:
- cut out a bunch of leaves from your various pieces of scrapbook paper. I started off having my Silhouette do the cutting for me, but then the blade went dull or something, so I ended up cutting a lot of them out my hand. Very time consuming, but what else was I going to do. I used three different leaf shapes, but you could do more of a variety than that if you wanted to.

- Cut a piece of string/ribbon/twine to your desired length. I originally wanted to hang it from my staircase, so I measured that length with a little extra just in case.

- You can curl the leaves around a thick pen or wooden spoon to give them some dimension, if you want. I only thought of this because of my Silhouette. When I took them off the feeder sheet, they came off curled up and I liked the way it looked. It resembled real fallen leaves better. 

- Start gluing your leaves together in a line. You can see in the picture that mine is not a perfect line. Try to make it organic/natural looking---like they just happened to fall into place. Every so often, flip it over and glue the ribbon/string/twine to the back. Keep gluing until you've covered the whole length of your string.

- Hang and enjoy! Mine has hung a little funny, so I have to tuck it under the bar a little so it will hang upright better. I'm sure if I messed with it some I could fix that, but I haven't gotten there yet.

(In my picture, you can see some hole punches in some of the leaves...that's from my original idea where I hung them on the ribbon. When I did that, you couldn't see all the leaves and it looked really bad. I didn't feel like cutting out new leaves so I just made due with the hole punches).

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