Fall JOL

Even though Fall isn't officially over until the end of December we all know that bitch Christmas owns the whole month, declaring it winter and claiming it for it's own.  Fall unofficially ends on November 30, and that's just the way it is.  Can you imagine if we left Fall decor up til Dec 20 and then just decorated for a span of only 5 days for Christmas?!

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love me some Christmas decor and have the bounty of plastic storage tubs to prove it but I am not wanting to let go of Fall yet.

Since the inevitable is upon us I decided to spend this last "Fall" day carving me an autumn inspired pumpkin of a most precious squirrel!

It came from a vintage embroidery pattern:

I know once a pumpkin is carved it's only a matter of a few days before the rot sets in so that will be my motivation to let go.

🍁  🍂  🍁  🍂  🍁  🍂  🍁  🍂  🍁  🍂

{I am literally sitting here trying to come up with some way to invent/create Fall-Mas right now.  It can't have turkeys, pilgrims, maybe not even pumpkins.  I see Fall colors, leaves, woodland creatures (deeries!), cabins, pinecones.  Using these characteristics but maybe on traditional Christmas fodder....Ya'll it's basically a 70's Christmas!  No way I could pull that off this year, but interesting to think about}

 

National Square Dance Day

One of the neatest "holidays" is National Square Dance Day!

To celebrate I am going to share our small collection of Square Dance Records.

Up on top we have 'Learn Square Dance with Ed Gilmore'.

Square Dance with 'Mac' Gant and his Tennessee Dew Drops.

Square Dances with Roy Horton and his String Band featuring Slim Coxx

Swing Your Partners with Hank Barns and the Country Squires, calls by Smilin' Ed Hayes

We will be celebrating this year by spinning these toe tappers!

 

Past Square Dance Do-Si-Dos Posts:

 2019 Sets In Order Magazine Features and our Square Dance inspired outfits

2016 Square Dance Cake

Make Your Own (Shrunken) Head Day

 Boy Howdy!  Make Your Own Head Day is one of my favorite obscure "holidays"!

This year I am sharing the 'How to' on the Shrunken heads I made for our Tiki Voodoo Swamp Hut decor from Halloween. 

Materials needed: Masking tape, aluminum foil,  newspaper, paper mache material (I used Celluclay), paint, clear craft glue, hot glue, waxed thread, hair (I used a dress up hair headband (toy department) from 1.25 Tree)

It's a very abstract 'How to' because I thought I had taken several pictures along the way which I apparently did not.   I only have one...

Start by balling up newspaper into a vague head shape, control looseness with masking tape.  Next, use pieces of aluminum foil to shape and build up features of the face such as eyebrows, nose, and lips.  Tape all in place. Next mix up your paper mache material.

I happen to have a package of Celluclay that I have had for close to 28 years. It's a product that has been around since the 70s and is still available today. It looks like a block of compressed powdery dryer lint.  You add water to it and smoosh it until it becomes clayesque.  Apply small amounts of this to the head armature.  Smooth as you work.  Use small dollops to build up areas such as the eyelids and lips.  Use a pointy thing (such as a ceramic needle tool) to make definition to the eyelids and lips while still wet.  Also use this time to make holes for the stitched areas.  Let dry for several days.

After your head is dry, paint in your color of choice and let dry.  Cut small pieces of waxed thread for the stitching and craft glue in place, a pointy tool to jab the thread into position helps.  Let dry.

Lastly cut and hot glue down the hair. 

Tie on some twine to the hair and hang from the rearview mirror of your Knight Bus or place at an Alter to your God! 

Here are several past Make Your Own Head Day posts.  

The Miracle Masque one is quite disturbing:

MYOHD 2021: Vintage Funny Face (DIY paper craft)

MYOHD 2019: Vintage Beauty Tips

MYOHD 2018: Scotch cellophane tape Funny Face (DIY paper craft)

MYOHD 2016: Miracle Masque

And here are a few edible heads I have made:

Pancake Head

Funny Face Hamburgers

Skull Cakelettes

Turkey Roulettes

Looking for yet another way to use up those turkey left overs?

Try out Betty Crocker's Turkey Roulettes!

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"Turkey Roulettes are a real delight, when lunching by the fire on a stormy night."

Oh, that sounds heavenly!

If you find yourself short on storming weather or a crackling fire, I love to listen to ambiance videos on youtube with these exact characteristics.

These roulettes can't help but be tasty, they're just turkey, biscuits, and gravy!

Here are a few other past posts where I made the most of a turkey I baked during the early days of the coronapocalypse:

Souper Turkey Squares

Turkey Chicken Bake

Hot Corn Ring with Creamed Turkey

 

Gooble-Gobble Gobbler

For our Thanksgiving dessert this year I made this Mr. Gobbler coconut cake!

I didn't realize until after I had the icing on that I should have tinted it a caramel color. Mine looks kinda like a fancy hybrid free range snob turkey that you can only buy at Fresh Market.

I didn't have any black gumdrops or licorice on hand (because it's nasty) so I used a black button for the eye and fashioned him some legs out of chopsticks and hot glue.

 

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This cake is the November offering from a vintage book of coconut cakes (Baker's Coconut Cut-up Cakes 1956) that I have made several of:

January Mr. Snowman

February Ever Lovin' Heart

March Coco the Nutty Clown

April Quick like a Bunny

October Hallo witch

Space Turkey

 

I did a abbreviated and last minute theme this year for Thanksgiving.  

It is based after a story that I love for Mr. Husband to tell me every year.  Several decades ago when he was having Thanksgiving dinner with his family his mother wouldn't stop talking...on and on.  Talking at people, not with them.  Posing questions about stuff no one knows or cares about.  Somehow she got on the subject of astronauts and their Thanksgiving when they are off planet.  And again on and on... I imagine it in my head like the girl on the end of the MST3K episode of Manos where the chic (Joel) is talking about her 5 year plan and loosing 5 pounds of butter... Everyone around the table has about had it,  Then she asks "I wonder what they eat on the space ship for Thanksgiving?"  Mr. Husband's dad had had enough and bursts out "God Damn Space Turkey!!!"  Ya'll I'm chuckling as I am typing this.  I will laugh every single time.

So, that's the theme I have been wanting to do for the past several years but haven't been able to get all the pieces sourced.  I decided to just see what I could pull together in 24 hours.

I printed out some stuff on a regular printer.  I made the poster by printing two pages, tiled, and matched the seam.  There's pipe cleaners, glitter, star confetti, and some little space men from PB's toys when he was 4 years old.

I also thought I would kinda address what the astronauts might eat on Thanksgiving as a little pre-meal appetizer.  I browsed around 1.25 tree and found the whole meal...freeze dried (kinda) style!

From left to right: Cranberries (craisins), green beans (shaped crisps), Turkey (jerky), and mashed potatoes!

And Tang (the official drink of astronauts) for a beverage.  Dessert is Pumpkin Pie (baking morsels).

Here are some of the bags for what items I used.  The Tang isn't actually Tang as you can tell by the color.  The store was out so I used Orange Crush powdered drink mix.

It was a quickly tossed together kinda thing but it's fun.  

Hope you all enjoy your damn space turkey today!

Turkey Apple~Pumpkin Pie Surprise

 I made this little cutie to adorn the top of my pumpkin pie.  And my pumpkin pie surprise is this one is store bought! You can't beat 5 bucks and all the work is done!  If you would like to make the true surprise, spoiler...it's brown sugar, not Wrigley gum!

 

I don't think this is something I would try.  It doesn't look right.  Part of the appeal to me is the golden orange color of the filling.  Wrigley's has turned it into a mud pie...and this poor little turkey apple looks like he's stuck!

Thanksgiving Decor 2022

Even though I have only decorated for Thanksgiving 2 1/2 times in the past it has become my favorite to do.  I was so ready to get the Halloween stuff down on Nov. 1 this year which is just abnormal.  I love Halloween every day of the year but something about Fall/Thanksgiving decorating (done my way of course!) has got a' hold on me!

And this year's decor is the best by far!

Scroll and behold!

The dining room sideboard

The record cabinet

Dining room table centerpiece

The top of the china cabinet

The top of the display cabinet

The inside of the display cabinet

Living room side tables

TV area

These oversized cans of pumpkin were a craft project I was working on this year but didn't quite work out how I wanted.  The cans are those restaurant industrial sized ones and I added a print-out of a vintage can pumpkin label.  The issue is I couldn't get a proper print size to work making the label unable to cover the can fully.  It still gets the idea across and works for the most part.

The green display shelf/rack and focal wall in the living room

Close ups of some of the displays on the rack

This year I tried to pull more black into the decor as a bit of a Fall-o-ween look.

I had really wanted to do a dinner theme in the dining room (like when we did Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, Turkey Day with The Clampetts, and Heat and Serve TV Dinners) but the free large format printing service hasn't been offered by my library for the past 2 1/2 years and it's really pivotal in getting a theme across quickly without having to make a bunch of time consuming crafty stuff. But even in this late hour I am trying to think of how I could pull off crafting a theme for this year!

I'll tell you all right now, I am certainly NOT going to be taking this down the weekend right after Thanksgiving.  Christmas can wait it's ass till December...

Here are the other 2 1/2 times I have done my Thanksgiving/Fall decor:

 2019

2020

2021

And if your Thanksgiving blog-fat-pants aren't stuffed enough then peruse all of my Thanksgiving posts by clicking on the 'thanksgiving' label seen below and to the left.

Fall Front Porch

Doing my Fall decorating has become my favorite and I look forward to it the most.  I think it's because I have only done it a few times and for the most part all of the items are in just one single manageable bin.  To fill the look out I pull items from other places in the house to repurpose along with scrounging some stuff off mother nature.

Here is the front porch this year which I am ehhhh about how it turned out.  

I think the pom pom wreath is a bit too much and overcrowds.  The door could benefit with more black oak leaf garland.

I need to make a larger front door wreath.  Near the bottom of the door you can barely make them out but I bought some Thanksgiving window clings that are super cute but wound up being too transparent. That really irks me when window clings look good on the white backing in the package but then are basically garbage on a window.  Next time I will just have to pull one off the sheet while in the store and check out it's opaqueness.

Here are close ups of all the vignettes:

We didn't carve the pumpkin this year for Halloween so I was able to use it as extended Fall decor.  I just couldn't come up with an idea of what I wanted to carve it as...Maybe I'll come up with something over the Thanksgiving weekend.  Maybe even a Thanksgiving theme?

I have only decorated the front porch for Thanksgiving one other time, waddle on over to:

 Fall Front Porch 2019

Fall-O-Ween Wreath

Have you guys heard of the Fall-O-Ween trend?  I am usually the last to hear so I am sure you have.  It's my understanding that it is lumping Halloween/Thanksgiving/ Fall together for the entire season.

I decided to do a little of this by pulling more Halloween into my fall decor.  I used a lot of black and orange this year. 

One crafty thing I did was take a Halloween pom pom wreath (see the Before below) that I picked up on after Halloween clearance (my kind of  "Black Friday" deal ) for a few bucks...

*Before*

 ...and I then Autumned it up by adding some brown pom poms.  I made them from yarn I bought at 1.25 Tree.

I'm still working out what items and what-not I think would work for me as Fall-O-Ween decor.  I also bought a Halloween black with orange and white plaid table cloth on clearance that transitions as Fall.  Black crows, pumpkins (sans Jack-o-lantern faced) and scarecrows work too.

(Spiders are year round decor!)