Blogmas | A Little Wrap Up

Hello!

Welcome back to Blogmas everyone!

I wasn’t sure I would actually participate this year, especially what happened those two weeks at the beginning of November… If you’re wondering about that, you can read my little update in the monthly playlist I released on Monday. Anyways, we are here now and for some odd reason I have developed a trend during Blogmas and I tend to do a simple recap of the previous year’s holiday posts. I’m still unsure why I started doing this, but it’s become part of my ritual for the first week of December; kind of like publishing a playlist at the end of each month, I guess.

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Why I Decided on 8 Days

For anyone who doesn’t know or understand what Blogmas/Vlogmas is, it is a theme in which a person releases a post or vlog (video log) of everyday up until Christmas or sometimes the day after, it just depends on the person. I have blogged every day once and I will never do it again, because I felt so stressed out, so when I wrote this post, I was explaining my need to shrink the timetable just a bit with only eight days. This year, I am doing seven posts, but it could also change depending on my end-of-the-year posts too.

The Christmas Song Tag

This is another annual thing for me to do for Blogmas, and that is at least one Christmas-y tag. I actually love doing them every year, mainly because I am curious about if my answers will change as much as the year before, and since we’ve added a new member into our family, I’m sure that’ll change it up a bit.

I’ve done this tag multiple times over the years, but I think the oldest is from 2014, and again, I enjoy reading about what I had said in that post and compare it to the others. As much as I like this tag in general, I would love to see if anyone’s created any more Christmas tags; I have been tempted to combine all of the tags I’ve done in the post and come up with an ultimate Christmas tag, but I haven’t made my mind up yet, so we’ll have to see what happens next year.

Festive and Winter-y Baby Names

Last December, I decided to do something different and share some of my favorite holiday theme baby names.

Back in 2020, I spent the entire month creating new and festive name combinations on my second Instagram page, and it was really fun, but extremely chaotic as I was posting six name pairings each day. I will say, my page looked gorgeous, and I did feel proud for committing to both Blogmas and the names. I definitely don’t recommend it, and I will not be doing that again but kudos to anyone who is multitasking like that in 2022.

So, when I go to 2021, I knew I couldn’t do that again, so I thought of a different route and honestly, this was so much better! I was able to add more names and discuss which names represent this time of the year the best.

Holidays Reads & TV

I spend a lot of my time on Instagram and scroll through a lot of bookstagrammers and I always see various holiday-ish books that actually sound interesting, but I am very difficult to please when it comes to stories based around Christmas, I mean, there’s a reason why I have never been a fan of the Hallmark Channel. I actually pick that channel and Lifetime out of my guide once November comes around because they drive me nuts!

However, I finally talked myself into listening to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickins, and I think I may end up making it part of my tradition, kind of like what I do with Halloween; I like to watch the music video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” on the final day of October. I’ve done it every year since 2009. This year, I wasn’t able to watch the film but I listened to the actual song before I left for the nursing home, and I’m saying that counts for something!

Anyways, I also shared my favorite short Christmas cartoons. They were not produced by Walt Disney, but they are as old as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1939) and I’m happy to know I can actually watch them without having to use YouTube because that’s what I’ve been using since 2015, but now they’re on Prime Video as a collection, and I’m really enjoying having them so easily again.

Wooden + Dot Ornaments

I love giving and making gifts for people. I’ve done a lot of seasonal crafts over the years but being able to do them for Christmas is different for me as a person. I like being able to make someone else special for a day, and Christmas is the perfect holiday to do that. As I continue to do these wooden ornaments, the list of people increases and unfortunately can knock off others, and honestly, I hate leaving certain people off the list, but I can always add them to my 2023 list. I was literally rereading these paragraphs and realized I sound an awful lot like Santa Claus…

Best Songs of 2021

One of the main reasons why I keep track of all of the songs I’ve enjoyed over the past year, and it actually makes things so much easier in the end. I like to be almost done writing the December post before I bring everything into one playlist. It is also helpful to wait until Spotify’s unleashed their end-of-the-year collections as well. It gives you a better idea of which artists, bands, genres, etc. you were loving the entire year.

The list for 2021 is actually one of my favorites. Despite my best efforts, not all of my yearly playlists end up being favorites in itself, but I’ve had a couple of them before, the first was 2016, the second best is from 2019 and this one. I am excited to see what I can do with the best songs for 2022 later this month.

If you would like to check out my 2021 wrap up playlist, you can click here.

Top 7 Books of 2021

For the final post of Blogmas content, it is usually my top favorite books of the year. In 2021, I decided to write about the Top 7 books, and I find it odd that I completed my original goal of 30 books and managed to shrink my favorites list to only seven. I probably wanted to make things easier for myself, especially doing this post in general, and I can understand my need to do it that way, especially if I wasn’t in the mood to do any more Blogmas stuff after Christmas.

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Next Monday, I will officially start my Blogmas content, and my schedule will continue as normally, a new post will publish around 7:30am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I am hoping to finish before Christmas arrives and relish in those final two weeks of December before putting my sights on what I want to do in January. So, I truly hope you find something that you enjoy and if you’re a new blogger, looking for advice or ideas to do for Blogmas, I hope you are inspired to spread your own Christmas spirit onto your platform.

How do you feel about Blogmas and/or Vlogmas? Whose content are you most looking forward to this year?

November Playlist

Hello!

Since I’ve been kind of turning these monthly playlists into mini wrap ups, I figured this was the perfect way to talk about October and why exactly I was staying at a nursing home for a bit.

So, let’s rewind back to around August as it was the month where everything went up a notch.

My dad has a lot of health issues, but at the end of summer, we started noticing he was losing the usage of his right arm. He has had many MRIs and X-Rays in the past few years and the majority of his trouble areas are in and around his neck and spine. He has broken several discs in the past, but now as he ages, he’s continued to add more arches and pains. He has been told to have surgery since I was a kid, but he’s always turned them down for risking his ability to take care of me. If you’ve ever met my dad, you know how stubborn he is, so you wouldn’t expect anything less from him, especially for something like this.

Four years ago, when my mom had her surgeries, I made the decision to staying in a nursing home while she was there in the hospital and recovering, and since she is a nurse at a really great residential home, and at the time where my nana was living, the idea was simple but most importantly practical for everyone involved. I would spend my week there, before going to stay at my sister’s on the weekend. I was having my mom’s co-workers and friends basically take care of me like the rest of the people there. I was even allowed to get my hair cut by the hairdresser there! Honestly, I had a lot of fun spending time with my nana and the other ladies, and of course playing bingo too!

Fast forward to now, the idea of dad having surgery and knowing how indeed stubborn he truly is, made my mom and I make that crucial decision of staying at the nursing home for two weeks. We had made this decision pretty quickly, because we knew if we had it planned out well enough, my parents could essentially forget about me, and focus on dad’s surgery and recovery. We figured it out within a month or maybe less than that, because we discussed it quite a bit beforehand, so it’s difficult to narrow down the timeline.

This time was completely different.

There were things that I expected like my tiny calf muscles screaming at me during the first week because I was rolling around in my wheelchair the entire building, and like my dad, I am also stubborn and rarely asked for help, because I actually liked it. It was when I was pushing my folded bed in breakfast table with some stuff I had I would need for that day, down the massive hall that I was actually allowing myself a break and had someone carry it to my destination, which was always the activity room.

What we didn’t intend on happening was the edge of my knees, all the way down to my ankles and toes would become very swollen. I have never experience this before, it actually freaked us out because my feet felt like balloons and looked like they were going to explode at any moment. After that, I was put on a water pill and gradually it helped with the swelling, but I would still have some issues around the ridge of my feet, especially on my left foot, which makes sense considering I was using that foot to push myself around, but yeah that was a fun little surprise.

I was only supposed to stay there for two weeks, but I kept having the date to go home pushed back… twice.

My nana had moved up north with my aunt and uncle a few months later, so I would be alone this time around, and I’ll be honest I was worried about being on my own, but I was in really good hands too, as the longer I was there, the more I was making friends with the other residents too. This was my first time having a roommate since 2002, and she was a lovely lady and we sat together for meals, and we would go to the different activities. The first I participated in were these weaving pumpkins. They gave us a wired outline of a pumpkin and there were two different types of yarn to us, i went with the skinnier and darker orange whle my roommate went for the Cheeto-like yarn as it was bright orange and very puffy!

Besides doing lots of crafts, they played a lot of games too!

The first full day, not only did I weave a pumpkin, but I played Screamo for the first time ever. What is Screamo you say? Well, like my dad said, it’s like Yahtzee and it is, you have two dices and a sheet with the numbers 1-12 including 12 chips or coins, and the group goes around and rolls the dice and whatever it lands on, like a four and five which adds up to a nine, so you can cover those numbers or eight and one, or just the nine, but it is smarter to get rid of the 1 first as it can be tricky to get it as you cover the others. Once you’ve covered the entire board, you scream it out and win. It is easy to follow and would be really great for kids who have trouble with math, and you could switch it up to subtraction and maybe even multiplication if you feel like getting really creative with it.

Three weeks after I came home, I introduced it to my four-year-old nephew, and he literally kicked my butt in three games. However, I will overlook the loses as he thoroughly enjoyed himself and to me that is even better than winning any game with him. Speaking of which, I will be doing a post about fun games to play during the holidays for Blogmas, so keep an eye out for that coming soon.

I was able to spend my birthday there, it wasn’t planned as I was supposed to come home that weekend, but my gal pals really wanted to throw me a party and I thought it was too sweet to tell them no, so after playing Bingo, we had a party and my mom, sister, Nolan and Kimber came out to help celebrate it. I heard the “happy birthday” song three times and by the second time, where everyone in the dining room sang to me, absolutely terrified me, because I don’t like being the center of attention at all. I felt very loved, which was their intention of course, but again, totally out of my element.

The last day I was there was bittersweet as it was nice. I had a lot of people trying to keep me there, but I needed to go home too. While I was there for four weeks, I had missed my dad (he did come to visit me), Rumer, and the cats. My cat Stormy became fairly sick before I left, he’s been really snotty and his allergies really took hold of him, so while I was gone, I kept getting updates from my parents on him, and I enjoyed the pictures my mom would send me, but my ultimate favorite was this one. He felt good enough to climb up to the back deck, which wasn’t something he could do before I left. My mom was so proud of him she opened the patio door and allowed him to enjoy his lunch on the kitchen rug. He now has a bit of a head tilt, but he seems to be doing better. He has been coming up and meowing to us whenever we call him.

November was chaotic in those first two weeks. I had a really heavy time of the month and then on top of that, I either contracted food poisoning or stomach flu. We think it might’ve been the latter since my mom was also affected by it too, although, she wasn’t too bad, I definitely made up for her that’s for sure! Once I was through with both of them, the month started to perk up a bit. We had to have Thanksgiving two days earlier than usual; my mom tends to work on Thanksgiving, so we try to have it on Black Friday, but we had a conflict with other schedules, so we had it on Wednesday.

While I was in the nursing home, I ended up starting and finishing two books I found there. I read Murder on The Orient Express by Agatha Christie and The Duchess by Danielle Steel (the review will go out on Wednesday!) and I still have my third book which is, The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin. It is about Anne Morrow Lindburgh, who was the wife of Charles Lindburgh, but I actually haven’t been doing any reading lately, which is sad, but I read over 50 books this year so I’m not too mad about it honestly. I’m just not going to enjoy updating my stats on Wednesday because that is going to be a real bitch, but I think once I’m done with all of my blog work for the year, I will be able to get back into it again.

I have one more thing to say, since I wasn’t able to get everything done for my final installment of the “Garden Tour” I will be waiting until January to publish it. I am going into Blogmas content on Friday and will not have time to do anything with it for a while, so I just wanted to give you a heads up on it.

And now, I can finally give you the November playlist. If you would like to hear the rest of the playlist, click here

End Of The End by Blastoyz featuring Reality Test, UNSECRET and Krigare
Rise Up by 2WEI x Edda Hayes
Ghosts by Xandria
Hold Me, Help Me by Halocene
Vivien by Crosses
Wake The World by Epica featuring Phil Lanzon and Tommy Karevik
I Like It by Cardi B featuring Bad Bunny and J Balvin
Shut Down by BLACKPINK
Dark Sun by Ros Stephen x Power-Hus
Believer by Lea Michele
What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong
House On A Hill by Kamelot featuring Simone Simons

How was your November? What were you listening to?

DIY: The Dotted Piggy!

Hello!

Since discovering dot art back in 2019, I’ve felt like my journey with art in general is on another level. I absolutely love the feeling of creating something new and being at peace with the imperfections that come with it. After I finished with my Christmas projects, I wondered how long I would last until I had the itch again, and if you are wondering, it was only three months.

We have three chances a year to go up north to visit with my family, the first is around my nana’s birthday and I tried looking for little figurines or plush stuffed pigs on Amazon and Wal-Mart, and I just couldn’t find anything that stood out the most and I searched for a fairly long time and became frustrated that there were more things for guinea pig lovers than the pink ones… I don’t remember what pushed me into creating something for her, but once I had the thought, I just went crazy with the number of ideas to do with them.

I found this unfinished wooden cut out of a pig face on Wal-Mart’s website and I just thought the whole thing had enough sass to it that I knew everyone would love too. While I was went looking for the pig, I ended up finding a sea turtle design and thought it could be a great idea to do for my Aunt Laurie and Uncle Mike because they love beach themes, but my aunt really loves turtles too. I worked on the projects at the same time, but I will not be sharing my thoughts on it until the end of June, which is my aunt and uncle’s birthday month.

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What you will need:

• Canvas – you can use whatever you can find, whether it’s wood or ceramic.
• Acrylic paint – I use DecoArt paints and the colors I used were pink, red, black, and white.
• Dotting tools – you can purchase a set of tools online, but you could use anything in various sizes like a pencil, Q-Tip, toothpick, etc.
• Paintbrushes – this is totally an option, as I only used it for the base coat and the tongue, but you can definitely dot these spaces or leave it out entirely.
• Damp towel or baby wipes to was wash your hands/feet and anything else that has accidently paint on it…

Links:

Unfinished wooden pig (similar) | Dotting tools of various sizes | DecoArt Acrylic Paints: Black, Royal Fuchsia, and White

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One of the main reasons I adored this pig was because of the outline around the ears, eyes, mouth and nose. I was worried that once I started doing the first layer of paint, they would disappear but for the most part, they stayed visible for me to do the black dots, but we are getting a heard of ourselves, so let’s rewind a bit.

The canvas itself was the perfect size, as it wasn’t too big or too small, one that even the big bad wolf would probably enjoy. I started off painting on the floor of my room and I went with a very light shade of pink; since I didn’t have the right color in my collection, I had to make it with my neon pink and white acrylic bottles. I put the pink in two slots in my palette and added the white as I heard (and tested it!) this worked better to blend and create the right hue of the paint and it covered the entire thing, but my thought process for the overall design was to add dimension between the cutout and dots. I actually went back and forth on the base coat because I thought it was too much but I’m very glad I decided to do it because it added an extra oomph to the whole thing!

The next day, I finally got started on how I gave her some personality, and again I was so sure how this part was going to turn out at first. I am still learning how to follow a line while making my dots. I made simple small designs for when I did the Christmas tree and Rudolph ornaments but since I only had to follow the slits of its features, I figured it would be easy enough for me, and thankfully it was and to make things even better for me, I used one of my smaller tools, they are really great with details, especially tiny ones and I have realized through doing this project, I am definitely confident creating each section. At first, I was going somewhat outside the lines so that I could still see everything but then as I went on, I managed to cover up most of them with the black paint.

I hadn’t even completed the mouth before I was falling in love with the overall result. The black really set a tone to the plain pink base coat and you could see we were both loving the magic coming to her. I tried to not get so confident that I would be taking risks and messing up the whole project, but I also couldn’t hide my excitement either!

Once I finished the outlines, I left it to dry for about a day. I gave myself time in between each layer so I wasn’t choosing over the comfort of my body and what I wanted else I could do to the pig. I was also in a brand-new position as I wasn’t on the floor anymore, I decided to use my new little table I got for Christmas, and I was really unsure how my body would react and definitely didn’t want to overdo anything either so once I started experiencing some pain in my lower back and eventually my knees, I knew I would need to stop at some point. Whenever this happens, of course I become upset with having to stop in the middle of a project but knowing my body’s limits is a very important. If I continued to push myself, I could possibly make mistakes and would be frustrated with myself about that as well.

When I went back to it, I was conflicted about how much I really wanted to use the dots. I really love the contrast between a regular painted section and a very populated dot area, and I knew it even before I did the ears of how cool that effect would be to the overall design. So, I decided to paint the tongue red. It would be another smaller part so as long as I didn’t go off my original idea. After I completed it, I went forward with doing a dotty inside of the mouth, and I am still not 100% happy with how it turned out, but I think adding the hot pink larger dots on the rest of the pig helped because the color contrast between the lighter pink of the background and a milder shade of the same paint really made it pop. Once I went around the chin with those big dots, I literally couldn’t contain my excitement for how cute she was becoming and I had to show her off quite a bit to my folks but also had to shield her away from my family–especially my nana, because she knows that anything pig worthy goes to her automatically! A part of me wanted to show her but I knew how important it was to reveal it face-to-face, so I kept a very big secret for at least a week and a half, which is impressive to my standards!

When I finally finished with everything, our plan was to glue or tape down a cute pink bow around its hairs, it had three little semi-sharp “hairs” poking out on the top of its head and decided to include some dots on them, in case we didn’t have time to put it on her, but in the end, it turned out we didn’t have a way of making sure it stuck there forever so I’m very glad I put dots around that section anyways!

As of right now, they haven’t found a way to put it up in my nana’s room. She has a big room, but she has a lot of decor, photos, and posters all over her walls, so finding the right placement for it is going to be a little bit tricky. While we were up there, I was even trying to find a spot for it and I had a difficult time with it, so good luck Mike!

I hope you enjoyed this “little” how to do post. The second post will be going out in June, so we have some time to find more projects in the meantime!

Nolan’s Birthday | 10 Gift Ideas Under $100

Hello!

I am so excited to do this post, I actually wanted to do this last year but I wanted to make this more for other families who have a little boy around Nolan’s age range so what was suppose to help our families, can help everyone! You can purely look at this as a wish list for him but you could look at this as ideas for Christmas too, although most of the items are under $20–I didn’t plan on that, it just happened!–I went for stuff he would love for the summertime. Every item I talk about in this post is subject to change, but even if some of them do, it would still be under $100 on Walmart’s website!

Nolan has a lot of interests, and according to his babysitter and OT, he is very smart and has a good imagination! He is very busy but he loves to get cozy with his blankets, books, stuffed animals and watch movies. And like every other little boy in the world, he loves anything wheels… so he has over 300+ cars, tractors, trucks, and a single toy wheelchair that is affectionally dubbed “Meghan’s” everytime he finds it through the basket at our house! I tried to remember the main things I knew he would enjoy the most for when I was creating the post but I think it could work for any kid in his age range too.

Blippi: Let’s Look and Find Book – $8.08

This year, I think, the theme will be about Blippi because he is utterly obsessed with this dude! He doesn’t watch him at our house so I’m not exactly familiar with him but I knew if I didn’t add anything Blippi related I’d probably get in trouble with him, so I was very happy to find this book. To me, it looks like this generation’s “Where’s Waldo” and/or “I Spy” and I think he might like it for that because he’s always had an eye for finding things – when he was a baby, he could find holes in things like clothes you didn’t even know about at the time!

It actually looks pretty hefty which considering the rest of his boxes, he might be ready for these thicker ones now.

Pinkfong Baby Shark Ultimate Sticker and Activity Book – $5.88

Last Christmas, when he went to visit Brandon’s family, he came back with a sticker book that he thoroughly enjoyed and when I saw that they had one of Baby Shark, I thought it was too cute to ignore. Nolan enjoys singing along with the songs and even has Aunt Meg doing the hand motions with her feet (thankfully they’re very easy for me to do!) but nothing is more funnier than dad trying to dance and Nolan getting mad at him for not doing it the right way!

Marvel’s Superheroes Board Box – $10.47

Nolan is starting to fall in love with superheroes, and so far he likes Marvel characters. Although at first he was saying “Batman” but now he is obsessed with the Hulk and Spider-Man.

There is a show all about the Hulk and his mates on Disney+ and I think he started watching it with the bigger kids at the babysitters during the week because we didn’t introduce it to him. I want to show him like X-Men but I also don’t want to scare the little dude either so I’m trying to hold off on as much as possible.

So while looking through Walmart’s website I saw this box full of books about Marvel’s characters, even I became a little jealous! The site says there are 12 books included and considering how cheap the entire block is, that’s really nice! They also have Pixar, Paw Patrol and Frozen blocks as well.

Large Plush Sloth Toy – $10.00

Besides his Hot Wheels cars, he also has a large amount of stuffed animals. He has two of my Husky pups in his toy hamper at our house but he also has Mimi’s cow she use to have on the kitchen table too! So, it was only right to include another one of his favorite animals to the mix, which is a sloth. There were a lot of different sloths but this was my favorite because it looks so cuddly and cute. He really would love it to pieces!

Bubble Play 64oz – $14.99

Another one of his favorite things in the world is bubbles! He has always loved bubbles since he was itty bitty, and it is so nice to see that he loves them so much because it is something that I still love too, so I thought it would be smart to include it in the list too.

M&M Character Candy Case – $3.00

This one might be a little weird, but for the past six months, Papaw has been giving him a handful of M&Ms from his secret stash and for a while, it was the only chocolate thing he would eat, but we think because they were covered in various colors that he wouldn’t see it as chocolate because everytime we tried to give him ice cream with chocolate syrup or chocolate chip cookies, he’d stay away from them.

I was hoping to find M&M plush toys but I think I will have to go on Amazon for that but then I saw these and I was like, I think he’d enjoy having the figurines up in his room.

Melissa & Doug’s Wooden Train & Race Car Paint Kits – $13.40

One of things that Nolan has been really interested to do is paint! I have to thank his occupational therapist for this because he use to hate having his hands dirty, and considering his mommy and I use to spend most of our childhood digging along the sidewalk of our nana and papaw’s house was very odd. Thankfully, he doesn’t mind getting a little messy now!

What I really liked about these kits is that they are wooden, so they are sturdy (hopefully) enough to last through Nolan’s playing and can be packed up and stored somewhere after he has grown out of them too. I just thought they would be cute to do with him or he could do them with his parents!

Garbage Truck Toys – $30.88

I have not included a lot of cars and trucks into this post because he has his fair share of these items already but if you are looking for something that could keep your child happy with multiple toys in one present, this might be your ticket for a lot of excitement!

It has over 10 trucks included and they range of various careers like construction to farming, and I thought it was pretty impressive honestly. It definitely could be worth the $30 in the end, you never know!

Play Food – $9.97

My nephew still loves his play kitchen, unfortunately, it didn’t come with food and for some odd reason, he still doesn’t have any after two years! I feel bad for him because he still “makes” us things and will use his actual snacks in the dishes so I feel like the poor kid needs something and thankfully, they are incredibly cheap on the website so that’s why I decided to include it on this post.

Melissa & Doug’s Vehicles 4-in-1 Wooden Jigsaw Puzzles – $9.79

Another thing that he really likes are puzzles. My mom bought him this little tin of puzzles for Christmas but nothing is in English nor did it come with an actual picture of how it was suppose to look like after you finish! We’ve had to hide it from him because we still don’t know what to do with it.

Once I started searching for puzzles, I was very careful as to what I was looking for, easy for all ages and most importantly for the adults, the main language is English! And I found Melissa and Doug brand of puzzles and I thought these would be perfect as you get more than one puzzle and again, they are wooden so they will definitely last longer than any of puzzle piece I think. And of course, they are of various vehicles, so I think we have a winner here.

I really hope you find this post helpful for you, as at this moment, I will not be doing a post for toddler girls but in the future, if you would like me to do it for Christmas, please let me know and I will consider the option. For anyone who have used these products in the past or present, I would also like to hear your thoughts (both good and bad!) and will relay the information back to my family.

If you could, what is one item on this list that you would purchase for their little man?

DIY | M&M’s Pumpkins

Hello!

The last time I did a post about pumpkins was in 2017! So, that was two years before my sister had my nephew–technically, she might’ve been pregnant with him if I remember correctly! Anyways, we were hoping to have all three of them over to have a big painting party but between the COVID scare and work schedules, it didn’t end up happening.

For once, we finally decided on a theme for the pumpkins. We have always wanted to do that, but then after some time we would forget about it and end up on doing our own thing. However, my mom was looking through her Facebook memories and found a photo of around six pumpkins painted with various M&M faces from the commercials, I shared this with her back in 2015, and I’m so glad I did because this was a perfect idea to do with our front stairs display, but of course we had to do ours differently.

Things you will need:

• Pumpkins – various size is optional
• Old newspapers
• Brushes – sponge & regular
• Paper plates
• Acrylic paint

The last time we did this, our cats were fairly distracted and didn’t even come around to the front porch to rub up on us, so it was a pleasant surprise that I think all three of us enjoyed. For this project, we started off on feeding the cats before going outside to start and I think that was our issue because they eat quickly and if they know someone is on the porch they think we brought out even more food for them! They act like we don’t feed them at all and we do, trust me!

I want to say within five minutes of coming outside to get into a comfortable position, and actually begin to paint the pumpkins, all of the cats came up to the porch to find giant orange things stealing their attention. Honestly, they behaved like good kitties throughout the entire thing.

This was a two day project, as the first my mom and I just painted on the base coats on the five pumpkins we had, and unfortunately my mom didn’t take my advice to purchase the primorary colors in medium size bottles, because it is really easy to mix the colors with acrilyic paint. As I mentioned above on the things you’ll need, your pumpkins can be in various sizes but you also need to keep in mind about the size of paints you have too. We had somewhat larger ones with small tubes of paint, so we ran out of some colors quicker than we expected to; which is why I heed this caution to you as I do not want you to be stuck with one color and find it run out before finishing the entire surface. We had to do this with our blue pumpkin. It started out with a bright blue but the next time my mom went back with a darker color for the bottom and she wasn’t very happy about the contrast in the end.

In order to cover the entire pumpkin with paint, we used the large sponge brushes. I really enjoy using these types of brushes because since they are sponges, they can absorb quite a bit of paint so you don’t necessarily have to go back and get more on the tray, but I also like them for the fact they are easy for me to grip and move around the object. I ended up painting three out of the five pumpkins while my mom did the other two and the bottoms of mine because I can’t keep my balance and paint at the same time.

The really cute part happened the next day, after we left them outside to dry fully, my dad really fall in love with the red one so he decided to come into my room later that day to create a face for the pumpkin. He made his very animated and everything had to be perfected but unfortunately he was only able to do that one, while the next time my mom and I went back to them, we just freehand the faces with a sharpie. I thought this would be easier so to give us some kind of guide to what the faces should look like, and I’m glad we did it this way and because it was helpful to us.

After my mom finished her pumpkin: the only girl and green pumpkin. (which turned out really cute, but I think we overestimated the size of the pumpkin because the whole face is so small compared to the rest, but like I told her, everything is a trial and error; we learn from previous “mistakes” and move on. If we had decided to keep the letter “m” underneath the faces, I think we might’ve liked it a lot more, but really it was not only her first time doing freestyle, she also exercised that she does have some patience stored within her. Honestly, both of my parents have expressed that they don’t have any patience at all, but yet they really took their time to get their ideas in order. It was a lot easier to convince my mom that she didn’t need to be perfect with it than dad, because for us we got through our pumpkins faster than he did and he also became very messy too!

In his defense though, he not only went off a totally different picture we did and on top of that, everything was bigger and since he likes everything to go right, it was very critical of his handiwork. Since we only gave faces to three of the pumpkins, I was next on the latter and I think I mirrored what each of my parents did with their pumpkins. I kept myself contained in my mind and thoughts but I really attempted to find a medium to both of them and I think I did a pretty good job after not painting a face for a long time.

As my dad was working on this lone tomato looking pumpkin, my mom was busy with creating the “M” on our final two pumpkins. Since she went back with the blue one, it hadn’t dried enough before she started on the white so on the picture you can kind of see how the letter blending into the background a bit, but thankfully she was able to add two coats on it so it is readable and personally, I think it looks cool like that. It is unique with the marbleizations of all three colors. The brown one also has a cool factor too, two of pumpkins had these great greenish veins going from the bottom to the top and unfortunately they were painted over with the red pumpkin but I guess mom thought it was neat too, so it almost turned out to look like a bowling ball in a way!

It was pretty fun and interesting to do a craft with my folks, especially since one has confessed that they are not a big fan of these types of things, but has painted quite a few pumpkins this month! After we finished our creations, my dad has made me a desk out of a Styrofoam so I can have an accessible table for my future projects. I am really happy that he didn’t make it before the pumpkins because I don’t it could take all of the weight of the some of them!

I think I am officially done with this post. I’m not sure when I will be doing another project, but when I do, you know I’ll try to put it on here for you. So, I hope you have enjoyed this crazy adventure that happened in the middle of October and here are the rest of the photos that were taken in the course of two days!

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Have you been able to do any type of DIY or crafty projects for Halloween or fall in general? It doesn’t have to be with paint like ours, but I would still like to see your end result. Send me your pictures through Facebook or Instagram please!