How I Decorate For Autumn!

Hello!

I bet you’re confused–it’s Monday but I’m not publishing a music playlist! I still think you’ll enjoy the change though, especially if you love decorating as much as me.

In September, I was able to get some fall décor for my room and I said towards the end of the post that I was going to hopefully show you where each item would end up, byway of a little tour. I’m not yet comfortable showing off my entire room, instead I’m just going to explain my way of thinking (or at least try to!) into how I wanted everything to look in certain areas, plus share with you how everything started out and the changes I made throughout the dreary season!

Let’s start with my door, because I have the only thing that has never changed places since it arrived to our house, and it is the pumpkin styled wreath that has faux berries, flowers, and leaves placed in the middle of the structure. It gives you a little sneak peek into what you will surely see once you go into the room.

I have really enjoyed seeing this wreath every day, and will probably be really sad to see it go once we get our Christmas decorations out sometime this week. As of now, I do not have a Christmas wreath and I don’t know if I will have one at the moment, but if I do find the perfect one, I’ll be posting it on my social media for you all to see of course!

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One of my favorite things about my room is that I have a space in between two of my large treasures that allows me to not only have a Christmas tree but a good size autumnal display as well.

My mom purchased this absolutely beautiful sunflower rug when we first moved in two years ago, because the rug next to my bed blends into the floor but when we transferred from the bed to the wheelchair or commode–because we tried both!–my feet were slipping and sliding all over the place! What was really funny about this, is that on the tag it says, “non-slip” and although the rug never moved, we knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to keep it there! The material is like velvet, so really fuzzy and soft but apparently not great for what we do in front of the bed, so it was moved by the window and would be used for decoration for all holidays.

I have loved only having one window, in my room,. In our old house, I actually had two windows, but I only used one because the other was covered with plastic to keep out the cold in the colder months.

The placement is perfect in many ways, if you pay attention to my “Three Good Things” on Instagram and Facebook in the evenings, you know how much I like to bird watch as I have quite a few bird friends that live in and around our backyard, but it is also the best backdrop for décor and even for my blog photos!

I have a translucent curtain with orange-y sunflowers all throughout; once I found it, I thought it would be different from having the normal thicker and darker shades of fabric and the latest addition are white cord lights all around the sides and front of it, which makes you feel cozy like instantly. I cannot tell you how happy I am when it’s nighttime and see the whole room illuminate in this warm glow and I feel so safe inside compared to how I felt in our old house.

Anyways, I have always wanted to decorate that area for the holidays. Christmas is easy because it is the perfect width to support a tree that’s both small and tall as you’ve probably seen in my posts last year. However, for autumn, I wanted to create a little oasis, that would blend in with the curtain, lights, and rug and thankfully I found some stuff that was perfect to showcase my love of fall.

When the stacked pumpkins arrived at our door, I knew that they would be perfect in the space in front of the window, but finding something that would separate them a little was somewhat difficult. I have another faux flower arrangement in a basket, and I’ve had this for years and have used it as props for blog posts but never had a place where they looked like that on purpose so I thought of putting it in between the pumpkins and placing other autumnal things around them. It took me a bit to arrange everything together, but I did get it all together where I thought I was happy with, but then within a week after taking my pictures of the finished project, I was given even more stuff to spruce up the piece again.

This is what it originally looked like for a good week and half until I changed most of the layout.

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So….

My mom went to work one day and sometimes, they do little games and she had won this beautiful plump black and white plaid throw pillow that is somewhat heavy to lift but has a nice design on the front: it reads, “Pumpkin Patch” in between a dark grayish truck full of pumpkins (my nephew is in love with the truck by the way!) and at the bottom of it, has the words “pumpkins, apples, and hay rides” and it is just the cutest thing ever! It doesn’t match anything in our living room, so mom instantly just gave it to me and I had it for one day before I came up with a brand new plan.

The day I worked on this, I was committed to take on the challenge of moving this pillow around and switching out various things by my window to make my vision happen. I kept my pumpkins the way they were, but moved out the flower arrangement and put the pillow in its spot. Now here was the tricky part. The pillow did not want to stay still once I got it in the right place. Thanks to the silky rug underneath it, all it wanted to do was slide down as I was moving everything around! It was annoying but I got through it in one piece! I ended up having to squeeze everybody together to make sure it stayed upright, and that’s why you’ll the pumpkins sitting very close to it.

The flowers I moved to the right side because on the other side I had another project that has taken me ages to finish, but it is very heavy and takes up quite a bit of room on that left corner so the only thing I had that could fit on that side was a witch figurine that my nana gave me a few years ago that has never had the best luck at finding the right home either, so it was amazing luck that everything worked great together and made the display even better than I had dreamed the night before!

And now I can show you the final result that is in front of my lone window.

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During the week my mom received the pillow, we went up north to visit with family for a couple of days, and my cousin Amy, her wife Danielle and their kids came over on the second day we were there and they brought these cute wood cravings in different Halloween-y designs for everyone to do together. Nolan painted the cutest pumpkins ever and my nana and I worked on my witch, I did the sides in brown while I painted the front in this purple-blueish hue and added a lot of white dots everywhere! Inside each craving are lights that are battery operated and mine flicker with multiple colors at once and even though I was slightly angry I added so many dots, it actually worked out great with the lights in the background. We placed it in front of the TV because I don’t have a bigger space for it, maybe I can come up with a better solution next year.

The final item to arrive and put up was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever encountered while decorating and DIYing!

As I mentioned in my haul, I absolutely adore the moon. I have always wanted something that was moon related in my room, whether it was a poster or banner, I didn’t care. However, I found out through this, that it pays to look at reviews before buying because it was a disaster!

When it arrived, we opened the package and it didn’t come with instructions so we relied on YouTube for help, which was fine! The next part was getting them attached to their pedant and this was really irritating both of my parents and what made things worse was we had three that broke upon clipping together and then on top of that, you have one side that is very shiny gold and the back is grey and dull which at first, it was okay, until you went to put them on the wall and they were facing the wrong direction.

We were going to put it underneath my TV, because the base and we were hoping that the gold line would be able to fit across the mantle. We had made that decision after my mom lost the long cord, and after finding it back in the box it came in, we were back to my idea that was having it hang above my bed and it does fit between the long section of the wall and thanks to the Command hooks, it was easy to arrange it like a theater stage curtain with a rounded effect. You could easily have the two markers but I saw an image on Pinterest that had a third hook in the middle so it makes that loop design on each side and I really loved it that way so that’s what we agreed on!

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Once we got it hung up on the wall, we kept it there for a bit before deciding on how to fix our next problem. The worst part of the whole thing, was ours had some type of red markings on at least four pieces! Since we were still painting pumpkins during this time, I was allowed to do a little experiment and use purple paint to hopefully solve our issue; and it happened to be the greatest thing because it didn’t matter if they were facing each other or not, at least they were one color. I painted 10 moon phases with two coats of a royal purple on both sides – while the middle moon was left out of the family day of painting and was only covered with one coat with the same paint. This one is more purple-y because of this decision but everybody is in agreement, it makes it look more unique because its the full moon.

Here was the before and after pictures of the moon banner!

In my mini haul, I said I had bought a throw blanket and a T-Shirt but I don’t have any photos of those things. I am hoping I will maybe do a OOTD for you but we’ll have to see what happens because December is coming and I have a lot of Blogmas and New Year posts to get up soon so I might have to do it on Instagram or something.

I hope you have enjoyed this post, and got a kick out of what goes on in my mind as far coming up with a plan and fixing issues while decorating my own room! Again, I have no plans for Christmas décor, but will definitely work on a post if I do get some things soon!

Did you decorate your house/apartment/bedroom for autumn? What was your favorite item? And what was your most frustrating piece to put together?

Music Haul | Pop & Metal

Howdy!

So I’m back with my second music haul post! Ironically, the day the first post went up, we went back to the Record Cellar and purchased the next batch of albums! I did not plan that whatsoever! It just happened.

Before I go too into this post already, while I was busy taking pictures of the CDs I bought I thought I’d attempt to do my own little header for this post using the materials I had for the whole thing! A CD, foam board, and different colored bandanas! So yes, that is my “footwriting” if anybody is wondering! I actually put three pictures of the banner in three ways and I had everybody on my Facebook vote. Everybody seemed to like this one the most!

I kind of talked my parents into taking me after I got my tooth filled at the dentist. I spent the rest of my Christmas money plus some that I raised while working for my nana! I purchased six albums! The first one I got, well technically I looked over at the new releases before we went to the back of the store, I almost bought MGK’s General Admission because I’d seen it there down at the bottom, it was in reaching distance, I should have went for it but I didn’t feel like explaining to my dad that I wanted to get a rap album. I would have heard about that choice the whole way home! I did finally get Adele’s new album though! I like sweet, melodic music I really do, but I found out that when I’m angry and want to sort of stay that way, it’s not smart to switch from heavy metal to a pop album. It was a total buzzkill! Despite this, the album is really good!

While my mom and dad were looking for music that they’d enjoy, my dad bought like two albums and had to listen to an acoustic album by Joe Bonamassa the whole way home, which by the way wasn’t that bad! Anyways, the other two albums I remembered in my head before my brain really did go blank. I had to order both Butcher Babies’ “Take It Like A Man” and Like A Storm’s “Became The Enemy” and I had to wait a week or two to get them because that was the week of the big snowstorm! So I had to not only wait to get my CDs but also my teeth fixed all in the same week! It was worth it though!

The next batch of albums I’m about to discuss were pure recommendations of the owner of the place. Like, I said my brain kind of went blank after I got the three I wanted (so I should have bought MGK’s album!) and Rick came up to me and asked if I liked Bullet For My Valentine and/or Of Mice & Men, which I do and I should have asked if he had anything by them! I’m pretty sure my medicine was just kicking in at this point! He suggested the band Myka Relocate new album “The Young Souls” and I have to say out of the three he offered, this was my favorite! Gosh, it’s so good! It kind of kills me though that I hadn’t even heard of them before! What’s wrong with me?! If anybody out there wants new(ish) rock music, this is thee band you need to hear!

The other two, I feel like one of them was meant for my dad and not me, even though I bought it! It’s from a band called Danielle Nicole and the album is called, “Wolf Den” It sort of has that bluesy rock that he’s been really interested in lately, like Joe Bonamassa! I tried to listen to it the next day and I couldn’t get past track three. The other one is a little interesting! It is in different packaging then the previous albums which makes me think it could be more of a demo? I don’t know honestly, I hardly ever see folded album cases unless they’re by unsigned or demo. They are called Mercury Rev or Red, I couldn’t tell by the packaging what exactly they were called nor could I find anything about them on Google/Facebook. Anyways, this album is very mellow, it sounds more alternative than anything else! I like that and it’s really not bad, I just wouldn’t buy it on my own!

After I told my dad that two of the six were “duds” and that he could have them, he got mad at me for not liking them or listening to them on Spotify. First of all, if I couldn’t find their band pages on Facebook, there’s a pretty guaranteed that I’m not going to find them on Spotify! He thinks I wasted money on purchasing them, but in ways I don’t see it that way. He can listen to it and have a complete outlook on them. I do see his point in a way, but I will take recommendations on different, new music. I just shouldn’t buy three of them at a time! That part I’ll admit was a little dumb, but I just can’t turn down everything. I have the ability to listen to almost every genre and I take pride in that, so I don’t necessarily hate myself for wasting my money on them.

So what do you think of my latest purchases? What was the last song or album you bought? How open are you in finding new music?

 

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Nail Polish Haul!

Last week, my parents and I went to Wal-Mart to get a few things, and I’m actually serious when i say “few things” too! The last time we went I hardly got anything for myself than besides gummi worms and two T-shirts, this time I went with full intentions on finding something that will keep me occupied during the days of the week at home.

I had it in my head that if I was REALLY desperate enough to just go ahead and buy paints (red, yellow, blue) and see what I can do with them. I’ve never been interested in painting! I hated doing it in school, even though I could hold a brush and do everything else, but there’s also cleaning off my feet and not getting paint everywhere! So instead, I got one of those fuzzy/velvet posters that you color in with markers and a deck of UNO cards. They say on the packaging of the poster that its “mistake proof” and I laugh everytime because its not true! If the velvet is very thin, it’s not going to help me from running off the design! I always lose whenever I play UNO. I finally talked my mom into playing me the other night and she thoroughly kicked my ass! I won two games, but she actually kept score – something that I didn’t know you had to do after finishing a round! We were only supposed to play til 200 points but we were tons of fun that she kept bumping up! We played for a whole hour and a half!

I’m not a huge girly-girl. I have my good days but it’s rare! I hate makeup on me, probably because I don’t exactly know what works for me and my skin tone. I also don’t like it because I can’t put it on myself, somebody else has to do for me and I just hate doing that! However, I can make an exception when it comes to nail polishes. I love doing other people’s nails! We went into the makeup/nail aisles of the entrance of the store. It was the last place we went into and I got six different colors of polishes! Whenever I have my mom or Blondie get me some nail polishes to store at nana’s house, they usually come back with glitter polishes! My nana and I actually despise the glitter polishes, mostly because they are a bitch of get off with the remover stuff! I find it hilarious that I bought six of them and yet I know I’ll only want my toe nails painted. I’m not much of my fingers painted like I used to, it’s difficult to get to them so I find it better just to do my toes instead!

I decided to do a haul of them. I was feeling very spring/summer-y and bought a mixture of bold and pastel colors! I think my mom and I had a little bit too much going through the lit rows of colored polishes. The first two are from Sally Hansen! I actually surprised myself because I bought a light pink shade and if any of you know me really well, you know I hate the color pink with a passion, but this one looked so cute and innocent. It’s called “Hardcore Party.” The green is more like a lime green, this was my mom’s least favorite of the bunch! She literally said “ugh” when I told her it was pretty and it is! It reminds of early spring, before all of the rain comes in and evolution makes the shade of the leaves to go darker. This one is called, “Limestone” which seems to fit it perfectly!

The next set is from Xtreme! These two are my more bolder shades of the group, especially this yellow! I’m actually in love with it, because it’s not like a light yellow, it’s got more of a gold-ish tint to it. It’s still very much a bright yellow, but it’s a bit darker too! It is called, “Mellow Yellow” and the blue one was my last purchase! I have been on a blue kick since last summer! I haven’t been able to get a blue in any shade since I let my friend’s daughter Katie do my nails last July! The blue isn’t like a baby blue like maybe I would have liked it to be, but it’s not boring either! It looks like the color of the ocean which is ironic since my sister has spent most of her week in Hawaii on board a cruise! So this might remind her of the ocean when she gets back! This one is called “Big Teal” and I love the name of this one don’t ask me why!

Before I became a blogger, I never cared to read the brand and since reading this off, I’ve been trying to think if we’ve ever tried any of them! Sally Hansen, yes we have!! The last brand is called Pure Ice and I’ve never used this brand before! The first one is like a peachy color, very, very light. I’m thinking about pairing it up with the yellow or green polishes! The picture is making it look more like an orange, but it’s not I swear! The other is another blue-ish shade! This one looks more minty to me than the teal one. It’s very pretty! Unfortunately finding any information about what the colors are called, hell even finding them on the Wal-Mart website was a freaking bust! Sorry about that! I’m hoping that everybody loves the colors and hopefully in the next month or so I can get some more! While we were in the aisles, there were rows of polishes empty, so I’m hoping next time they’re fuller and we have another fun time selecting new colors! By the way, all of them were less than $2 each!

Roll With Me: The Perfect Getaway/Alternative Fashion Haul

Have you ever looked out your cars windows and thought the sky ahead looked like fresh new painting? Have you ever looked at the ground that you were slowly passing by and notice that there were three shades of green? These are just two thoughts that came to me this afternoon as we were coming home from our little family adventure. It’s kind of funny that this even happened because it has done nothing but rain and storm for the past few days now. Weirdly enough, as we were on our way home it was actually raining! We literally got home just in time before the small storm came through. The sun has come out a few times and it made the day all that much better for us all. I like being out of the house, but being out of our hometown does something else too. It makes things even interesting to kind of hope not to run into anybody you know because you know if you do, your parents embarrass the living crap out of you. For me though, I’ve just learned to ignore those feeling of insecurity. They say that Holiday World is the perfect getaway, I highly disagree with that!

It’s absolutely hilarious that when my sister and I go shopping, we each have different styles and complaints about one another. We’re sisters, it’s normal to be like that! I mean, we don’t yell at each other for our clothes that we choose. However, when she calls herself fat that’s when I find the urge to yell at her because she’s not that at all. She’s very into the floral, light, and jeans fandom. Her favorite stores are Forever 21 and Charlotte Russe but we only went into Forever 21 this time around. Our normal stores we go into were the ones we actually never made it to them. The only store we went into that’s basically a tradition for my dad and I, we like to end our day by going into the candy store and finding sweet treats to rot our teeth with, and this time we got to expand our tastes. He let me get chocolate covered pretzels this time around and I’m proud to say they did not melt on the way home. Just don’t ask me about the sour fruit roll ups, because I have no clue if they made it or not. I think the trip all around was pretty successful, between thinking we weren’t going to go when I got up this morning since it was cloudy as crap. I have been working with my nana doing odd jobs for her and basically spent $70 worth of stuff in literally two stores!

Now to talk about what I got, I wanted to put it together with another thing. The ladies (Mel and Michele) that run Ketchup With Us are doing a lists theme for the whole month of June! So I decided to incorporate what I bought at the mall into this little thing. So it’s a two-for-one deal in a nutshell! The two stores that I went into and bought stuff was at Hot Topic and Spencer’s. I almost bought two different floral leggings at both Tilly’s and Forever 21. I am LOVING these floral designs especially the sunflower and daisy designs. The only downfall is I have nothing that would go with them than a black shirt. At the end of our day, I asked my mom how much money I had left and we literally right by Tilly’s again and I was just tempted to go inside and buy them but considering I only had $3 left, I knew there wouldn’t be any way that I’d ask my parents to pay especially since they were definitely done walking for the day. So I didn’t get those leggings and this is probably the first time ever that I didn’t buy any leggings at all. Yeah, even I was surprised!

I’ve been really into the band Of Mice & Men for about six or seven months now. For anybody thinking in their hands right now, yes I went into Tilly’s to see if they had any Austin Carile shirts in the store. They unfortunately didn’t, but while we went into my ultimate favorite store Hot Topic, my main attention was to find Of Mice & Men shirts and they had a LOT to choose from and I was excited! Since they were having a sale I bought one and got another one whatever percent off. Whenever my mom went up to pay I decided to go wait by the door to make sure I could get out without tipping anything over. My mom came back and told me that the cashier wanted to show me something. She showed me the small tattoo of the “&” symbol and I was SO happy because as soon as she saw my reaction she started telling us about how much fun seeing them, Bring Me The Horizon, Issues on the American Dream Tour. She said that she had a hard time containing herself around the younger girls that were fangirling uncontrollably. I could literally live in that place and just talk to her and listen to the amazing music that was playing.

While my sister was in the middle of shopping at her favorite Forever 21, I’m sorry but every time I go into there I always wish that I had dried mud on my tires just to create a little something to take away the damn brightness of that place. It is absolutely too girly in there for me. So my dad came in to take me into Spencer’s. I like the clothes in there mostly the music tees and graphic tees covered in skulls and flowers. We did find the mother load of different Sons Of Anarchy stuff. I was very tempted to buy the Jax Teller blanket I am not going to lie! I ended up finding the jewelry part and was memorized with all of the skulls and gothic stuff that I could just stayed in that area all day if it wasn’t for the stuff on the opposite side of us. I ended up buying a small pack of different black and silver bracelets and when we found out that they were having a sale too, I ended up getting the necklace that I pointed out to dad before we found mom. It looks very gothic and considering years ago I would never wear black, anything with skulls or anything else that was related to the gothic style just smacks me right in the face every time.

1.) This was the first one we found and I like the song “You’re Not Alone” a LOT! So I had to get this one just for the song and what it represents to me. To buy this top click on the image!

2.) This was the second shirt and I totally forgot to feel the symbol for my hands as they are very sensitive to different textures especially anything with glitter. It’s got gold glitter and the picture doesn’t do it justice at all. If you want to buy this top, click the image!

3.) FIVE bracelets in one small little package. Not a bad deal honestly. After we paid for them my mom was concerned that they won’t stretch around my ankle but they do! Thank god! Sorry but I couldn’t them on the website!

4.) This beautiful piece was the first to really catch my eye. I saw a few like this one on different sites and I’m glad I found one like them in the store. I love the black rose and the thorns a lot. If you want to buy this piece, click on the image!

For just the heck of it, I’ll even share a song from a band that I have never heard of until today while we were in Hot Topic. The band Chelsea Grin was playing in the store just as we were about to leave and I was seriously headbanging throughout the whole damn song. I literally told my mom that when I got home I was going to put it on my Spotitfy playlist. As soon as I got home, it was the third thing I did and I even liked and added a few others into my rock/metal playlist too. I always find a good song in the different stores I go into, but Hot Topic always has the best music playing. Sorry!