How to Turn an Old Shirt into a Pumpkin
Inside: Need something cute, quick, and easy to make for last-minute fall decor? Turn an old shirt into a pumpkin with just a few easy steps.
I know what you’re thinking–awww! Am I right? While I wish I could take credit for this idea, Emily sent the link to me from a website called It’s Always Autumn. With that inspiration, I took some old flannel shirt material, toilet paper rolls (yes, toilet paper), ribbon, and sticks from the yard and made a couple myself. (The ones pictured above.) But the small one? I had to improvise and so I can tell you how I made it. But, first, let me direct you to the link where you can find the instructions for these cute pumpkins.
Incidentally, you might be wondering why I don’t go ahead and include the project instructions here, but it’s not mine to give. So please support It’s Always Autumn by clicking over. Besides, it’s a cool website, and you’ll be glad you did!
To Make the Smaller Pumpkin
Truth be told, I figure this little cutie could double as an apple, too! Think red plaid material, and you’d have it. . . But back to the project. Again, I used old flannel shirt material. Thanks to Hubs, I have quite a stash of spent plaid shirts. All I really had to buy was green ribbon.
This is one of the quickest projects you will ever make! So are you ready?
You will need:
- a 9-inch square of your favorite material
- a piece of green ribbon, 1 inch wide by 3 or 4 inches long
- a stick from the great outdoors (I used a piece off a grapevine for this one.)
- a 2 1/2-inch cardboard tube (I used a leftover cardboard tube from a roll of wrapping paper, cut down to size.)
- 2 plastic grocery sacks for stuffing your pumpkin
- a couple of pieces of scotch or masking tape
Instructions:
Take your plastic grocery sacks and make them into a long “rope” (tie them or tape them together) for winding around your 2 1/2-inch cardboard tube. Start at the bottom, taping one end there, and wind the plastic sack around the cardboard tube. You want to make it thickest around the middle of your pumpkin.
Place your wrapped tube in the middle of your flannel shirt square and bring up each corner, tucking it inside the top of the tube. You may have to tuck and fold it a little to make it look more pumpkin-like.
Once the tucking is finished, place your stick (stem) in the center. I didn’t do anything special to fasten it inside, but feel free to do so if you’d like. Tie the green ribbon in a knot around the stick stem and trim the ends with a diagonal cut to resemble leaves.
Voila! You have a quick and easy decoration for your table or porch decor.
Do you have any quick and easy craft ideas to share? Tell us about it in the comments. We love quick and easy crafts!
Related posts:
My Top Ten Must-do Fall Activities
Make Our Simple Spicy Pumpkin Seeds
Posts from a year ago:
Get Started with Essential Oils: Advice from an EO Teacher
Road Trippin’, Fallingwater Inspired, and Other News Fresh From the Farm
Inside: Vacation all I ever wanted, visiting Fallingwater, and more memories from the Memory Maker. Check out all the latest news fresh from the farm.
Vacation All I Ever Wanted
Sometimes the road calls, winding its pointer finger, beckoning. Time to leave–but only temporarily–my Missouri home. See how the other half lives. Watching mile markers pass, reading billboards, seeing land so gorgeous it makes my heart swell. Listening to songs I knew in more youthful days, singing along if it suits me. Or not. Breathing in life with big gulps.
Once a year I need this. Putting comfortable routine aside to pursue a little adventure. It’s not much, mind you, but it works for me.
Maryland mountains, here I come. . .
Visiting Fallingwater
If you’ve ever admired the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, you have to see Fallingwater. To get to this secluded abode, you walk a quarter of a mile through woods and hills to a stream, and there, suddenly, a house appears as if from nowhere. That was Wright’s intent–to blur the lines between trees, water, rock, and home, as if the home had always existed in the landscape. Water is such a central theme of the place, as well as the natural surroundings. Rock quarried from close by is integral to the house design.
The story behind the building of the Kaufmann home is just as unique as the architecture. At that time Frank Lloyd Wright was not getting work, and many considered him past his prime. The times worked against him as well–the middle of the Great Depression–and as a result he actually lost commissions.
Then enters Edgar Kaufmann jr. of Kaufmann Department Store fame. He studies under Wright and becomes a fan, discussing Wright’s ideas with his parents, Edgar and Liliane. The Kaufmanns wanted a home built in the Bear Run area where they spent so much of their free time enjoying nature. While the Kaufmanns envisioned a residence in which they would have a view of the falls, Wright did one better and built a home directly over the falls to make Fallingwater one of the most remarkable architectural marvels of the twentieth century.
The particulars: Fallingwater is located in southwestern Pennsylvania, about 90 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh. Tours are daily, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., except for Wednesdays, and you can buy tickets through their website–$30 per adult, $18 per youth (ages 6 – 12).
We’d been wanting to go for years and finally got around to it this year. So glad we did. Definitely worth a visit!
For more information, click here.
More Memories from the Memory Maker
We’ve been doing this Maryland gig for the past five years now. My friend Patty hosts a writer’s retreat for her writing groups in beautiful Deep Creek, Maryland, and I help her put it together. We stay at a large vacation home called the Memory Maker with vaulted ceilings and windows extending that high with a view of the lake. (For my local friends, think Lake of the Ozarks transplanted to northwestern Maryland.) The kitchen is my dream kitchen with several ranges (not that I’d need that, mind you) and sprawling granite counter tops and a large central island which seats eight and still has a ton of room for food prep. And the dining room table, also with a view of the lake, is the perfect place for us writers to gather and discuss authors and stories and characters. It’s great fun and relaxing and you learn from other writers as well as lending some of your own wisdom. All the while eating lots of good food–the attendees each bring a main dish, appetizer, and dessert. Food buffet heaven, to be sure!
This year we did a ’round the table story, every person adding anything from one line to several, and, truth be told, I sucked at it. I am a writer who needs time to think when I write. Creating off-the-cuff is just not me. But that said, it was great fun, and the others were patient with me. This particular story had a mysterious man wielding a couple of chainsaws and happened to be a kitten wrangler of sorts. A couple of steampunk rabbits made an appearance in the story as well. . . Okay, you had to be there.
Deep Creek is a great place to visit, a wonderful place to unwind, reconnect, create, and dream. The mountains and lake are peaceful, restorative, and every year I take something with me when I leave.
But it’s always good to come home again.
Where do you like to travel? Tell us about it in the comments.
Related posts:
Sugared Plum Visions, Maryland Bound, and Other News Fresh From the Farm
Finding my Pace: Slowing Down to Enjoy Life
All Winding Roads Lead to Nausea
Posts from a year ago:
Coffee Love: How to Make Pour-over Coffee
How to Waste Time on a Budget
Inside: A humorous look at what happens when one woman decides to download a shoppers app to her smartphone.
*This post contains affiliate links.
Ibotta Adventures
Sometimes in life we find ourselves in a shameful place, wondering just how far we’ve sunk. How we could have ever let ourselves stoop to such lows. The other day I found myself in such a place. But let me back the truck up and explain. . .
Trying out my new smartphone–really new because my last cell had a QWERTY keyboard–it dawned on me that I could finally download one of those nifty shoppers apps that I’d been hearing about for years. Ibotta came highly recommended, so off I went to my Google Play store for a quick install. After a short get-acquainted session, I wanted to start earning some dough from actually buying dough. (Okay, I haven’t really been purchasing frozen doughs, but it was a clever way to make my point–grocery buying = money.)
Upon searching Ibotta’s featured products from my favorite stores–Kroger and Walmart–I was pleased to see that I had purchased some of the very same items. I’d been to my fave grocery stores several days earlier and kept the receipts. Now all I had to do was click on the product, scan my receipts, and start earning the big bucks.
The first match I found was from Kroger where I’d bought a healthy guilty pleasure (meaning said item, while healthy, wasn’t on current food plan, but I was treating myself). The item in question–Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Butter Blend, conveniently packaged in a single-serving packet. You simply knead (and in my case also need) the little packet, tear off the corner where indicated, and squeeze into an available receptacle. (Ideally your mouth.) But I tend to complicate things–at least when it comes to Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Butter Blend snack packets.
So after clicking my purchase, I noticed Ibotta wanted the bar code. Problem. I’d already consumed my snack. But I knew where I could find the package remains–in the trash. Only, remember how I mentioned a complication? Well, confession time, when I eat a packet of Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Butter Blend I, er, cut open the packet. Truth be told, I tend to mutilate the package because I don’t want to miss even one tiny bite. I scrape the inside of those babies down (you can actually get an additional teaspoon or so out of it). To my defense, have you ever tried Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Butter Blend?
Don’t judge.
Anyway, by the time I’m through with the little package, it’s always in several pieces. My hope against all hopes was that the bar code would be on the main section of the wrapper.
It wasn’t.
In fact, the bar code was in a couple of pieces. By this time Ibotta was concerned, asking me if I had any problems. They gave me the helpful suggestion of punching in the bar code numbers if the scan wasn’t possible.
Eureka!
So off I went, heading to my current nearly full trash bag to excavate. At first I gingerly removed papers and containers and trash until reckless abandon set in and I was up to my elbows in refuse. As you can imagine, tiny pieces tend to drift downward. Along the way I encountered butter papers and dryer lint, yogurt cups and meat trays–a veritable history of our eating habits over the past several days. Except for the dryer lint. We don’t eat dryer lint.
But along the way something happened. Call it a moment of clarity. Sometimes in life we stop, spurred on by desperation, and take stock of our lives. Arms plunged deep into the bottom of the bag I had one such moment of introspection. I could actually be doing other things to earn money. Like my day job, editing books. Working on my current project that was on my laptop waiting for me. Was it really that important to earn $2.50 for my first qualifying purchase of Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Butter Blend?
Heck yeah!
I wasn’t about to stop. I emptied that entire bag, and wouldn’t you know it the final piece I needed to be able to punch in my bar code was at the very bottom on the bag? With a silly grin spreading across my face, I eagerly typed in the numbers and watched my smartphone screen as the little dollar bills on my Ibotta app floated down.
Success!
A little older, a little wiser from my first encounter with Ibotta, I savored the moment.
Ibotta: To Download or Not to Download?
In all seriousness, I’ve had the Ibotta app for about a month, still working toward my first $20, and I’ve become a fan. Admittedly I’m not a huge shopper in general, and for a self-described homebody, I’m not on the go a lot. Recreational shopping is not my thing. That said, we all eat, and most of us find ourselves in the grocery store several times a month. If I’m purchasing something from the list, why not earn money?
Promoted items run the gamut of brand names, and I’m finding new products I want to try weekly. And promoted items are not limited to brand names, either. I like that you can earn money for staple items like eggs, bread, cheese, and bananas for any brand–if they are offering that promotion. For example, recently they offered a deal on the purchase of bananas, any brand.
Plus, you’re not limited to only groceries. Other categories include mobile (online) shopping, clothing, home electronics, beauty and wellness, pharmacy, restaurants, travel, specialty, convenience, and crafts and gifts.
What I like about Ibotta is that participating feels like playing a game, with new ways to earn, new products and challenges. They make it fun! I actually enjoy using my app. Sunday nights I spend time browsing grocery items on Ibotta while watching TV. (Currently watching The Munsters reruns as of late.)
To download or not to download?
Download!
Like to join the fun? Use my referral code, wctwpqu and get a $10 welcome bonus. Sign up for Ibotta here.
Do you use any shoppers reward apps? Tell us about it in the comments.
Related posts:
All Winding Roads Lead to Nausea (humor)
Posts appearing on the blog a year ago:
Mum’s the Word, Hundred-mile Man, and Other News Fresh From the Farm
2018 Decluttering Challenge, Day 7: Clothes and Shoes
Inside: We’ve reached the final day of our challenge–decluttering clothes and shoes. I’ve got this one in the bag–literally! While I’m not a clotheshorse, I think I can easily wrangle 25 items.
*This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you click through to make a purchase I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. View our disclosure policy.
Decluttering Clothes and Shoes
We’re at the final day of our decluttering challenge, and might I say a collective, “Whew!” It’s been eye-opening, it’s been enlightening, it’s been fun, but I’m glad it’s done!
But back to the challenge. Today it’s simply a matter of looking through my clothes and Hubs’ things. Last year I had quite a few items to part with, mostly because of bad purchases–buying the wrong piece of clothing because I needed to buy something for such and such event and I got it home, and, horror or horrors, it didn’t look right. (Yeah, I know, there is such a thing as a fitting room for trying on said clothes before leaving the store. I hate fitting rooms. . . ) Those bad purchases went for a clothing drive, which made me feel good about them in the long run, actually. But this year I was tapped out. I’m pretty much of a minimalist with my wardrobe anyway, and I hadn’t bought anything new for a while.
So, all that to say, I wasn’t sure what I could come up with for my last and final decluttering day.
What types of items might fit (pun not intended, but, hey, it works here) into this category?
- impulse purchases
- clothes someone else bought you that aren’t “you”
- clothes that no longer fit
- ripped clothing that actually doesn’t look fashionable
- outdated styles (you really don’t have to hold on to that peasant blouse until it comes back in style)
- old “comfort clothes” that you can read the newspaper through
- an overabundance of certain clothing items that might be useful to someone else
- old unmentionables
- socks without mates (unless you want to start a sock puppet theater)
- shoes that your pinky toe sticks out the side of
- three-inch heels because you no longer want to live dangerously
How Did I Do?
Fortunately Hubs pointed me in the direction of a file cabinet in which some of his old clothing was stashed. Neither one of us have any idea how the clothes got in the bottom of the cabinet–file that under mystery–but it yielded a bag full. Today I got rid of 25 items ranging from old socks, holey jeans, torn shirts and T-shirts, and other cast-off clothing.
No shoes this time.
Grand Total for the Challenge
On this our final day, my total for the week is 315 items–all to be thrown away this year. Yay! And the crowd goes wild!
So we’ve come to the end of our challenge, a little wiser, a little lighter. The great thing about this challenge is that you can do one again–simply rinse and repeat. I aim to collect these posts together for a decluttering resource for subscribers.
Until then, keep vigilant lest clutter invade your home!
Did you join me for the decluttering challenge or did you lurk? No shame for the lurkers. Tell us about it in the comments.
Related posts:
Announcing Our Decluttering Challenge! (Rules for the challenge found here.)
2018 Decluttering Challenge, Day 1: The Kitchen
2018 Decluttering Challenge, Day 2: The Spare Bedroom
2018 Decluttering Challenge, Day 3: The Junk Drawer
2018 Decluttering Challenge, Day 4: Paper
2018 Decluttering Challenge, Day 5: The Living Room
2018 Decluttering Challenge, Day 6: The Closet
Recommended resources from my bookshelf:
Organizing From the Inside Out, Second Edition: The Foolproof System for Organizing Your Home, Your Office, and Your Life by Julie Morgenstern
One Thing at a Time: 100 Simple Ways to Live Clutter-Free Every Day by Cindy Glovinsky