Spoonful of Imagination

Add it to a Family for Something Beautiful

Two-Minute Fall Decor

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Yesterday, I was admiring all the fall decor in Hobby Lobby.  Fall is my favorite season, and Hobby Lobby is my favorite store.  So, this was a really good moment in my day.  While staring at some really cute fall frames, I got the urge to buy one.  I checked the prices and didn’t want to spend $15 on a frame that was already %40 off.  I decided I would make my own!  This is what I came up with…

I literally grabbed a piece of wood I already had, three frames from the dollar store, three nails, and my hammer.

I was set to just tack the frames lightly to the piece of wood.  In doing this, it would be easy to pull the nails out every year and replace the picture with a more current picture and then nail the nails back in.  Right before I started hammering my frames on, I decided I wanted to spray paint them.

I spray painted them a burnt orange, with some paint I already had.  I looked at them laid out and decided I liked it and hammered them in place with one thin nail each.

The dollar store frames were perfect for this craft because instead of glass they had a thin clear plastic to cover the picture.  This allowed for the frames to be hammered in without the worry of shattering glass.  I had plans to go back and either paint, stencil, or use stickers to create a “Welcome to our Pumpkin Patch” message across the frames like this…

BUT, I fell in love with my new framed art and didn’t want to make it too “seasonal”.  I liked the rustic/fall look, but it also keeps my frame more versatile incase I want to use it at other times in the year.

It was so easy and quick!  You can do it!  Thanks so much for all of those that read about our family the other day!  I love sharing about things and people who I love!

Thanks for checking in!  I hope you are enjoying this change of seasons too and getting a taste for it in your weather and decor!

Linked up at : Fox Hollow Cottage and Southern Hospitality

DIY Wood School Calendar

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In preparation for starting to homeschool, we made a school calendar.  It is one of my favorite things in the house now!

We live in a fun 60+ year-old ranch.  Although we love our house, we don’t have any “extra” rooms.  Our school room is right in the middle of our living room.  I am so excited to be homeschooling, but I couldn’t give up my need to have a fun decor in this central room.  I decided to make a wood calendar rather than one of the laminated poster calendars found in most elementary schools.

My brother gave me this sign that he created out of an old wood pallet to start as my base.

What  a huge help it was to have the wood part done!  I decided to have the boys help me create the calendar, as it had lots of teaching opportunities.

We started by taping off the days of the week.  If it looks funny to you, it took me a while to realize it did to me too.  Yesssss, it was by accident that I gave eight days to our weeks.  OOps!  Hopefully, that is not telling of the kind of teacher I am going to be. 🙂 Sooo, we adopted that extra column into something cool.  

I spray painted it a light blue to give the background a little color.  The boys helped spruce it up…

I gave them about 7 or 8 bottles of bluish paints and let them squirt and drizzle the paint all over the calendar.

They LOVED it!

impatience

We are all working on growing some patience, and it was a hard lesson for me to model here for them.  I wanted to rip all that tape off just a few hours later.  It took over a day to dry enough for the tape to be removed, and even then it still had “gooey” parts.

We decided the “lines” to the “columns” needed to stand out a little bit more, so Caleb stained them for us.

I than tapped/screwed little hooks into each box for our number tags to hang on.  I liked this better than doing a velcro or tape system.

I might have gotten a few blisters while twisting and tightening those screws.  I moved the project inside and had another little helper.

We then found clip art pictures on the computer for some of our weather/season tags. The boys helped pick out the pictures.  We did a lot of printing/cutting and number prep.  We were than ready to laminate! I do have a laminater!  Best $20 we have spent in a while!  I may or may not be going crazy laminating everything these days!!

The boys might be equally as obsessed as me.  They come up with things daily we could laminate!

Do you remember my Creative Spot?  It has now been taken over by schooling tools.

homeschool corner

I am that homeschool mom who does the calendar with days of the week and months of the year songs.  We even say the pledge.  I am having a blast!

You see our “extra” column came in handy!  We post a bible verse for the month there, and we recite it during calendar time.  The boys pretty much have it memorized on week one!  The two brown tags are for writing things they are thankful for.  We talk about it everyday, but I will occasionally switch out writing them.  You see what my sweet Jeremiah came up with (all on his own too).  I don’t know if I will be able to erase that comment to write another.

We had some days that looked like both rain and sun this week :).

I know we have only completed our first week, but the calendar is my favorite activity so far!!

Thank you so much for checking out my Calendar!  I will eventually get back into a routine, after adjusting home from our trip and figuring out homeschooling, to get these Friday Project Spotlight posts actually posted on Friday!

I hope you all have a wonderful and relaxing weekend!!

Linked up at: Funky Junk Interiors, Southern Hospitality, Hip Homeschool Moms, and At the Picket Fence.