I’ve caught a little bit of the Halloween/Fall decor bug, all thanks to Aunt Vicki. She sent me an email with a great blog that I’d never seen before. Which led to a few more blogs that I’m now obsessed with and so now I’m heading down this Halloween decorating path, and honestly…Halloween is my least favorite holiday. Imagine when Christmas hits.

So, we made little mini monogrammed pumpkins inspired by Brown Paper Packages (LOVE her blog name!) today for our mantle…

See Nana’s handiwork in between the pumpkins? We’ve been getting a card every few days for the past two weeks. The big question before the last card was, will it spell “Happy Halloween” or just “Halloween?” Very clever, no? I have a great idea for the cards when we get the final piece of the puzzle. I am so in love with the “A” one. The Frankenstein is just too much.

Anyhow, yes. We did little pumpkins for us, and a few others for the neighbor girls, and still a few others to give away as gifts.

And then, I stupidly showed these ridiculously cute bats to Ad’s teacher. Uh huh. As you might have guessed, we made bats in Ad’s class last week. 30 bats later (I didn’t get a photo of all of them!!), I still have hot glue burns on my thumbs, but they were a definite hit. Such a cute idea.

(Photo Credit: BabyCenter – Click for instructions)

And other than those little guys, I’ve been doing a lot of house stuff. Like painting trim (yeah!) in the kitchen and a bunch of little stuff that nobody else will even notice, but I notice it all, so therefore it is very important.

I’m getting closer to prepping the cupboards to paint. But it is such a huge job that I keep putting it off. Well, that is not entirely true. The real reason is – I’ve been on Pinterest looking at ideas for the kitchen. Specifically, what colors to paint the cabinets. I have a few friends that are pulling for that really cool light green color. If you look really closely in our tile, there is a slight green outline that the cabinets could pick up.

Well…you can’t really see it well in this photo, but it is there. And if we painted the cabinets a lovely green like this…you could really see it.

From jasdesignbuild.com

Oh, I love that green. And I’ve always loved just white cabinets, but I am a little worried that it will be too much white in there. But oh…look at this beautiful kitchen…(with my green in the BACK of the cabinets!)

From shorelychic.blogspot.com

And this one… (Yes, I realize that white cabinets is not going to make my kitchen look like this. But oh, is it pretty! Totally impractical with ALL of those windowed cabinets. Where do you hide your stuff? But, again. Oh.So.Pretty.)

From cococozy.com

This one?

From traditionalhome.com

So this one was interesting because I was drifting into a creamy, not-so-white color. Which has been our dilemma with the trim color around here. We have a Spanish-style, old house. It deserves/needs antique-ish colored whites. I’m still looking for a good one for the upstairs trim. So maybe an off-white color like this above would look good? But with the tile?

Then we were watching Modern Family the other night and I almost fell off the sofa. First of all, if you’re not watching this show…you must start. Now! It is the funniest show. I am convinced the Clare and Phil are J. and I. At least once every episode I look at J. in disbelief. “Seriously? Are they just hanging out trolling for material in our house? That is us!”

But I digress. Yes, falling off the sofa. I love Clare and Phil’s house on the show. It is so comfortable and beautiful all at the same time. And then I noticed their cabinets. Love, LOVE that color. So I started doing some scouting online. Apparently I’m not the only one crazy about the color. These are the best pics and guess to the color (thanks to Reckless Bliss!).

I’m just bad about this kind of stuff. What would this look like on the cabinets with our current tile (which is staying.)? What do you guys vote for? First a look at the kitchen again in its’ current state:

And a little refresh of those colors on the table:

– all white
-a vintage, light green
-a cream, antique white
-this “straw” Modern Family color
-something completely different??

Ok…discuss.

Piddling around with little projects here and there between fitting in some trim painting. Now that the cupboard is out of our kitchen, and I took down the shutters to give them a good cleaning, it is painfully obvious that our trim needs a fresh, new coat of paint.

I think we have decided on a color. I repainted a door and some trim upstairs that J. says is too “white” and looks cheap or something. I think a nice white is crisp and clean. But, very rarely does J. voice an opinion about anything around here, so I figured I ought to listen and let him have his say. So we picked out a “warmer, less stark, creamier” white. And I’m on a mission to start painting all our moldings, doors, and basically anything that isn’t taped down.

We also have the hole in our ceiling that the cupboard left we need to deal with and…oh! A big portion of the next-door cupboard wasn’t stained, so it looks like the painting of the kitchen cabinets, that I have also wanted to do for so very long, has moved up on the list as well (yeah!).

Let’s see – we had a September birthday round-up on Friday with our friend, Alexander, who also turned 6 last month, and whose name also starts with an A! So the two A’s got “6” cupcakes and some much overdue time together.

Evah…our Silhouette machine, has gotten a little love in the past few weeks. We personalized the girls’ soccer jerseys for the Terrible Teal team. I need a pic with all of them lined up with the backs of their jerseys.

And I’m working on getting a custom project done (they are coming, Aunt Laura!). I’m making her a whole bunch of the little wallets to use at Christmas time for giftcards.

These little wallets are the best way to use up scraps and I can just sit and cut a few out each night as I watch tv. I know I eventually have to actually sew them and get them together…but I like looking at the stack and feeling a little bit of progress.

What kind of crafty progress are you making lately?