1.  Ernie.  I have a thing for Ernie of Sesame Street.  It all started a few years ago when my friend gave me an Ernie hand puppet he used in one of his films.  Actually, he was selling it at a yard sale and I thought that was a very bad thing.  Very bad.  I rescued the puppet from the pile of toys and brought him inside.  From then, it grew and grew until Ernie saturated my life.  One year I made a pumpkin in his image. I used a piece of black fur for his hair, a flickering battery operated candle to illuminate him and a few magic markers to complete the look.

2.  Men.  When he and I first started dating, it was in the fall of the year. He was suprrised I was carving pumpkins, saying he hadn’t done that since he was a little boy.  I decided to surprise him with a pumpkin of his own.  What face would be masculine and appropriate?  I figured it should be something he loved and not just any ole face so I carved what I thought was the logo for his favorite football team–the Indianapolis Colts.  This is a repeat offender every year in our home.

3.  Drill.  Get out your power drill and create this polka dot pumpkin.  On some holes, I drill completely through the pumpkin while on others I only drill in until the tip is piercing the flesh.  Then when you illuminate the pumpkins, different size streams of light will pour through the flesh.

4.  Minis.  Last but not least, I grab a handful of the small pumpkins to carve goofy things.  These two are examples of the silly.  One is a sly face with eyes looking sneeringly to the left (or maybe the right) and the other is covered with carvings of dollar bill signs.  It was a nod to the amount of money I had spent on pumpkins!

The suggestions I have here are merely to open your mind and get away from traditional faces.  They are fun but do a few others as well.  Many of you are very talented and do the serious Martha Stewart style carvings.  I wish I were that talented but am always pleased with my outcome.  Simply because I have fun doing it, and have a sense of pride each day coming home from work and seeing those beasts on the front porch.

Have you figured out what your last minute pumpkin may be?

xo-me

First you should decide if you want to use just shells or hard boiled eggs.  Some of the methods below require one or the other so check first before you get started.  To blow an egg, first shake it to break up the yolk.  Use a small pin to make a hole in the top and bottom of the egg.  Blow until the egg is empty.  Have some patience if it’s your first time.  If you are boiling, use the perfect method.

Dye:

You can use PAAS or another brand for convenience but I use food coloring paste (pick some up in the cake decorating aisle).  Use one cup boiled water mixed with 1/4 c. cider vinegar.  Drop in a dab of paste.  Stir until it is dissolved.  Dip in eggs for a solid color design.  Grab the center of a paper towel or toilet tissue roll and cut them into several small stands for egg drying.

You can make many designs on the eggs.  Using simple household items you can be very creative.

1. The simplest of all is to dip half of the egg and then flip it over to dip the other half.  You can also dip from side to side.
2. Using rubber bands, wrap them around the egg in different angles.  If you are using a flat band, make sure the sides are flat if you want an even pattern.  Once the bands are in place, dip in one color.  Once dry, remove the bands and you have what I think to be a psychedelic plaid.
3. Grab some various size of round stickers.  Place them firmly all over the egg in a random pattern.  Dip the egg, allow it to dry, and remove the stickers.  You have a polka dot egg.
4. Create outlines of bunnies, ducks, stars, hearts, whatever you love and cut them out.  Once you have dyed your eggs, paste these designs onto the eggs.
5. Instead of dipping the eggs, grab a sponge and sponge paint them.

Crayons:

This idea requires boiling the eggs.  Once you have, remove one egg at a time and allow it to cool for a five minutes.  Leave the others in the water until your ready to decorate them so they remain warm.  Hold the egg on a paper towel so your hands are protected from the heat.  Grab your crayons (the heat of the egg melts the wax onto the shell) and draw away!  Be gentle when rotating the egg so you don’t smear your design.  I would let it set for at least 40 minutes.

Spray Glue:

I enjoy using spray adhesive.  It’s simple and easy.  Spray the entire egg and dip it into colored sand or attach sequins.  They will shimmer and shine!

Strings:

I loved doing decoupage as a child.  This design uses those skills.  Take a blown egg and paint the entire area with mod podge.  Then use embroidery floss or colored string and press the string all over the egg in any design that blows your hair back.  Brush a second coat over the string and insert a wooden skewer into the egg.  Put skewer in tall glass and allow egg to dry.  Remove egg from skewer and enjoy!

Paint Brushes and Magic Markers:

If you are a closet artiste, paint brushes and magic markers along with your skills and vision create beautiful eggs.

Glue Gun:

No decorating post would be complete without the glue gun.  Decorate your blown eggs with ribbons, buttons, crepe paper, anything you can find in your home.  How about M & M’s glued on your eggs?

Once your eggs are decorated, you will want to display them in your home.  My childhood friend Shelly gave me the best idea.  Decorate a flower pot with trim, bric-a-brac, whatever your style is.  Plant some grass in it or pick up some cat grass and replant it into your pot.  Hide your decorated eggs inside the grass.  It makes for a perfect center piece on your Easter table.

These are just a few ideas to get your Easter-Egg-Decorating-Mind going.  I look forward to hearing from you on what you used to decorate your eggs.  Happy Easter!

Spring!  Spring!  Spring!

Spring has definitely arrived this weekend in Southern California.  The signs are all there–gorgeous weather, flowers blooming and a hummingbird nest in the back yard!  While out shopping, I stumbled onto a motherload of hyacinths, smelling them before viewing them.  I couldn’t resist and brought home a gorgeous purple one.  I spent the afternoon seeking a pot in which to replant it and every one I found was better suited for outside.  I wanted to keep this delicious fragrance inside so I was stuck.  Then I figured maybe I could redesign the plastic green one it came in?  I grabbed the best tool ever–the glue gun– and a roll of fabric ribbon and got to work.  I cut three pieces of bright yellow sheer ribbon that would wrap the circumference of the pot and glued them onto the pot one at a time, slightly overlapping to give an additional pattern to the already patterned ribbon.  The dark green of the pot muted the brightness of the yellow ribbon just perfectly.  The entire process took me just over 5 minutes and now I have a custom made pot that looks darling in the room from which the hyacinth fragrance is now wafting.  Happy Spring!

She needed color more than anything in the room so off we went to a warehouse style store with a lot of seconds.  Everything was cheap and gorgeous.  We fell in love with a pre-made silk flower arrangement that was $80.00.  Ouch.  I suggested we see if we could do it on our own.  She had a flower vase under her sink at home (How many of us keep all those floral arrangement vases thinking we will reuse?  I think they reproduce at night.) that was a similar shape to the one we loved.  After meticulously picking out the flowers and some rocks, we were heading home for less than $30.  See our lovely creation?

The pop of color helped a lot but we needed to move some things around.  I starting digging out her shelving units and found she had some gorgeous things but they were dark against a dark wood and became invisible.  She was not able to enjoy any of them!  We emptied her shelves first and I surveyed all that she had.  In that moment I convinced her that she didn’t need to spend a dime as she had everything right here.  We rearranged every shelf in the room (9 in all) and purged a lot of the clutter.  It opened up wonderfully and you could actually feast your eyes on her lovely pieces of art, family pictures, and family treasures.

I then took a hard look around the room focusing on areas that were too cramped and others that had too much symmetry and seemed boxy.  We rearranged her mantel, got rid of a few items and did groupings with others.  After moving one small piece of furniture and setting two colorful bottles strategically, she had a brand new room!  The various groupings, color injection, purging and rearranging changed the entire vibe of the room.

The point to this experience is if you are wanting a new look for your home and don’t have the money to redecorate, move some things around.  Put some items away.  Dig out some of those things in the back of the closet that you forgot you have. Move the pictures in the back of the table to the front.  Move some from one room to another.  Look around!  Dig it out!  You will be surprised what an impact small changes in the home can make.

I had a room with a hideous popcorn ceiling.  With cracks.  And I was running out of money.  I wanted to do something fun (it was the TV room) but was struggling with finding something inexpensive as well.  I thought of wallpaper and how it covers ugliness and while daydreaming, I thought of putting fur up there.

The first attempt was a disaster.  I bought short hair fabric with a bit of stretch to it.  Lining up the seams was impossible and because of the short hair, they were more visible than I wanted.  We ripped it down and started again.  This time I used a long hair white shag fabric that was straight out of the back of a 1970′s van.  The length of the fur allowed me to ‘brush’ it over the seams making them less noticeable.  I used wallpaper paste very conservatively to attach the fur.  You do not want to saturate the fabric or the glue will seep through.

The ceiling looks like a fluffy cloud and I love it.  It was a simple, fairly easy solution to an ugly ceiling.  Use your mind to explore new ways to use everyday items!  And yes, I get the vacuum up there for a quick cleaning once a month.

Last fall, I was lucky enough to be invited to a very special club opening and having the privilege to sit among the LA Lakers, music executives and a few rock stars.  One host of the evening was generous to invite me to sit with him and his wife.  After an incredible, top 10 memory making evening, I realized the thank you was going to be tough.

This gentleman and his wife are very well off financially as well as professionally so not only was I dealing with the ‘what do you send to someone who has everything’ but I was also dealing with ‘what do you get for someone who can get anything’!  I resorted to my old standby. Something very few people seem to take the time to do anymore–I baked.  Not anything extravagant because I was short on time and I would prefer to send something simple and immediately instead of complicated and several days later.  I baked a few dozen homemade chocolate chip cookies, making them extra delicious by putting the uncooked dough in the fridge over night before baking (you all know that changes everything with the cookie, right?).

What made these cookies special was the container I sent them in.  I went to the 99 Cent Only store (in other parts of the country you will find Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Everything’s a Dollar) and bought a Tupperware-esque container as well as a handful of seasonal decor of the appropriate size.  Once I got home, I had a lovely decorated sealed plastic container within minutes with the help of scissors and my glue gun. I merely cut the stems off the decor, arranged them on the lid, and shot a dot of glue from the glue gun.  Voila…this sweet container.

Not only did the husband love the cookies (he claims his wife never bakes) but the wife loved the container and said she would use it on the counter top stuffed with cookies and snacks for the season.  My total cost for this simple thank you–$10.  Now tell me where you can get 3 dozen chocolate chip cookies inside a custom made container for 10 bucks?

Years ago my mother got a gel stick-on-your-window Christmas tree at the holiday.  She put it on the glass pane of the exterior door of the garage. Every time we left the garage to go outdoors, there was this sweet colorful tree in the sea of grey that is the garage.  As simple as it was, it gave a kiss of decor to a very undecorated place.

Fast forward to this year when I found red, pink and clear gel “XO’s” and hearts in the dollar section of Target.  My mind went back to Mom’s tree and I grabbed them for my home.  I wound up putting them in the lower corner of the bathroom mirror–not the entire sheet just a few.  Every morning they brought a great memory to my mind and a bit of decor for the bathroom (not the only bit of decor in the bathroom–more on that in another post) all for one dollar.

This weekend I found gels for Easter.  Same section, same price. Some went on the bathroom mirror, while others on the window above the kitchen sink.  A sweet bit of spring during these last rainy days of winter.