Fall Projects

Here are the promised pictures of the most recent Fall projects. There are more to come next week because I am off of school for Fall Break and with no Andrei around during the week and Luis out of town visiting family in Mexico, and with mama' gone, Ana working full time, and Kenley in day care, I'll have the place pretty much to myself. Ahh... It's going to be sweet.

So without further ado, my most recent projects

I wanted to harvest all of the remaining tomatoes before the first heavy frost predicted for last week, which ended up killing my cherry vine, but most of the tomatoes were still green. I googled "Green Tomato Relish" and found a great recipe with a promised salsa-like flavor. All it took was some basic ingredients, my green tomatoes, a whole lot of apple-cider vinegar, and some canning equipment to get the project off the ground.

Here are some photos of Sherriff Woody helping out with the whole process. Andrei was being quite naughty that afternoon and it was mostly attention-seeking behavior so his punishment was to help me core and quarter about 100 green tomatoes and dice some red peppers, onions, and garlic. It ended up being less of a punishment than originally planned because he loves to help me cook, as does Sherriff Woody, which I didn't mind very much. Betcha didn't know the Sherriff was an ace in the kitchen, did ya?

Our other major project last weekend was prepping the house for Halloween. I LURVE Halloween- it may be my favorite holiday because I am weird like that. I have never decorated the house for Halloween, though, because I live with a bunch of people who do not celebrate it (and no, we do not celebrate Dia De Los Muertos either- lame!). Anyway, I made up my mind to decorate this year for Andrei, mostly because I miss having him around all the time, so I try to make the time we do have together pretty special.

I had the SCATHINGLY brilliant idea of making window clings this year as a tasteful and fun decoration. Vinyl window decals can cost upwards of $35, however, so I made my own custom decals out of white contact paper- I found some designs I liked on the internet, free-handed them onto the contact paper, cut it out and viola'! Fancy-pants Halloween window clings for about $3.50. Nice!

Aside from the Halloween stuff, I also wanted to do some general autumn-themed decorations that I could leave up until Thanksgiving. Our house is mostly decorated in reds, golds, browns, and greens, so it kind of lends itself to an autumn pallette. Andy and my mom (who was still in town after the funeral) helped me cut out paper oak leaves, which I sewed together with some cheap silk leaves I got at the dollar store. We made garlands out of these strings of leaves for the entryway and kitchen chandaliers.

Mom helped me pry apart the world's toughest silk sunflowers to make some nosegays for the entryway banisters (which I thought turned out perfectly) and I used the remaining flowers and ribbons to gussy up my favorite thrift-store find this year- a $5 antique birdcage (thanks Provo D.I.! You always surprise me in a good way!). We stuck a spooky raven on the top of the birdcage for an extra-Gothic touch. Take THAT, Martha Stewart!

Anyway, I think everything turned out well. It feels really cozy in here these days, and I'm glad we took the time to fix things up for the autumn holidays. It went so well, I think I might venture into other holiday decorations in the future...