New Style Pumpkin

I rarely get around to doing all the crafty things I read about and think I'd like to do, but something about the toile pumpkin on the cover of October's Country Living magazine made me want to replicate that look. I had some toile fabric on hand that I thought would work just fine to use (instead of paper the directions called for) and Modpodge. All I needed was the Funkin. A trip to, new to Greenwood, Hobby Lobby, satisfied that requirement.
While inspecting the fabric, I realized the Scotchgard treatment on the material would prevent it from taking up the Modpodge correctly, so I ditched the toile idea and bought some scrapbook paper in a pattern I liked to do the job.
Here are the results.

First step was to paint the Funkin white.

After cutting the papers in one inch strips, I stuck them to the Funkin with the Modpodge.

  Then I brushed the Funkin with two coats of Modpodge, letting it dry between coats.

I grouped the faux pumpkin with some natural ones for a foyer display.

Fall is Definitely In the Air

What is more fallish to do than visiting a pumpkin patch? With the cooler temperatures and beautiful sunshiny days, we couldn't wait to take the grandboys to a pumpkin patch while they were visiting this weekend.  Gray was away at a retreat so we shooed Seth off for a bicycle ride in Greenwood while we packed up Collier and Hamilton to enjoy an outside adventure. An old friend from our Christmas tree/pumpkin selling days has a farm in Pelzer called May-Lan Tree Plantation and it has a "full service" pumpkin patch, complete with hayride, hot dogs, farm animals and scarecrows, not to mention lots of gourds and pumpkins from which to pick. We enjoyed our two and a half hours outside on someone else's farm.



Hamilton loved peeking through each opening in the photo signs.



Sewing and More Sewing

My Etsy business has been flourishing of late, but there's plenty of room for expansion. The administration folks there have been urging us to get ready for Christmas and are offering all kinds of helps to keep us Etsians motivated and focused on our businesses. So, I'm thinking I shouldn't wait until the last two weeks in November to begin my Christmas projects. Duh!
I'd like to sew matching jon-jons for Collier and Hamilton and also take orders for them to be custom made. In between the window treatments and bike baskets, I made this one for Collier this past week.

I've got another outfit in the works and several ideas in my head--now if I can just keep sewing. . .

I Recommend This Book

Just last week I finished reading a book called Confessions of a Transformed Heart by Nancy Sheppard. She and her husband are missionaries to Liberia and have been for some thirty years. They left family and friends soon after graduating from college and raised a family of five children there and in Ivory Coast, its neighbor country to which thousands of Liberians fled during civil war.
Sheppard is an accomplished writer with a straight forward style. Her effort to be transparent makes her story all the more compelling. This is no "look how sainted we are" narrative of her life, but rather a telling of how sufficient God is in the midst of innumerable hardships, some of which she brings on herself.
For a very real look at life in West Africa for one woman with a teachable spirit, read this book.
I came to know about it from one of my friends at church who works with Nancy Sheppard's daughter-in-law. The eldest son of Mark and Nancy Sheppard, John-Mark, and his young wife are awaiting the birth of their first child and then off to Liberia they go to continue the work in Liberia's interior.