Halloween & Christmas!

I believe I inherited something from my mother. No, I'm certain I inherited something from her.
The love of decorating for the holidays.

I have such fond memories of my mother decorating our house for every holiday. It was always so fun to come home from school and see that she had been a busy little bee placing every little decoration in it's perfect spot. I did the same a few weeks ago while the girls were napping, although I don't have near as many as she did. I didn't realize how much Morgan enjoyed it until she met Justin at the door when he got home from work and told him to close his eyes. She proceeded to take him from one decoration to the next and then would say, "Open your eyes, Daddy!" and then she'd tell him to close them again and then drag him to the next decoration. Most of what I have used to be my mother's. I have really fun ceramics with lights in them that are inscripted on the bottom with "BM '78" that would be Betty McPherson... my wonderful Mimi, who used to paint ceramics. My friend Lindsey was over last week and told me she had the same ghost holding a pumpkin from her grandmother! Anyone else have him too?

We also decorated the outside of our house this weekend. Most of our guests, except the UPS man, use our side entrance. So we decorated our side door. When we get around to overhauling the front doors, I'll decorate them too. Here's what we did at the side door...

You'll see my owl wreath didn't make the cut... the black boa against the black door didn't make much of a statement. When we overhaul the front doors, we're going to overhaul this door too... and hopefully paint the house {can you see the $$?}. Our new door won't be black so I'm saving my wreath for another year. The precious "BOO" owl came from Jennie-Marie. I saw him on her blog last year and asked her where on earth he came from... I should have known better... he showed up at my house a matter of weeks later! I think she said.... Cracker Barrel? Random, but I think that's where he came from! My sister-in-law brought us these fun lanterns {below} on Friday... they're so fun and colorful! I had to rack my brain to figure out how to light them... I ended up using night lights and extension cords... it's very rigged but works great! They are hanging in our bay window and can't be missed from the road!

All this talk of Halloween got me excited about Christmas!! I've been working on a "star garland" for my fireplace made from all my fabric scraps over the past year. I thought it would be very fun above our stockings. I'm almost done. Morgan loved lining them all up, counting them and telling me which stars she has outfits to match!



I just layered "fusible fleece" {left over from my Amy Butler "Nappy Bag" project} between the two layers of fabric; sewed them together and then used pinking shears around the edges. They were done quickly and are little rough around the edges but I kinda like 'em that way! I'm planning on punching a grommet hole at the top of each star and connecting them with ribbon!

Ok, I've put in a special request to E for an inspirational post on Halloween decorations... depending on how inspired I am... I may do some more decorating! :)

I hope each of you had a splendid weekend!