Pantry Door

I have had an open space with shelves that I call my pantry since we moved into this house. It always looked messy and I tried to hide it with curtains, etc. One day when my husband and I were in Lowe's looking for something else, we came across the bi-fold doors and I asked him if one of those would fit on our pantry. (A regular door would be too wide to be able to be opened.)He thought it would, we bought it and headed home to cover up this mess!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that he had installed the door the very next day while I was at work!

Now for some charm and cuteness! I've always wanted a pantry door that said "Pantry", so I printed some large letters with Word, scribbled across the back of them, taped them on the door and traced them onto the wood.

Next, I used my trusty black paint pen to outline the letters and then filled in with craft paint.

But I wanted more - I wanted something down the panels. I didn't know what I wanted, so I started looking in books, on line, etc. and finally found what struck my fancy in my old Betty Crocker Cooky Book.

I loved the little drawings at the top of each page!

Now, here's where the choices come in. You could take these to a copy store and have them enlarged and trace them on (similar to my letters), find some wall paper or decals that you loved and paste them on, decoupage something on, etc. I am fortunate to have a wonderful sister-in-law who is very artistic and she agreed to just draw them on for me freehand!! What a time saver!

Then I helped with the trusty black paint pen - she did some shading and viola!! it transformed those plain white doors. I love going to my pantry (and now I think I'm inspired to clean up the mess inside and make it cute too!! Check back in a couple weeks to see that!)

For more do-it-yourself projects visit A Soft Place to Land

Front porch for fall

Front porch do-it-yourself decor at Knottliten Cottage
(my daughter's cottage in the city).

I already had the fake white pumpkin (from Michael's a few year's ago) and used Target dollar bin Halloween transfers for the spiders and webs and a ribbon I already had. The ghost jar was made by my Mom (Esther) following the instructions at this post and the gourd is a yellow squash from my neighbor's garden that I spray painted black. The brown branch pumpkin in back was a half price Rite-aid find at the after-Halloween sale last year. The stalk sticking up came from the neighbor's corn in their garden.

The orange ceramic jack-o-lantern and "Happy Halloween" pumpkins are from TJ Maxx. On the second fake white pumpkin I already had, I painted "BOO" with stencils and added a brown ribbon from my craft supplies. The branches fell off our plum tree and the white berries are fake (I think from my mom's craft supplies). The jack-o-lantern jars were also made by Esther.




Another clearance branch pumpkin from Rite-aid. Then I bought a craft pumpkin from Micheal's and spray painted it white and added a ribbon from my craft supplies. The red Cinderella pumpkin on bottom is real (from another neighbor's garden) and I used a black sharpie to write out Trick or Treat.

The wooden ladder was no longer safe to use for home repairs, so my parents gave it to me to use for decoration. I cleaned it and spray painted it black. The day after Halloween, I plan on removing the jars and the TJ Maxx pumkins, adding a few gourds in their place and just turning around the three pumpkins with Halloween decor. Then I can use this through Thanksgiving!

Click here for "A Soft Place to Land" full of do-it-yourself links.

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Little Red Wagon

Remember the cute little wooden cart I got on my Thrifty Weekend? Well, the big decision was what color to paint it!! I finally settled on red (one of my favorites) and sprayed it this weekend with some Walmart's ColorSpray Burgundy Spice. I added a little black around the wheels to make them stand out.

When it was done, I loved it and wanted to get it filled up!! That would require another trip to the pumpkin patch and I didn't have time for that! So I "borrowed" some gourds and pumpkins from other places in my house and filled it - just to see what it would look like!

So now this weekend, I'll have to get some more pumpkins, etc. and get it out on the front porch!

We're ready for Halloween!

A Thrifty Weekend

Being a HUGE bargain hunter/trash to treasure kind of person, I always enjoy seeing what people have gotten and what they do with their treasures, so I thought I would show you my weekend's pickins. I paid $7.00 for the little wooden cart (my husband assured me that he couldn't make it for that, so I went for it), and $7.00 for the big pear because I've had my eye on one of those for a long time and I had just gotten my "allowance". Otherwise, everything was 20c to 1.99.

Most of the white dishes made their way into my built in hutch and will make it into a later post. The little cart is still waiting for its treatment. I just don't know what color to paint it. I want it to sit on my front porch full of pumpkins, gourds, leaves, etc. for Fall and then greens or something for Christmas. Any ideas?

The black colander needed nothing but washing and then we could put in some fresh-from-the- garden tomatoes and apples (well, from someone's garden).
The little white dish looks adorable with mini pumpkins in it

I spray painted the cake plate black and set the pear on it. I don't think it will stay like that as I really want one of those blueish pumpkins on it. The pear just doesn't stand
out enough either. So I'll do some work on that and maybe it will show up in a later post.



Today my daughter and her husband brought the twins down to spend the day with us. We went out to a pumpkin patch and picked up some beauties!! (Now why didn't I pick up one more of the bluey pumpkins?)



There's nothing like pumpkins to give a porch a welcoming, Fall look!

And a pile of them on the table looks so festive!

Oh - and thank you little men for helping Nana pick out some GREAT pumpkins!!