I painted my house for fall.

No, really I did. I LOVE fall colors. Except for the girls’ rooms (which are a bright yellow for Kami, and a nice, calming – theoretically – sea green for Chloe), every room is a deep fall color.

I finally got around to getting my fall things put up this last week, thanks to some inspiration from my decorating class last Tuesday at Rose Johnson’s lovely home.

This scarecrow is for the girls. And that mum WILL bloom. I'm determined. Don't laugh...

I use the same exact wreath on my door every day of the year. I just change out the picks. This makes for an inexpensive "season" project (I never spend more than $5-$10 on new picks for the wreath.) And my door is always current (except that time I had hearts on it during St. Patrick's Day...) This is the one thing that gives me a "super-mommy-ish" feeling.

Here's a closeup of my fall wreath. I found it here where a girl made it for her friend's wedding. I just LOVED the way it looked!

So, you can use a Cricut for just about anything.

And ribbon. (And when Halloween is over, I'll just turn those puppies around, and change the ribbon to a different, more Thanksgiving-ish one. They're only $1.50 a roll this week at Hobby Lobby anyway.

These are also the same pumpkins my girls painted a few weeks ago. No, I didn't take the paint off - the rain did. I would NEVER steal my girls' art projects, wash them off, and reuse them for my own purposes. Ever.

Here's my "mantle" - I don't have a fireplace in this house (not many South Caroliner-ers do) - but this one totally works.

My table - I would love to get some place cards going too...I'm still working on some cute ideas for some. I got those green chargers at Target - in the dollar section! I bought some red ones too for Chistmas. Can I just say I LOVE that dollar section at Target?

These lanterns were from IKEA - like, $6 or $7 each - I'm a huge Pottery Barn fan, but not a huge Pottery Barn Stock Supporter...therefore...IKEA is my friend.

Here's my makeshift china cabinet. We were given this chest of drawers when we moved from WV from a dear friend, and it's since worked perfectly to hold all my china - which is really mostly my great grandmother's china. I'm sure it'll make an appearance at Thanksgiving.

Happy Fall ya'll. Have fun decorating your homes this year!

The Value of One Penny – Homemade Laundry Detergent!

My husband alerted me to this story on cnn.com today – very interesting that we’re not the only moms out there trying to save money on groceries! 

After reading about the homemade laundry detergent, I did a little research, and found this cute blog with a great post about how her family made the laundry detergent (go down to “Science Experiment” Post)!  Just to break it down for you as to how cheap it actually is to make your own detergent, the recipe she used would wash 64 loads of laundry, and cost only $0.73 to make!  (For you non-math scholars out there, that equals $0.01 (ONE PENNY!!!) per load of laundry – can’t beat that, no matter where you shop. . . in fact, it might be cheaper than making a special trip to CVS to get FREE detergent with gas prices the way they are!  (Not to mention, you probably find at least one penny in each load of laundry you do! )  She found all the ingredients at her grocery store, and had fun making it one afternoon with her kids.

After looking some more, here’s a few other recipes I found for liquid detergents, powdered detergents, quick hints for making the detergent, and some tips for finding the ingredients. (Unless you already know what aisle Borax is in!)  I’m thinking about trying this, especially if it really does save lots of money every year. . . once I run out of free Tide from CVS!