I am totally in love with this Fall season we are having. The leaves here in North Georgia have finally turned the most beautiful colors.  Every time I turn the corner in my neighborhood, I am blown away by the beauty of the earth! God loves us so much. He knows we long for variation and excitement!

Today, I am showing you how to wax leaves. This is not a new concept to most but for some reason, I never knew about this.  I just remember pressing leaves in books. I saw a post on Clover Lane and decided to try it for myself! Waxing the leaves just shines them up a bit. It also preserves the color and texture a little bit longer. From what I've read, they won't last forever.  This is such a neat little craft to encourage you to get out in the beautiful, fall weather with your kids. Or, by yourself.  I relish a solo walk through the woods. Try it. Remember to make sure that the leaves you collect have stems because we are going to make a little garland with some string. The longer the better.

Collect your leaves-they work best when they are freshly fallen leaves. I actually picked several off of trees. I think it's funny that author over at Clover Lane got a fresh little comment on how she was "defacing" nature by using leaves this way. HUH?? Dead leaves are that, dead leaves (OK, mine will be dead in like 2 days). Clover Lane didn't even respond. Hopefully, she just laughed it off. Laughing at other's negativity just makes you the better person. You will just be in a better mood!

Here we go: Get you a box of Paraffin Wax.  Any grocery store will have it.

Pick up a disposable aluminum pan while you are at the store. You DO NOT want to use your cookware for this. It WILL ruin it. I used an old turkey roaster I had, so the pan was pretty thick. I think that a thicker pan works better.  I'll  tell you why in a minute. 

Next, you put the wax bar or bars (I used 2-3 bars) in the pan.  Put the pan directly on the burners. Yes, just put the pan on both burners if it's long enough. A smaller pan would just go over one burner. Again, I think the longer, thicker pans work better. I'm not sure how a little aluminum pie tin would work. OK, turn on VERY low heat.  If your oven has numbered dials, turn it to 2-3.  The wax will start to melt quickly.  It has the constancy of water. Once it's all melted (less than 7-8 minutes)you can start dipping your leaves. *DO NOT ATTEMPT TO MELT WAX IN MICROWAVE-it can catch fire (I googled it). Also, while you are working with the wax, if hit hardens up, simply turn the burner on again and it will melt back perfectly.

Keep in mind that the wax is extremely hot! Adult supervision is an absolute MUST. I don't want any burned little fingers please. That would make me terribly sad   If you want to be really cautious, someone online suggested getting a clothes pin to hold the stem on the leaf.

Palmer helped long enough for me to snap this picture. He is your typical teenage boy (OK, he's 12 but acts like a full on teenager). He wants to watch football, shoot basketball, hang with his friends… much more than he wants to do crafts with me. I miss the time when he would grin from ear to ear while we were crafting. Please disregard the rotting bananas in the background! I refuse to eat a banana that is ripe. I even want some green showing on mine! I would have made banana bread but I'm on the Avocare Challenge remember? Arggg!

Slowly dip the leaf, pull up slowy and let the wax drip a second or two.

Some people lay the leaves on newspaper. I decided to lay it on wax paper on top of newspaper. Whatever you want I'm sure is fine.  The leaf starts off really glossy but dries a nice matte finish.

As you can see, we picked up lots of leaves! We need choices in life right?

Let cool for about 5 minutes and you can GENTLY pull them off the wax paper by inserting your fingers underneath and pushing up. 

OK, I got carried away with the leaves. I used 16-17 leaves on my garlands (one on each window in my eating area). I put the rest in a big glass vase to display.

To make the garland, I used simple brown twine. I've seen some use thread or fishing line. I wanted something pretty and natural looking without being thick and cumbersome. The twine looked perfect.  I just tied simple knots the whole way. Don't tie, knot and then cut though, just knot it and keep going. It's hard to explain but you will see when you start to do it what I mean.

Happy Fall Yall!

It's Fall and Halloween around here!  I love to get out all of the holiday decorations.  I think the reason I go all out for the different holidays/seasons is because it helps me get my "girlygirl" fix.  I live in a house with nothing but boys after all (even the dog is a boy). Anyhoo, enjoy!

I got this adorable little house for $3 at TJ Maxx after Halloween last year! Nothing like a little glitter to bring out the girlygirl in me! The frame was also $3 at the after Halloween sale at the Maxx! Palmer was a football player (didn't have to buy a costume for that one!)and gave me the perfect smile!

Owls are on everything right now, why not your Kleenex box? This is the Halloween special edition hologram box! I love how his eyes and wings open up when you turn it!

My sister gave me these cute Halloween doggie tea towels! We both love dogs so much! She also gave me the adorable paper straws! 

I'll leave you with a little "bathroom humor"! 

Fall is here! I love decorating my front porch for the Fall season. This year, I took inspiration from this topiary I spotted at the Country Living Fair a couple of years ago. I knew I would do something similar one day!

I knew I wouldn't find the unusual pumpkins I needed at the hardware store, so I headed to a great farm about 20 minutes from my house.  The Kinsey Family Farm is in Forsyth County off of Jot Em Down road here in North Georgia. How lucky are we to have such a cute place so close to home!

I could have stayed for hours! What a beautiful, fall day!

I walked around looking at everything before I made my selection…and at last…here they are…perfect!

My next stop was at Home Depot for those fall mums, pansies and ornamental cabbage.

And here's the finished display! I absolutely love how it turned out. Who knew there were so many varieties of pumpkins?

Here's my post from last year. It features my Polka Dot Pumpkin Topiary! My next post will give you a peek at our indoor decorations!

Hello!!!! Yes, it's been 3 months since my last post! Wish I could say that I've been on a world tour or training for a marathon. But, uh, nope… pure busyness. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think "Gee, I really need to do a blog post". I have tons of ideas, pictures, things to tell you, show you… the list goes on and on! Every time I think about sitting down to type and edit pictures I think "Ugg, it's going to take too long, I don't have time".  What could possibly be keeping me so busy? Life. Well, my son started middle school and middle school football!!! He's been practicing since July!  At one point this summer I found myself going back and forth to his school 4 times a day. He had a readiness camp (for middle school)in the morning plus football practice in the afternoon! We also have traveled to the beach a couple of times and we took a trip to see my sister. Hopefully, things are starting to settle down a bit. Oh, did I mention that I finally jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon?? Oh yeah!!!  Hopefully, it will be like Facebook. When you first join you could spend hours and hours and then you calm down a bit and don't spend every spare minute on the computer. Maybe Pinterest will be the same!

OK, another thing I have been doing that took up some of my time …I've found ANNIE SLOAN CHALK PAINT (ASCP)!!! Annie Sloan is a real person! She created this paint that everyone is crazy about! I've painted furniture before but not with results like this! We have had a little empty spot in the living room for quite a while and I found the perfect shelf at TJ Maxx to fill it up. I knew I needed to paint it (it was black and my living room wall color is a dark brown)but wasn't sure what color to go with. I did know enough to know that using regular paint requires you to sand and prime the surface first. I had been seeing lots of blog posts about Annie Sloan Chalk paint and was impressed with the results AND the fact that you can eliminate the sanding and priming by using chalk paint. No brainer for me!  I happened to be at Queen of Hearts Antiques in Buford and saw they had her chalk paint! It was a sign…BUY ME, BUY ME!! I love her color, Emperor's Silk and they had it in stock! The color is a deep, bold red and I desperately needed more color in my living room, so it was the perfect color choice. Now, the $38 price tag will scare some people but it's well worth all the trouble of having to do all the prep work and it saves you the cost of buying primer. You must also put a wax coat over the paint and her wax is $27.  I didn't panic about the cost because you see, another thing that has keep me busy is cleaning out my basement and selling lots of stuff. So I had the cost covered! I do have to say that this shelf is in a very dark area of the living room so taking pictures here was not easy. I did the best I could. I must say though, that it looks perfect where we've put it and I had so much fun antiquing and finding the perfect items to fill it up.

OK, now I'm going to take you through the steps of how I painted it. Now, just know that I am NOT the expert on ASCP. There are tons of blogs out there that give you lots of great tips on how to use her paint.  I literally spent hours reading all of them before I could work up the nerve to try it myself. In the end, I just decided it was never going to get done unless I took the plunge.  Glad I did, it was super easy. Just time consuming.  All in all, I would say I spent 9-10 hours working on this. I just couldn't dedicate one whole day to painting-it was all in little batches. That's OK, I had fun. Palmer even helped a bit.

Now, I do blame myself for choosing the most complicated piece to be my first! I was naive to think that I when I saw this at TJ Maxx it would be a fast project. Easy it was, fast it wasn't.  I hear about those with more experience finishing up 2-3 pieces a day.  No joke. I'm not one of them.  I guess I'm slow.  You can see from the picture below that this shelf folds up, making it easy to transport. But, it also makes it more difficult to get to all the surfaces!

Yep, it was very nice the color is was before, but it just was not the color I needed.  See all those "X" 's? Yep, they take a lot longer to paint than the flat shelves. Up, down, sideways…my back did suffer a bit on this project.

OK, here are my supplies: ASCP and Wax (clear), a wax brush (I bought her brush too), a Home Depot paint brush (choose from the "Best" section-it makes painting easier), a roller tray (to keep messes from getting everywhere), a plastic drop cloth, a cheesecloth (to wipe the wax) a fine sandpaper block (if you are going to distress your piece, you need this), baby wipes (these were a lifesaver) and plastic gloves (if you don't like to get paint on your fingers). I don't show these, but you need a stir stick and a paint can opener.

First step…dip you brush and then paint! Yep, it's that easy-no prep work required (I did run a damp rag over the whole shelf to get any dust and dirt off the surface). See how beautiful the color is?

In no time, your paint is dry. But what happened to that glossy red coat of paint? This is what the first coat looks like. It's a little scary, I must say I was terrified at my investment after the first coat dried. I persevered though. I painted a second coat and was thrilled with it! The second coat gave it the deep, rich color I yearned for! The waxing is where the little bit of sheen comes in.

Here is what it looked like after two coats.  Beautiful!!!

I waxed my shelf at night so I didn't take any pictures but it's super easy to wax. Your paint is completely dry within an hour so waxing can come anytime after that. Waxing it is easy, just dip your brush in the wax and dab it on and spread it. Less really is more with wax. There are horror stories out there about people using way too much wax. Just a very thin layer will do. Dab it on and then promptly wipe it off. Yes, that's right, wipe it off. I used a cheesecloth to wipe the wax off on this piece but I used Palmer's old white T's on the other shelf and the shirts worked just fine. I let the wax settle in overnight and then moved it upstairs to decorate it. If you are painting a piece that will be used in a high traffic area, let it sit for a week or so before you use it.  Some blogs even say it takes up to 20 days for it to fully cure.

To distress the shelf all you need is fine sandpaper. I like to use the kind wrapped around a sponge. In fact, I used 8 of them sanding this shelf. Just remember that when you sand it, whatever's underneath will show through. I knew I would love the black. Some of the blogs I read said to sand before you wax, others said to sand after you wax. I loved sanding it after I waxed. It made for a lot less clean up. I focused on sanding lots of edges. Some more than others. That's the neat thing about distressing, it's totally up to you!

Here a close up of how pretty and unique distressing can be.

And this is what happens when you use too heavy a hand while distressing. I could have painted over it but decided not to. Just use a gentle hand at first and adjust your pressure as you see fit.

I had a great time painting this shelf and am super happy with the results.  In fact, I have already painted another piece and put it in Palmer's room-hopefully, it won't take another three months for me to do a post on it!  I do plan on doing another post about the antiques I bought for this shelf. I've been doing a lot of antiqueing lately (another thing that takes up time!) and loving it!

Some good sources for painting with chalk paint can be found on:

http://missmustardseed.com/

(she has painted with chalk paint and milk paint-they are different, so make sure you are reading about chalk paint when you brouse her site).

http://www.perfectlyimperfectblog.com/2011/06/chalk-paint-faqs.html

Perfectly Imperfect has some great videos. This particular post is about ASCP.

http://www.sassystyleredesign.com/2011/09/annie-sloan-chalk-painti-think-i-love.html

Another great post about ASCP

Many Blessings,

BROWN EYED GIRLY GIRL