Lights, Colors, and Twinkles, Oh My!

For the past several years, my favorite part of the Thanksgiving holiday is the day after.  No, I do not camp out all night in front of department stores for Black Friday deals.  Rather, every Thanksgiving weekend, the Harvest Festival comes to my city.  It’s an arts and crafts fair full of a grand assortment of anything from clothing and accessories to glass blowing and wood working, and lots in between.  Here are some samples.

Decor: Enchanted Cottages

Egg Ornaments: EggstraSpecial

Jewelry: Color Burst

Quilted Accessories: Larenda

Fun Stuff: Wonderful Wacky Women

Woodworking:This year there was a new booth with these incredible hot-plates/baskets.  Yes, they double as both!  (Sadly, no website.)

There was much more that I couldn’t possibly cover.  It’s too bad blogs don’t have a scratch-and-sniff feature.  The smells from the candle and soap shops were heavenly.  And the food stands with their tantalizing sweets.  The glass-blowing booths were exquisite, and the homemade scarves were so soft and warm.  It’s the highlight of every Fall. 

What was your favorite part of this Thanksgiving weekend?

It’s Pumpkin Time!

Welcome to Imagine That on Wednesdays!

With the holiday season fast approaching, people are breaking out the crafts.  First up are Halloween decorations.  We used to carve pumpkins when I was growing up.  Simple at first, but then I fell in love with the various patterns you could buy at Michaels.  Carving cats was much more fun than triangle noses and mouths.  My least favorite part, however, was scooping out the pumpkin innards.  Blegh.

My solution now is not to carve at all.  But my mom still wanted some pumpkins for decorations, so last year she bought them anyway–and gave me the job of decorating them.  Not to worry.  If I didn’t want to use a knife, I could use a Sharpie.

You can do this at home too if you don’t like the mess of carving the pumpkins (and the even worse mess of throwing them out after they’ve molded).  And you can still use the patterns from the carving book.  Simply use the Sharpie to color in the areas you would normally cut out.

Last year's pumpkins

For some other Halloween crafting tips, see Debra Kristi’s post on making a budget friendly “Wicked Wreath of Delight” and Tameri Etherton’s “Getting Crafty With It!“