FALL!

The seasons are changing!  And with it brings some new excitement in the home...for me, anyway.  As much as I complain about the weather turning colder (Justin is ecstatic), I love the things that fall brings.  This year, it is bringing a new job for me.  I have been given a job offer at Lutheran Family Services as their RSafe Site Coordinator in Lincoln.  I will be working with children and their families who have experienced trauma.  It'll be a tough job, dealing with a lot of sexual abuse, but I'm excited for the new challenge.  Justin is finishing up his quarter at SCC, and is halfway done with finals.  He'll get about a two week break before starting up again in October.

With Justin gone to class, and without any REAL agenda of things to get done, I have kept myself busy with a variety of projects while I'm waiting for my new job to start.  For starters, I am working on a quilt, and I finally finished the top piecing.  Here is a picture of it laying on our bed...

I still have to do the backing and the quilt stitching, but I figure I'll wait for that endeavor until I start getting a paycheck.

I've also spent some time during the past week getting some fall decorations up.  I first decided that I needed to change our nice spring floral arrangement with a fall arrangement.  So while I was visiting Hobby Lobby and Michael's looking for Halloween floral and buying Christmas ornaments on sale, I started getting ideas to give our apartment a "fall" feeling.

Our Halloween floral arrangement.  Justin and I don't see eye-to-eye on whether or not purple is a Halloween color, but I think it looks nice :)

My other idea was sparked by Justin, who reminded me that he had won some fall decorations at a race he did last year.  We have yet to find a hook to hang our wreath, but the scarecrow people got my somewhat creative juices flowing.

The end product

Now, I feel quite accomplished.  This was my first project EVER of making a chalkboard and distressing something...in this case, a picture frame.  I know it's the "craze" these days, so I figured I might as well hop on the bandwagon.  So I invested in this cool thing called chalkboard paint.  I've wanted to try it out for a while, but I couldn't think of what I would want to paint.  People have messenger boards, but I didn't think I'd ever use it.  This was a nice alternative.  The frame was just a cheap black one from Walmart, with a couple coats of paint (cream and green), and a "chalkboard" made out of cardboard.  After a day of painting an sandpapering, this is what was created...

I was pretty proud, especially of my drawing skills :)

I would say the venture was successful, just for the fact that it makes our apartment feel more festive!  And now I'm more excited than ever to decorate for Thanksgiving, and Christmas...and many more holidays to come!

HAPPY FALL!