Fall Bunting and Decorating Together

I wasn't always a big fan of festive holiday bunting.  I didn't have anything against it, I just couldn't see buying it when it'd be so easy to make, and I never felt like making it.  It's so easy though!  It's cute, it's fast, and it's a great way to use up scrap materials.  I love the satisfaction of starting and finishing a project in under an hour.

I knew which materials I planned on using, so I pulled them out and played with them until I found a combination I liked.  I used a stencil to spell out fall on the burlap.

This is the paint I used, but I imagine any paint with enough heft would do the trick.  Washable kids' paint would probably be too thin, and wouldn't show up on the burlap very well.  It took a pretty thick layer of this stuff to coat the burlap.

I sewed birthday bunting a couple months ago, but this time I opted for the simplicity of a hot glue gun. I laid the triangles in a row upside down, taking care to make sure 'fall' would be oriented correctly when looking at the bunting from the front.  I just estimated on the distance between the triangles- another great thing about bunting is there's no wrong way to do it.

I like how it came out- cute and simple.  Both Chris and Dear asked me if I was going to make one to spell out every season of the year.  I think they're making fun of me!

Our box of Halloween decorations has been sitting on the living room floor for about 4 days now, and Mister asks every day if we can put them up.  So this evening, in between dinner clean-up and showers, we took a few minutes to decorate together.

I love decorating for the holidays, and the kids have whole heartedly adopted the tradition, too.  Today was kind of a rough day, (traffic, missing homework, nobody following directions, pouting because oh my god I have to clean out my backpack?!)  So putting out the Halloween decorations was the one thing that worked for us today.  Those were our ten solid minutes together- ten minutes when everybody was happy all at the same time.  Some days are tough, and I think ten minutes is perfectly respectable for a Tuesday.  Or heck- for any day!  Because there are 5 people living in this house, and growing up is hard and parenting is hard and ALL 5 of us happy together for a full 10 minutes?!  I think that's pretty good.



**This has been Day 15 of 31 Days of Enjoying My Kid.