Fall Leaf Garland

Hey all!

Can I just say that literally ALL my Fall decor ideas this year came from Pinterest? This particular craft is super quick, easy, and pretty. Sarah at Clover Lane posted about the idea, and I've been excited to collect leaves for a few weeks now.

The perfect leaf collecting opportunity presented itself this last weekend when we visited Kinsey Family Farm, and we couldn't be happier with how easy the project was or how well it turned out! The whole project cost less than $5. Note: Be super careful while doing this project. You could easily maim yourself with the melted wax, and I won't be held responsible for that.

Here's what you'll need:

1. Wax (we used Crafty Candles because we couldn't find Gulf wax)

2. A Disposable Pie Plate

3. Fall Leaves of all shapes sizes, and colors. Like these.

4. Thread or fishing line 

5. Wax paper

Here's what you do:

Once you've collected your leaves, set them all out to make sure they're dry.

In the meantime, melt your wax in a disposable pan. CAREFULLY, on low heat.

And lay out some wax paper.

Once the wax is melted, turn the burner off. Then, carefully dip the leaves into the melted wax (I obviously got a little impatient since the wax isn't completely melted in the picture below).

 

Coat them well, then gently shake off the excess. Finally, lay them on the wax paper to dry.

We let ours set up for around an hour. Once the wax hardens, the leaves peel right off.

Finally, tie the leaves together with some thread or fishing line. Be really careful not to tangle the thread. (Tangle it anyway. Cry in shame.)

Finally, hang the leaf garland wherever you like.

As a complete aside, while we were on the way home from KFF on Sunday, we saw a park with some beautiful trees and decided to stop.

 

Pretty, yes?

As we pulled into the park, I noticed some older teenagers with fake swords and cardboard shields battling in the grass. That's when I realized they were LARPing. 

For those of you who aren't familiar with the term (probably everyone), LARPing stands for live action role playing. It's synonymous with nerdery--I can say that because I am a nerd--and it's pretty entertaining to watch. 

While we walked Jack around the park picking up pretty leaves on a peaceful Sunday afternoon, these kids kicked up a cloud of dust while fighting a medieval battle, complete with costumes and lingo. It was awesome, to say the least.

Even Jack got in on the action by bowing down to signal his readiness for battle.

Now that you know about LARPing, I hope you'll go join in a medieval battle or something. Happy Tuesday!

-T, K, J & C

Kinsey Family Farms

This weekend, we headed up to North Georgia to see the beautiful fall leaves at Kinsey Family Farm. That's right--KINSEY Family Farm. I read about the place a while back while researching pumpkin patches, and I immediately knew we had to go there. (Note: This is a very picture heavy post. Mostly pictures of Jack).

KFF has pumpkins, Christmas trees, honey, apples, hayrides, picnic spots, a fish pond, and petting zoo. They don't charge admission and you're allowed to take pictures. Sounds awesome right? Especially once we found out that Jack was welcome!

Thomas and I knew we wanted to wait until the weather cooled off a little before spending the day outside. It's been in the 40s for the last week or so, and we decided that this weekend would be perfect for a trip up north.

When we first got to the farm, we stopped on a shady hill for a picnic lunch...

And Jack surveyed the territory while we decided what to do next.

After lunch, we walked around to check out the Christmas trees on our way to the fish pond. It was super full of fish (lots of jumpers), which Thomas was pretty impressed with. 

Next to the pond was this beautiful berry plant. I thought Jack would like it, so I asked if he'd be willing to pose for a picture.

Nope. He decided to pee on it. To each his own, I guess.

The entire farm is completely picturesque. So of course, I forced the boys to strike poses everywhere. [Jack's ability to blink during the majority of photos is pretty awesome].

Side note--this flower is called a Caliente. Pretty schnazzy.

My absolute favorite part of the day was when we stopped to take family photos (we're sad Charlotte couldn't be there, but cats & farms don't mix). At this point, we'd explored the whole place and decided on the perfect spot. We brought our tripod along--because, believe it or not, Jack hasn't mastered taking photos yet--and we were all set to take some great pictures.

Today we learned that it's really hard to get your dog to look at the camera when there isn't someone standing behind it to make noises. We ended up getting ONE great shot (out of around 50), but the outtakes are hilarious. The best picture will be saved for a future event...I'm keeping that one secret ;]

Here are the fails:

 Awkward Jack handhold.

 Weird gap/Jack's eyes are closed.

 Then we came up with the idea of taking one without Jack. Jack's butt crept in.

 Oops...I bumped the tripod and cut off our heads.

 Scratching.

 This is probably the best/worst one. He was over taking pictures.

 Just as the boys started to get frustrated...

 I begged for one last try. Aaaand, Jack made a completely ridiculous face.

He then refused to move out of picture pose.

To wrap up the day, we decided to go check out the pumpkins. KFF has some special pumpkins and some 'regular' ones. Here are some of our favorites:

Poke-e-mon pumpkins.

 Jardales.

My favorite, the Baby Boo! We took two of these cuties home. 

 Jack was pretty impressed with these bright orange pumpkins...

 And even posed for ONE last good picture.

But when I put him in this little red wagon, he was done.

We had an excellent day at Kinsey Family Farm! We'll definitely be back, and tomorrow I'll show you a craft we made with the fall leaves we collected. I hope you'll be back!

-T, K, J & C

Somebody's got a case of the Mondays...

Or maybe he's just sad because it's still hot-ish.

I hope you all had a great weekend! Thomas and I had lots of 'last weekend before my real job starts' fun. On Friday we hit up Piedmont Park with Jack so he could play with some dog friends. The weather was beautiful and I collected lots of cute mini-leaves in pretty Fall colors!

Afterwards we stopped by Walmart, where we saw these ridiculous Sesame Street sweatshirts. I just HAD to show you. Because they're not for kids. They're for grown men.

Then on Saturday, we headed up to Norcross so I could show Thomas all the great shopping. Not that he cares about shopping, but it was fun anyway. We ate a quick/cheap lunch at Jason's Deli, and then we basically walked around looking at expensive stuff that we kind of wanted but could never buy, for example, this chicken.

I actually took this picture because it reminded me of the chicken post by The Bloggess--not because I wanted to buy the metal chicken. Her blog is hilarious (although always sarcastic and usually inappropriate. Don't say I didn't warn you) and I literally lol almost every time I read it. Mostly at the chicken post though.

Thomas' favorite place we 'shopped' was Williams-Sonoma. Of course, it is WAY above our price range. Also, we have more kitchen stuff than probably any other newlywed couple in the history of ever. We laugh because looking back at our registry, we mostly registered for exclusively kitchen stuff. We didn't really consider anything for any other room besides bathroom towels/rugs and some new sheets, and at the end we got basically 85% kitchen related items. This is obviously awesome because now we have a tricked out kitchen (and we do spend lots of time there). Someday we'll be living in a house with enough storage for all our kitchen equipment, and I know our current tiny kitchen will make us appreciate it that much more.

Thomas has kind of a thing about knives. Like, no matter how many knives he has it will NEVER be enough. Pocket knives, kitchen knives, knives for cutting different things. But hey...we all have our thing (I think it's pretty clear by this point that mine is nail polish). Personally, I'm always tempted by kitschy little things, like this cute strawberry huller.

I think it's mostly because all things strawberry related (storage containers and the like) are made to look like cute little strawberries. This is obviously a good marketing tactic, because I'm always tempted. I do resist though, because I know from experience that things like strawberry hullers are rarely/never used and just clutter up the utensil drawer. It was also $8. Oh, practicality.

We spent the afternoon at Norcross perusing the stores, walking in and out of places we rarely go but would love to shop. We pretended we belonged in JCrew (wish), but it was pretty clear that we didn't because all their sweaters are $98. We also went into Homegoods for the first time. It's part of the Marshalls/TJMaxx family, but instead of clothes, it's entirely stocked with stuff for your house--decor, kitchen stuff, bedding, etc. We were already tired by this point in the day, but I'm sure we'll be back sometime when the need arises. Also, we came home to this:

Weird.

On Sunday, we woke up late, drank some coffee (yes, I'm officially kind of a coffee drinker now) and watched some Weeds. We're getting super into Weeds now that we're done/caught up with LOST, Dexter, Nip/Tuck, and True Blood. It's always fun to have a show to look forward to, and we're liking the easy to watch but very interesting nature of Weeds so far. 

It was a nice surprise when Mari and Holly called us to have brunch yesterday morning. We tried out a great little restaurant that we hadn't been to yet, Home Grown. The atmosphere was kind of young/hipster, and the food was really tasty, but for me the biggest and best surprise was that the prices were really reasonable. Like, $6-$9 for an entree. I know this might sound high to some of you, but for brunch in the ATL, that's super cheap. 

I broke one of my own rules and had breakfast after 10. For some reason my body clock won't usually let me eat anything but lunch around then, but yesterday I was feeling some breakfast food. It was a great choice! I had the basic breakfast with scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and cheese grits. As a fairly new grit-eater, I was all about these cheesy delights.

Thomas settled on lunch and got one of his favorite meals, the fried baloney sandwich with a fried egg on top and a side of collard greens. He gave rave reviews, but did say he wished there was a little more baloney.

We also tried one of Holly's chili cheese slaw dogs, and it was absolutely amazing. We'll definitely be back for those. 

After lunch, Mari and Holly took us out for ice cream! Obviously we had a great Sunday. There was a Scoutmob for a cool local place called Morelli's. They're famous for their salted caramel ice cream, which has become a really popular dessert flavor. Thomas got the salted caramel, and I stuck with my old favorite, coffee (I've gotten coffee ice cream since loooong before I drank coffee. Because I'm weird like that). Both flavors were great, but the salted caramel was ridiculously full of flavor. The caramel was suuuper buttery and the salt topped it off really nicely. It was really really rich, so we were glad we just got a kids scoop.

Overall we had a great weekend, and I'm really looking forward to starting work this week! I'm equally excited about the beginning of Fall weather, which I know is coming soon.

THINK FALL THOUGHTS.

-T, K, J, & C