LW Designs

October is the best month. You can debate me all you want, but this is my reality. I L.O.V.E. October. The first full month of fall, it's my anniversary month and my birth month, the leaves are changing colors, the weather is getting cooler, there is pumpkin everything EVERYWHERE... and... football. It's a great time to look back at the past year and look forward at what's to come. For the past few years I've done a 31 day writing challenge each October as a fun way to document my reflection. But this year I have no time. I honestly don't ever have time to write for 31 days straight. I've never made it through posting every day for the 31 days. As I was reading through posts about people preparing for the challenge last year and this year I came to the realization that many people who participate don't - they pre-write and schedule their posts. So this year I'm trying something a little bit different - 31 days of being intentional. It won't be ...

Things I learned in October: 31 days is a long time to do something . I know there are study’s that say that if you can perform the same task for 21 days straight it becomes routine and an effortless habit. 21 days; 31 days; that’s a long time and along the way life happens.

Today was a big day. Some very famous people celebrate their birthday:

I was looking for some fun facts to share about Halloween in honor of birth week, which I never really thought about researching at any length until today. I found some really great infographics about candy , costumes , the history of Halloween , and safety ; but this Halloween by the numbers (from History.com and Column Five) seemed to cover the best variety and looked pretty to me.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about different ways to decorate pumpkins for Halloween and fall. Below is a photo tutorial for how to carve your own custom faux foam pumpkins. Start with the image of your choosing. This design needed some spacing added so that the pumpkin didn't fall apart! Gather your supplies - any size foam craft pumpkins; printed design (to fit); pencil; masking tape; thumb tacks; traditional pumpkin carving kit poker or paper piercer; heated knife. Here's a closer look at the heated knife kit (sold at most craft stores). Layout your design on your pumpkin, securing in position. I like to use both masking tape and thumb tacks. Poke around the design making sure to leave gaps in any connected spaces. After I have the design poked onto the pumpkin I like to remove the paper and draw the design by connecting the dots to make sure that there isn't any space that is going to get cut out inadvertently. Carefully carve out your...

At the end of the day I like to go through my feeds and see what my friends and family have been up to and check out the day's news. So tonight when I was going through Instagram I kept seeing #OneDayHH and had no idea what it was. I went off to Google and found this awesomeness (http://www.hollywoodhousewife.com/2014/10/one-day-2014.html). I wish I had known yesterday!! Today my day started off with my dog getting sick and waking me up. According to my sleep cycle app this took place somewhere between 4 and 4:30 am. I got up, made sure he was okay, took all the bedding off and into the wash (yes, my dog sleeps in my bed), and started getting ready for work.  As I was styling my hair I decided my ends looked horrid and I decided to trim my own hair. You read that right; I took scissors to my own hair and took about 2-ish inches off the bottom. Not the brightest thing I've ever done but temporarily not awful.  I had to wake up my husband (who I'm sure was only as...

Over the summer, my husband and I started making a lot more all home cooked dinners. Mostly because of my food allergies, but also because my husband wanted to get healthier. This has become one of our favorites and it is perfect for the fall. Baked apple pork chops. This recipe is from Betty Crocker . It's easy, quick and delicious. We normally pair it with steamed green beans, but today it was just a side of Bob Evans microwave mashed potatoes. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Here are some things about today: 1) It's my seventh anniversary. My sweet husband found the most perfect awesome card and we had a delicious dinner at our anniversary spot (because they have she crab soup like we had at our first dinner on our honeymoon ). 2) It's Monday Night Football with the Steelers. I just watched 3:00 of amazing plays. My black and gold spirit is beaming with pride. Let's hope they can keep it up... 3) I really liked my hair today. I don't often take time to 'style' my hair because it just frizzed out with wavy curl mess. I was really excited that my hair looked presentable because I was going to renew my drivers license. Then I got upset by the DMV because I'm convinced that they have a ploy to make sure no one ever has a drivers license photo that they like. It's at a bad angle, the color looks bad, they but a hologram on my face... It's like they have an ugly filter.  4) I'd really like to pai...

Hope you're having a great weekend!

I started this 31 day challenge with lots of ideas about what I was going to blog about - what I was going to write about for the 31 day WRITING challenge! I lost my editorial calendar... twice. Then I realized that most of my ideas ended up being not about writing but about seeing. Most of my ideas are visual - crafts, colors, photos, printables... And today I looked at my calender and most of the month is gone. I have so much to do!! I've missed blog days because of life. And LIFE is awesome! I missed days because I teach children at church. I missed days because I was busy watching our friends kids play football. I missed a day helping teach my husband how to use custom animation in PowerPoint. I'll miss more days. But for the first time I don't feel like the blog is bigger than me and I want to keep coming back to it. I have a list of fall things that I'm still going to document for the rest of the month, but tonight... Tonight I went to watch football, ...

I have had problems recently with arthritis in my wrists and fingers bothering me with the constantly erratic temperatures. We were making blankets ( future post ) for a mission project at church and with a piece of the scrap fabric that was leftover I made what I deemed a wrist warmer. Little did I know that these fingerless gloves were in style this year. I've seen countless patterns , posts on Etsy and even product at Target for the exact same thing that I thought I was being original in making for myself. Check out these foxy littles :   And then there's this... of course OWLS ( from Knitting Treasures on Etsy )!: I did have someone ask me if I was bringing back the Michael Jackson-one glove look. But sometimes it really is about comfort over beauty. I see more of these cozies in my future. Do you have a favorite comfort item that you keep handy when the weather turns colder?

Thanks to those who entered for the pumpkin giveaway! Winners of the designer pumpkin giveaway chosen at http://www.miniwebtool.com/random-name-picker/ . CUSTOM CARVED FOAM PUMPKIN  CUSTOM PUMPKIN TEMPLATE

This isn't really a post about fall, it's a post for any day. Several years ago my husband asked me to make a painting for him since I always paint murals and artwork for other people. I asked what he wanted and he asked for something "abstract." He actually wanted something geometric. I got as far as getting the design sketched on a large square canvas. It's still sitting in our guest room. A few weeks ago I painted a huge canvas for our new Children's Ministry classroom. It was completely different than anything I've ever done before. And before it had words on it, the hubs asked if we could keep it. Not possible since it specifically matched the classroom and the available space and was purchased by our church. I promised to to make a smaller painting for our house. We picked out some paint colors, and got a canvas on sale. Here's how east it is to make your own art for your home, office, or for a gift. Pick whatever colors you like and a ca...

Have y'all had a chance to see the leaves changing in your area? I haven't. For starters, the leaves in northern South Carolina are just beginning to show signs of changing and our schedules haven't let us make any road trips. I keep seeing photos on Facebook and Instagram of all the pretty colors up in the mountains and I know that soon enough they'll work their way down to us. Check out this awesome fall foliage map put together by the scientists ay SmokyMountains.com . I'm looking forward to the weekend after next when I'll be at the Allume Conference . It looks like a perfect weekend for leaves in Greenville. And speaking of colors... this fall's Pantone fashion palette are gorgeous! Mustard, royal blue, burgundy, cognac, taupe...

A couple of years ago my husband offered to make chili. I scrunched up my face and curled my nose. No, thank you. I'm allergic to onions, I don't like beans... Let's try something else. We decided maybe a white chicken chili might be better. So we put some things together and our own version was birthed. It's definitely become a cold weather favorite in our house - and at other times of the year too. Today it's a bit rainy and football is on, which is a perfect accompaniment. Here's the recipe for our chicken chili: 1-2 lbs cooked chicken (We use chicken breast, but I know friends we've shared the recipe with use rotisserie. Since I can't have onion or garlic, cooking our own is the safest option.) chicken chili seasoning - 1 packet per pound of chicken petite diced tomatoes - 1 can per pound (with a larger batch, I usually add a can of original Rotel tomatoes) extra sweet corn - 1 can per pound Philadelphia cream cheese - 4-8 oz. per pound depe...

Have you seen all those fancy pumpkins all over Facebook and Pinterest and thought that you couldn't duplicate the finished product? Well, YOU CAN!! One year, I really wanted a Tinker Bell jack-o-lantern. This was before fancy templates, Pinterest, and digital cameras. So not only did I have no guide for what I wanted to accomplish, but I have no proof that it turned out amazing. I will give a disclaimer that I have a strange ability to look at something and replicate it pretty closely. I have several coffee mugs from my college internship at Walt Disney World and loved one of Tinker Bell stuck in the keyhole of a door. I thought it would be pretty cute if she was pushing out of a pumpkin instead. I took out my trusty sketch book and went to work. After sketching the image I went back in with a sharpie to make sure that I had sections left intact so as to not have a giant hole instead of a Tinker Bell outline. It was adorable and reminded me of the scene from Peter Pan wh...

Most of my Sunday's are filled to the brim with things to-do. Church, laundry, football games, grocery shopping, musical rehearsal... and sometimes - if I'm lucky - a little cat nap. So in the midst of trying to cross off tasks I didn't allocate time to write my 31 days blog post yesterday. What I did find time for was finding these:  And these... A couple of weeks ago I made a disclosure about becoming self-aware about my obsessive personality . (Case-in-point: In the middle of writing that sentence I noticed a split end in my hair and stopped typing to trim off the end of that hair and several others. Yes, I have issues!) I have been looking for knee high boots for several years. I had a pair that I loved and wore constantly in college. Then I had foot surgery. Then I had knee surgery. My body changed and cute high boots didn't fit anymore. Finding wide calf boots is much more challenging than you would think - especially when you are actively trying to fi...

Each year our church has a week-long mission week. For several years it was in a community just outside of Savannah, GA, but this summer they stayed at home and worked in neighborhood just a few miles from where many of the church members live and work. This was the first time in several years that I wasn't able to participate daily in the Bible camp that we host for the kids where we are working. Because the neighborhood is in our backyard, our church has made a commitment to continue outreach to the community. We had been planning on a Christmas program with a party and distribution of toys and blankets. But why wait so long? That is what our youth pastor asked. And started planning a block party at the local park. Have you ever seen an idea snowball? Not the bad kind of snowball. The kind where it grows and grows into something amazing? That's what happened. Hot dogs, chips and cupcakes grew to bobbing for apples, candy bags, pumpkins for decorating, a "photo boot...

  Did you know that there are more than one kind of pumpkin? Now this might seem a little silly. But growing up in the city, we only got pumpkins at Halloween for carving. I only just found out today that there are specific types just for cooking. I picked out a pumpkin for decoration because I thought it looked like "velvet," and found out when I went to pay for it that it is actually used for baking pies. I wish I could remember the name or the variety... Aren't they gorgeous!? Here's a website that seems to cover all the different types, plus types of gourds, recipes, carving and much more. Since it looks like I'm a newbie on pumpkins (who would have thought), do you have a preference on pumpkin varieties? Good recipes? I think this will be a perfect addition to the church kids community garden next year! More coming on that fall festival sign tomorrow.