Happy December, friends!

I intended to post this blog before the end of November, but figured it was better to post it late than not at all. This post highlights one of my favorite crafts ever—decorated pumpkins!

As some of you may know, I got married this past July and simultaneously became a stepmother to two girls (Hannah—nine, and Rose—six). One of the joys of this journey so far has been sharing my love of crafting with them. I am very lucky that they each not only enjoy arts and crafts but are also extremely talented at it! They get just as excited about new crafting challenges as I do and always give it their best efforts.

During the fall months, we harvested a bunch of miniature pumpkins from the front garden that Rose (accidentally) planted last year. They are the perfect little size for indoor decorating and we enjoyed keeping them around the house during the fall months as festive decor. They were in such great shape that I did not want to get rid of them prematurely, but I also wanted to mix up the decor a bit for Thanksgiving. This year we were planning to host my parents for dinner, but they ended up getting sick and were unable to attend at the last minute. Still, before they came we went all out and decided to dress up our little house pumpkins for the holidays to use as festive Thanksgiving decor.

My main inspiration towards this idea came from a local coffee shop I visited with my mom a month prior to Thanksgiving. At this coffee shop they had hot glued lovely assortments of dried floral onto real miniature pumpkins and used them as coffee shop table centerpieces. I LOVED this idea and thought it looked fairly simple to try.

A few weeks later, I took the girls to the Dollar Tree and told them to have fun picking out a bunch of festive florals or greens that we could use to decorate our house pumpkins with. We found some sparkly pieces, pinecones, greens, florals, holly and ribbons and used wire cutters to snip the top pieces off of the branches. We then each hot glued the new accessories in the arrangement of our choices on the pumpkins. They turned out pretty great and overall were really not too hard to make.

The girls and I each decorated about three pumpkins and decided to display them around various corners of the living and dining room area to jazz up the space for Thanksgiving. They were so proud to show them off and have given these homegrown pumpkins such an exciting life!

My ONLY regret about this craft is that we will have to throw them away eventually as the pumpkins inevitably rot. If I do this craft again I will be sure to use artificial pumpkins of similar colors and sizes so they can be featured annually!

What do you think of these little dressed up pumpkins? Do you think they add some holiday cheer to the Thanksgiving look without removing the beauty of Autumn? There are certainly several ways these pumpkins could be decorated and I think they could make incredible decorations for any part of fall with the right accessories.

All you need are the pumpkins (fake or real), wire cutters, faux florals or pinecones or ribbons and a hot glue gun. It’s simple and very forgiving for even the least ambitious crafters out there!