Fall Decorating!

So this week I've been in a kind of creative mood. I really wanted to decorate the house for fall, so I've gone for a couple walks and collected things to use. There are still some other things that I want to do, but I thought I would show you what I've done and see what you think!


I wanted to do a nice center piece for the table, and since we usually eat in the living room I decided to go big. ;-)

It's all made out of grasses that I've cut, a couple of grape vine branches and some red berries that I found.

I haven't decided yet how much I like it, and I was wondering what you all would think.

Here is my first attempt at making a grapevine wreath.

Here it is after some decorating. I'm thinking it's too thin and needs some more grapevine.

Here is part of the mess I made in my kitchen. :-/ You can't tell here but there were grass seeds EVERYWHERE!

This is a centerpiece I made a few days ago. I liked it because it had lots of color, but it was a little bit too wild or something. It would still be there except the leaves all curled up and started to look bad. Does anybody know how to preserve leaves on the branch?
I am in the process of drying more leaves to string up on the curtains in our living room and scatter in a couple other places. When that's done I'll show you how it came out. I hope you are all having a very blessed week!

I'm Back!

I can't believe it's been so long since I've updated my blog! Have you missed me? :-) Well so much has happened in the last few months to tell you about all of it, but I'll try and give you the highlights. The best thing actually happened at the beginning of this month. We had our first anniversary!! I am so blessed and thankful to have had one wonderful year of marriage to my amazing husband and we are praying for MANY more years together. :-) To help celebrate, we decided to drive out West. We spent about a week at a cabin in a beautiful spot in Colorado. We went hiking, sightseeing, explored an old mining town and cooked out on the grill. It was so much fun!! After that we drove to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore. That was really neat, and there were several inches of snow! One of my favorite things from the whole trip was just driving through all the beautiful scenery. I had never been out West before so it was an amazing experience. I took TONS of pictures, but here are just a few.



Looks like a painting doesn't it? This was the view off our back deck!

This is one of the pictures I took on our longest hike. We could see for miles and miles. It was amazing!

The Aspen trees were beautiful the whole time we were in Colorado. This picture is from the hills around the old mining town, "Cripple Creek". There is still an active gold mine there.

This is the worlds highest suspension bridge. It is over 13oo ft high and stretches across the Royal Gorge. We walked and drove across. It was really neat!

And here is our truck on the bridge. Those wooden planks creaked and moved and made all kinds of noise as we were driving over them.



When I took this one we were at the top of a small mountain. As you can tell from my hair, it was really windy!

I took this from the top of a small mountain. Two days later we climbed to the top of the mountain in the background.

This is the view from that big treeless mountain. The air was so thin up there we couldn't catch our breath. We barely made it up there because we were so tired!



It was VERY steep!



For our anniversary dinner Josh grilled some steaks~ it was the best steak I've ever had!

I made cheesecake for dessert. :-)


This is one of the hundreds of ranches we passed on our way to SD.

This picture and the next few are from the drive from Colorado to South Dakota. Here we are getting close to the end of the Rockie Mountain range.

Once we got past the Rockies it really flattened out and we started passing huge ranch after huge ranch. It was beautiful.

These mountains bordered all of the ranches. They looked like they had been painted there.



Then it turned into rocky badlands that looked cool.


And here is Mount Rushmore!!





Lincoln


Teddy

Jefferson

Washington. My favorite president. ;-)



When you turn your back on the monument, this is what you see. :-) The reddish dirt and rock out there was almost glowing in the evening sun. It looks pretty cool and is quite a contrast from the granite mountains that the monument is carved in.
When we got home, we spent a week house-sitting and doing work for some customers, Mr. and Mrs. Hankins. They had two sweet dogs that became very good friends with Bell. Patsy didn't care for them as much, but by the end of the week he had warmed up to them. :-)

Meet Sadie! She was very sweet, but not very bright. ;-)

And this is Emma, even sweeter than Sadie and very smart. :-)

Bell was quite at home. :-)

Patsy sent most of the week right here at the top of the basement stairs ready to run away from the dogs if they came to see him. ;-)

There was some absolutely beautiful fall color around the house.




Now we are back home and enjoying the beautiful fall weather. The other day I went for a walk and took some more pictures, so here are a few!

This is our street.

This is one of our neighbor's horses. He is huge! Very sweet though and I enjoyed visiting with him for a few minutes :-)

This is one of the Amish farms on our street.



The white you can see through the trees is actually Josh's parents big barn. You can see it from our road.


And one last picture of Patsy....

He's so cute!

Well I think that's enough pictures for now. :-) As you can see, we are doing well and feeling VERY RICHLY BLESSED! :-) I hope you all are enjoying your fall and your families as well, and I promise I will do my best to keep you updated on what's going on with us more often!