i am SO ready for Fall

It's my favorite season. By far.
Crisp breezes, colorful trees, and leaves crunching under foot. 

There's a continual excitement in the air as holidays approach, and I am in a perpetual good mood.

I was perusing my Pinterest board today and seeing that I've been pinning everything Fall, including sweaters, artwork and crafts. The kids had just laid down for their three hour afternoon nap, so I found an easy project, grabbed my supplies and went to work!

what in the world will i need for this?!
let's hope this is enough.

 First things first, I cut my cardboard down to the shape I wanted it for the pumpkin shape and took the cover off of my book (please, don't tell my English teacher father that I used a dictionary to make this!!).

 Here comes the fun part!!

I put a cutting board down (I was working on my dining table) and laid the cardboard template over the book (I traced around the template with a pen for good measure).

I switched between my husband's box cutter and a steak knife (the steak knife was my husband's idea...it worked really well for the straight pieces!!) and cut around the template. This part took at least 20 minutes and got the paper dust flying!

This is the point where I got really excited about the outcome of the piece...and forgot my pictures!! So, step by step, here are the remaining, well, steps :)

1. De-fuzz. Once the book is cut into your curved shape, you'll want to get the paper dusties out of the picture. Grab a  can of compressed air (I used hubby's air compressor), hairdryer, or {....wait, let me remember my audience here...} heat gun and give it a good cleaning. 
2. Ink. With the book closed, I spritzed the cut edges with walnut ink. After the edges were coated to my liking, I opened the book and got a bit onto some of the pages, too.
3. Glue. Find yourself some decent sized twigs (I couldn't find one big enough to fill my dictionary-thick book spine, so I used three smaller ones) and rubber band them together. Using a glue medium of your choice (I chose a tacky glue for this project, but you could easily have used hot glue, too) and put glue on the spine and outer two pages of the book. With catlike reflexes and your extra arm that all mothers seem to grow, hold the sticks in place on the spine and fan open the book around them, adhering the outer two pages together, into a circle. 
4. Wait. I used a few chip clips to hold everything glued together, and because I'm not good at step #4, started in on the decorating :)
5. Decorate. I used random Fall-ish ribbon scraps and tied them to my twig stems (and tried to not go too over the top!)

 This is a really easy project and is an fun way to get your home ready for Fall!!