Pumpkin Painting

It is definitely fall around these parts.  The weather is crisp.  The leaves are changing colors and starting to sprinkle to the concrete.  Even when the forecast calls for SUN, you aren’t jumping into your daisy dukes or you’d freeze your little tushy off!  Jeans, sweaters, scarves and jackets are all coming out of the basement.

I have been trying to simplify my life, in so many ways.  There are so many distractions all day long that one way I’ve simplified is minimizing the clutter.  I pulled out the October decor bins (4 of them in total) and I MAYBE put out 1/4 of the items in them.  Not that I am not in the fall spirit but I just want to MINIMIZE!

Set a Goal

But how do you minimize?  I don’t know about you but in order for me to be successful at something, I need to set a goal.  I state it in writing (or in my head) what the goal or theme is and then I can easily say YES!  that fits with my goal/theme or NOPE!  that is not within my goal/theme.

This Halloween, I decided the theme was going to be BLACK & WHITE.  I’m just adding a few things around the house that are black and white.  Simple.  What stemmed this theme is after summer was over, I switched out the ribbon on my “evergreen” wreath (It’s actually a 22″ faux wreath from this lovely etsy shop: ElegantWreath) on my front door with a simple black and white buffalo checked ribbon from MillEnd (similar).  Again, simple.  Easy.

All Thought Out Plans Have Snags

With my black and white them in mind, I set off to Costco where I had seen large white mums for the front porch.  I walk into Costco and was presented with a dilemma: the white mums I was eyeing a few weeks before were already in full bloom.  If I bought those now, they’d be dead by Halloween!  My other choices were yellow, purple (you know how I looove purple! 😉 ) or a burnt red.  The burnt red reminded me of the gorgeous deep, almost black zinnias I keep seeing in bouquets everywhere!  So that is what I went with.

But…shoot!  My theme was BLACK & WHITE!  Ugh!  What to do now?  Well…this is one learns to be flexible. 🙂  It might not be exactly my original theme but how do I modify?  How do I bring back the black and white theme to this front porch display? (Long deep thoughts)  PUMPKINS!

Purchasing Pumpkins

Although pumpkin patches weren’t open to the public yet, Trader Joe’s had just received their first shipment of gourmet pumpkins.  I picked up a few white pumpkins from there, put them on my porch. Yah, it was a little splash of white…but…didn’t quite fulfill my vision… And then, I HAD AN IDEA!!!

“You painted them, didn’t you?  Of course you did!”  Yes I did.  In 1 hour, I had black and white pumpkins to finish off my fall front porch.

Painting Pumpkins

Here’s how you too can have some black and white pumpkins for your front porch!

What you need:

• pumpkins
• painters tape
• black spray paint
• drop cloth
• glove (if afraid of getting hand dirty)

Step 1: Tape

Tape off your pattern with the blue painter’s tape.  For the first one, I wanted to do a ‘buffalo check’ so I taped off a checkerboard pattern.  The second, I had round stickers (similar) in my junk bin so I made a polka dot pattern.  For the third, I wanted to combine the two techniques so I made stripes with the painter’s tape then took the round stickers and made a scalloped pattern down the stripe.  I couldn’t wait to see how this was going to turn out!

Step 2: Paint

Set your pumpkins on your drop cloth.  I spray paint on my grass.  Grass grows!  If over-spray gets on the grass, it’ll get chopped off in the next mow.  But, believe me…I’ve seen this happen…if you spray on concrete, even with a drop cloth, over-spray can happen and then you have permanent paint on your concrete!  No bueno!

Because grass causes the pumpkins to sink down, I propped them up on a box and then started spraying them. This worked great.

Once sprayed, let the pumpkins dry for 10+ minutes.

Flip pumpkins over (or on their side if their stem doesn’t allow for them to be on their “head” very easily) and spray the missed spots.

Step 3: The Reveal

Once the paint has dried, take off all the tape and stickers to reveal your beautiful, custom painted pumpkins!

There is some “bleeding” that occurred but I actually love it!  They look a little less perfect.  You can’t plan this stuff!!! 🙂

Whip out some spray paint and tape and get goin’!  You can do it!

Happy fall to y’all!

xo, Melissa