Fall is in the air. It is my family’s favorite season by far. My older children have watched the house transform for fall with more and more decorations that I sneak in each year. I say sneak because my hubby may think we have a few too many decorations, but the rest of us don’t believe in the words “too many” when decorating. My oldest son and I started looking around the house at different items that we had and came up with a few different ways in which we could create decorations on a budget. The following are two ways we were able to develop pumpkin decorations on a budget.
Toilet Paper Roll Pumpkin:
What you need:
- Toilet paper roll
- Yarn (yellow, cream, orange, whatever color you want the pumpkins to be)
- Stick from outside
- Pipe cleaners
Step One: We felt that a whole roll of toilet paper was not the shape we wanted for this pumpkin. So luckily, in our house, and I am sure in many other homes, we have a ton of empty rolls. We took empty rolls and wrapped spare yarn around to help “stuff” the pumpkin. We did different amounts on each.
Step Two: Pick your yarn color for the pumpkin.
Step Three: Cut lengths of yarn that you feel comfortable using. We cut shorter ones for the littles, so they did not have a lot of yarn to weave through at the same time. Once they have weaved one piece, you can easily attach another piece.
Step Four: Take the end of the yarn and loop it into the toilet paper roll. Tie the end of it on the loop inside. The knotted loop will serve as your anchor.
Step Five: Once that is done, keep looping in and out of the roll. This can become difficult as the roll fills up and the yarn takes us space inside the roll. To help with this we attached a pipe cleaner to the end of the yarn to act as a needle. This allowed us to pull the yarn in and out easily.
Step Six: Once you have covered the entire roll, cut the string and any that may be sticking out due to the tie-ins.
Step Seven: Break the stick to fit the size of your pumpkin and place it in the center.
Step Eight: Pour some apple cider for the kiddos and enjoy!
These pumpkins are a fast and easy activity that the kiddos can do on their own. They can fill their rooms with these pumpkins. Even my hubby approved this inexpensive decoration, though he told me we had to stay away from his Charmin’s 🙂
Foam Ball Pumpkins
What you need:
- Foam balls – Pick the size you want for a pumpkin.
- Knife
- Dowel
- Yarn- (Yellow, Orange, White- whatever color you are looking for)
- Pipe cleaner
- Stick from outside
Step One: Using a knife, cut a center out of the top and bottom of the foam ball.
Step Two: Take a dowel to push through from top to bottom. One can also you the dowel to carve out the size and shape you may be looking for.
Step Three: Take the yarn and cut it into workable strips.
Step Four: Attach pipe cleaner to the end of the yarn. Take the opposite end, loop it through the foam ball, and tie it. This will serve as your anchor.
Step Five: Pull your yarn in and out, covering the surface of the foam ball. The pipe cleaner acts as a needle to help once it gets tight in the center. We also used the dowel to push it through towards the end on our thicker yarn.
Step Six: Once the entire surface is covered, tie a knot and cut off any extra ribbon that may be hanging off.
Step Seven: Take your stick and break it into the desired size stem for your pumpkin.
We use essential oils in our home so we put a few drops of Thieves on our pumpkins to make our rooms have a fall scent, you can also use clove or cinnamon essential oils.