Craft Projects for Decorating Your Home This Fall -- S Post

The advent of autumn means the simultaneous arrival of some of the best things in the world: beautiful leaves, sweater weather, belly-warming recipes, and baked goods. Fall is the coziest time of the year, and making your home reflect that comfy feeling is easy with fall craft projects. Try any of these crafts to outfit your house with seasonal charm and ring in the changing temperatures.

Candles

Few things set the autumn mood like a delicious smelling candle. Take your illumination game up a notch and create your very own DIY candles this fall. Purchase a candle making kit with all the necessities, form your very own candle crafting station, and waft in delightful scents for the entire season. The best part? With your own kit, you can tailor the scent to your preferences; imagine a perfect-smelling home for months on end.

Jewelry Craft

Get started on making your own jewelry and design pieces with a little bit of fall flavor. You may need to try several different styles before you find your favorite design process. From traditional beading to hemp knotting to polymer clay, the options are plentiful. Incorporate common autumn colors to make your creations perfectly match the season. While making jewelry doesn’t seem like a house decoration project at first glance, you can easily display your favorite pieces throughout your home, dress up door knobs with untied pieces, and of course wear them all the time. Even better, they serve as wonderful gifts. If you really enjoy it, you can even start your own jewelry business.

Gourds

For a plant that doesn’t get a whole lot of recognition at any other time of the year, gourds provide a variety of crafting options. Buy some dried gourds and dip one end into metallic gold paint. Let dry, and place multiple creations in a bowl for an easy but sophisticated centerpiece. If you want something more simple, cut a large dried gourd in half and smooth out the insides and outsides to make a quaint bowl for fall fruits. You can often find gourds at local farmer’s markets or online from gourd-specific retailers.

Floral Fantasy

As wonderful as fall is, it can be hard to let go of the summer months. If you’re like me and you’re missing summer already, hang onto it a bit longer with a summery flower-inspired craft. While tulips bloom in spring, this is the last chance to get some. Most tulip crafts use fake or paper tulips, but why use fake flowers when you can get real ones conveniently online through ProFlowers? Fresh blossoms will provide a professional feel to any craft you work on, and will make your creation the perfect gift for any occasion. Try making a tulip bouquet to hang on your front door!

Antique Feel

The feelings of fall can be captured in old glass jars or bottles filled with orange, red, and dark pink berries still on the branch. Scour your local antique shops and flea markets for colored glass bottles. Mix and match as you see fit, and really search for antiquated, distressed bottles to inject a rustic appeal. Grab a branch of your preferred dried berry, place inside, and set up along a shelf or windowsill. This craft is quick and will leave you plenty of time to bake some delicious fall treats should you so choose!

Candleholder...With No Candles?

Repurpose old candlesticks, or buy inexpensive statement candlesticks at a store like Ross or TJMaxx. Instead of placing a candle on the top, stun guests with the addition of beautiful fall-related produce. Gourds, small pumpkins, or leaf arrangements work perfectly and transform the stick into a decorative art piece. Tie a ribbon around the base of the candlestick for a quaint look.

Pumpkin Power

Pumpkins work as an ideal decorating tool throughout autumn, and you don’t need to go the traditional route of jack-o-lanterns. Wrap a piece of fabric around the width of a pumpkin and add a string bow for a sweet, simple decoration. For a more intensive project, collect fall leaves from your yard or a local park and trace their pattern onto red, orange, and yellow tissue paper. Once you’ve cut these shapes out, spread a generous amount of Mod Podge (easily found at Michael’s) onto a light colored pumpkin, and place the leaves in overlapping patterns. If desired, gently nudge the tissue to create ridges for extra texture. Add another light layer of decoupage over your new design, and let dry. Place on a seasonal place mat in your kitchen and enjoy for months to come. 

Try one or a few of these DIYs to get the fall look and feel you want in your home. What other fall craft projects have you done in the past that really gets your house feeling cozy?

How to make fried apple pies -- Fail Kitchen

An alligator is coming to get you guys....ah NO!









 

How to make Unicorn Poop -- Fail Kitchen

"Okay, forget not getting my hands dirty, I'm just going to put my hands right in this."





 

Why are we talking about immigration?

If you were lucky enough to miss the debate last night, let me sum it up for you quickly:

BRAGGADOCIOUS

REAGAN

W KEPT US SAFE

HEY, I HEARD YOU SAID MEAN THINGS ABOUT ME, YOU JERK HEAD.

SHUT UP, JAKE TAPPER, I AM NOT FINISHED YET.

Got it? Okay, cool.

During all this blahblahblah, however, the Republicans spent an inordinate amount of time discussing immigration. Like a full half hour almost. And it was cringe worthy.

Yeah, there was the same old talk about the beautiful wall we're going to build around our borders with the fancy doors. And then there was some talk about fingerprinting every single person coming over and keeping an eye on them. I mean, we can't just be trusting them foreigners trying to make a better life for themselves, right? And one of them was like, I don't know, a dome or a force field or something equally ridiculous. And those jerk students and workers for our companies overstaying their damn visas. They are totally out of line, definitely. How dare they contribute to our society and cultural network with the money they earned and are putting back into the system. WE SEE YOU.

I know I'm convinced. I'm packaging up some legos to send to the cause right now.

Anyway, at one point, Donald Trump said (I know, I know, bear with me), that we are the only nation that allows a baby born on our soil to be a citizen, and he went on and on about how we then have to take care of that baby for, like, 85 years. AT LEAST. The horror.

But then, to my surprise, most of the Republicans standing on that stage were like, ya know, Trump's got a good point there. We gotta give that one to Trump. Yup. Babies being born here, and then we carry their asses for nearly a century. Something must be done. Good point, Trumpy.

No.

Nope.

Nooooooo.

First of all, when a child is born in the United States, they are an American citizen. That's kind of like our thing, guys. Yes, we are one of the only nations (if not the only nation) that has this rule. Because IT'S LIKE OUR THING. It is one of the things that makes us amazing. It is one of the few things left that make us amazing. It's a touchstone of our heritage as an immigrant country.

We are a country of immigrants. Can we please keep that in mind?

Second, all those Republicans stood in abject horror as they talked (wrongfully) about Planned Parenthood. They are pro-life. They argued over which one was the mostest pro-life. Dear God, we must take care of the babies! Who is thinking of the poor, defenseless babies? Why are American women so fucking cold-hearted that they'll just kill all the babies who can't even speak for themselves!

Unless they're brown, though, am I right, guys? All those immigrant babies should be born in the ocean to shorten their lifespan so we don't have to take care of their greedy asses.  We love every single baby. Unless we hate that baby because its parents are from another country. Those dicks.

Third, last time I checked, a baby didn't actually stay a baby for 85 years (unless I'm doing this whole parenting thing really, really wrong). And, like, citizens have rights and everything which I know is a total bummer, but in return they work jobs in our country and pay taxes in our country and support services in our country, and basically make the country work.

Like, you know, people.

Babies born on U.S. soil, who are then U.S. citizens, are, in fact, productive, fruitful members of our society who contribute to our national money base and follow the rules set forth by our founders.

They are not wailing, needy, no-go, babies for 85 years.

So.

Actually, that was a really bad, flawed, made-no-sense point and the Republicans who agreed with Trump there should be ashamed of their inability to logic correctly. What even was that.

And finally, lest you forget, Trump is like best buddies with Mexico. And China. They love him so much. He told me. So, at least there's that.

Trainwreck was garbage

It's my own fault, really. I only get to go out to the movies like twice a year, and I knew from the Internet that Trainwreck was not in any way the feminist comedy I wanted it to be.

But, because of that, I altered my reasons for seeing it, and thought, well, at least it will be kind of funny.

SPOILERS START HERE

At least it won't be a sappy, silly, woman-realizes-she's-been-living-life-all-wrong-without-a-man romcom.

I was wrong. So wrong.

In this ridiculous film, Amy Schumer isn't edgy or modern at all. Simply having a woman say upfront things about how she is feeling isn't omg-cutting-edge. And worse, the reason that is supposed to be funny is that somehow we still think women can't say what they're thinking or point out that they are uncomfortable in certain situations. So, to the general public, Schumer is basically saying things they think a man would think in situations. A hilarious role reversal! A barrel of laughs at every turn. A woman who doesn't like spooning and says so? Get outta here.

Way worse, however, is how quickly this quirky character changes her tune when she meets the right guy. Suddenly it's all tears and realizations that her whole life was just a blustery lie to cover up how scared she was about not fitting into society's mold for women. She was never meant to be a whore, dude-bros in the audience! She just hadn't found you yet! And she can change, dear God, she can change. Just give her like four months of prep work, then literally two days of cramming, and voila! A woman making a huge show for a guy she pissed off by being rightfully upset at him coming at her during a function where she got a fucking call from work.

And critiquing the content like this gives the movie too much credit because it assumes the storyline even falls together just a little bit. Which it does not. There are no motives behind all these grand gestures and evolutions. There is no tension or coherent strand of character development. Plot devices are thrown in willy-nilly without even a bandaid for the viewer whenever the movie needs to make a sharp left turn. It's as if a team of 12 different writers took turns writing a paragraph of the script each, passing the pages around the table in order until it was done. And it's all lifted from other stuff!

Look, I loved Sex and the City as much as the next young 20s girl in the aughts, but goddamn it, Amy, that shit was only funny then because it was a different time. A worse time, to be honest. And not only is the main character just a mix of those four women who were much better done 12 years ago, there are literal scenes taken right from the damn series. Like the couple's fight, for instance. The SNL guy comes out from a luncheon where Amy's been pretty under-dressed and not fitting in, and bored and nervous and just uncomfortable all around. He catches her smoking (pot). They fight. Didn't Sarah Jessica Parker go to some posh party in a wacky all-colored dressed then get reprimanded for smoking a cigarette out a window (by Big), then they kind of fight and she goes outside to smoke? Like, really, guys? How about Amy's job? She's a writer for a magazine which specializes in sexy stuff? NOWAI. I have never seen that before.

The scene at the end where she's with that kid? Bright Lights, Big City.

What about Amy's boss? Kind of a less-put-together Devil Wears Prada boss, no? Not kind of. Is.

And what was the point of casting SNL in this movie? They were all playing straight characters. Like, was it supposed to be funny that they were playing straight characters? Was it a meta joke? Because it didn't really work, to be honest.

Now for the killer.

There was absolutely nothing funny about the dad character or his story line. Nothing is funny about that type of person. Nothing was funny about the emotions he brought forth in his two daughters or how he shaped them. Nothing was funny about the horrible things he constantly said. Nothing was funny about the girls' relationship with each other as they tried to handle him. Nothing is funny about MS. Nothing funny. Nothing remotely fucking funny.

And to redeem him in the middle there? "He might have offended every one of you, but raise your hand if he was one of your favorite people?" And everyone raises their hands.

Noooooope.

Can we not redeem abusive-as-fuck parents, please. That garbage was no one's favorite person.

I will never get over the use of a narcissistic, completely inappropriate father figure as something that is supposedly funny. Fuck right off. Now.

It's also super funny that the muscle man is totally gay, right? Totally hilar.

Another lazy move is how Amy gets to take the article she wrote for one publication on their clock, dust it off, and send it to Vanity Fair after she gets fired. She meets with a Vanity Fair guy and they take the story? And it's published within a few days? DOES NO ONE KNOW HOW WRITING WORKS? Damn. And that it was so good because she put herself in the piece. That hasn't been startling since freaking Hunter S. Thompson, and P.S. Carrie Bradshaw did that like five times a week in 2004.

So, what did I like about it?

The black-and-white, Danille Radcliffe and Marissa Tomei film about dog walking in New York City that came up twice. I wish to God they'd made that a whole movie instead.

The homeless guy had his moments when the movie wasn't being completely condescending to homeless people. James had his moments when the movie wasn't being completely condescending to people of color.

Schumer did say a few funny things, here and there.

But, like, that's it. And that is not nearly enough.

Trainwreck is a waste of space. It's not just not feminist comedy. It's not just not comedy. I'm still trying to figure out if it can actually be classified as a movie.

How to make sand pudding -- Fail Kitchen

"In this house all the shovels and pails are covered in dirt. Because that's what shovels and pails are for."

Nicole Arbour: Jenna Marbles wants her delivery back

So, I've stayed away from that Canadian Youtube comedian who months ago decided to be really edgy (as in not edgy at all) and pick on women daring to post photos of themselves in a way they find attractive, and just recently decided to go so much edgier (as in not even close to edgy) and pick on fat people.

Because it's stupid and boring and I didn't want to write about it. So, I'm not going to. I shared a great response by Lindy West, and an awesome video response by Melanie Greeke, and I'd hoped that would be the end of it.

But alas.

I cannot stand by while everyone talks about Nicole Arbour, and no one talks about how she completely lifted her entire persona from Jenna Marbles. She is literally a much worse version of one of the first woman Youtube comedians. Why is no one talking about that? You can't just steal a person's entire Internet persona, sap it of anything that was funny, and make it mean and lacking in intelligence without facing some kind of consequence. Or can you?

Think about it. The quick edits where she is one one side of the screen then the other? The makeup? The way she edits as if she's having a conversation with herself as a group? The voices to indicate other partners in the conversation of one? The intersection of movement and straight monologue?

Hell, what about her pronunciation? Her cadence? Last time I checked, only one of them was from Boston. The way she does little asides in different tones. Her body movements? Heck, her very eye movements. Her whole facial repertoire.

She is copying Jenna Marbles right down to the molecular level.

Except she doesn't actually have Marbles' secret, which is to include yourself in the bit.

Funny: "If you're ugly like me, have no fear, there are steps you can take to be good-looking, kinda."

Not funny: "They complain, and they smell like sausages. . .Crisco was coming out of their pores."

Funny: "Now it's time for your eye makeup. I like to use black because it says, 'I'm a whore.' The goal is to make yourself look nothing like yourself.

Not funny: "I actually took his fat, and I pushed it back into his seat, and I held it in place."

In Arbour's version of comedy, she is the hilarious, ill-fated hero. In Marbles' version of comedy, she is the object of which she is making fun. Huge difference.

I'm not going to talk about the similarities or differences anymore because there is nothing left to say. Click on these two youtube videos. See for yourself. It is insane how similar the delivery is. And how different the content is based on where it's projected.







There are other Marbles' videos that are even more in line with Arbour's delivery, but I don't feel like finding them. Maybe the one where she talks about female athletes and their boobs. I don't know. Don't really care.

The important thing is: Not only is Nicole Arbour offensive, petty and not funny, she's also a damn copycat.

I can make a not funny video in Jenna Marbles' style, too. Maybe I will someday soon.