Finally! My {Handmade} Fall Garland!

At long last, I finally got up my fall garland!

Now I know it's only been fall for about a month now, so I don't seem too far behind, right?  Well...I actually cooked up this scheme LAST YEAR, so -- taking that into account -- I am a wee bit tardy.

The important thing is that I finally got my act in gear...and I think it was worth the wait!  I love the handmade fall leaves that are adorning my mantle!

Please don't judge what's on my mantle!  I seem to have simply added my couple of "fall" things [the girls' scarecrows and a little ceramic ghost and pumpkin] to the usual suspects.  Also hanging out are the penguin and shark the girls got at the Cincinnati aquarium, and the adorable bluebirds they made at school that I just can't seem to part with...still, they don't belong on my mantle!

Here's a closer view (perhaps the only view I should have included, in which I was mostly able to crop out the junk)...

So [last year, ahem] I let the girls experiment with red + yellow = orange.  I let them loose with finger paints and big sheets of paper.  They were happy to oblige.

I then spent what I remember as large amounts of time, tediously cutting out intricate maple leaf shapes from the girls' masterpieces.  (I downloaded a template somewhere...there were a ton to choose from...just search "maple leaf shape".)

I glued the leaves onto circles of cardstock.  This year [ahem] all I had to do was punch some holes in the circle and thread them with a couple of pieces of twine.

[I originally tried to thread strips of burlap through the holes, but I quickly learned how burlap ravels.  Maybe a tighter weave of burlap would have worked?]

The girls were beyond excited to get up one morning and see their leaves -- which they remembered! -- across the mantle.

Happy Fall, Y'all!