Pompom Pumpkins

At the end of last week my kids school launched a challenge: create a piece of fall decor over the weekend, using only what we already had at home.

Now, I rarely change our home decor according to seasons. Other than at Christmas, everything stays pretty much the same. I may add a thing or two here and there but, realistically speaking, I just don't have the time or the energy for seasonal makeovers. 

So creating something out of the blue, using what we had at home - and, on top of that, something that the kids could make or at least help making - wasn't an easy task for me. After some internal debate (and an early Saturday morning brainstorming session while everyone else was still sleeping) I decided we could make pompom pumpkins. 

I fished a small orange ball of yarn from my bag of yarn leftovers and found a green pipe cleaner in my stash as well. I would have preferred the pipe cleaner to come in a darker shade of green, but I stayed true to the challenge and used only what we had.

I do own a couple of pompoms makers, but this time we just made the pompoms the easiest old fashioned way possible: rolling the yarn over our hands, trying a knot and then cutting the folds: 

Then we tied the pipe cleaner to the pompom and cut of the excess. Since I had yarn to make three pompoms and there was only one pipe cleaner, we made sure to cut it in a way that would allow us to make three pumpkins.

Then we just trimmed the pompoms to give them a bit more shape.

And here are our pompom pumpkins, all three of them:

I wasn't totally happy with the shape of the pompoms - but then, I've never been really good at making pompoms, not even when I use the pompom makers.

The kids, however, were happy, so that's all that matters.

And the best thing about those pumpkins? The pipe cleaners are so easy to bend that you can use the pompom pumpkins to make a garland, just hanging them over a piece of ribbon:

In time, I may get myself a new ball of yarn and pipe cleaners and try to make a few more pumpkins, because it was a really fun project, but for now we'll settle with these.

Happy Tuesday,