Fall Decorating with the Daisykin

Remember the Better Homes and Gardens "mumkin" photo that I showed in this post? I've been determined to make one since the first time I laid eyes on them, but it hasn't been easy! :-)

I knew that there was NO way that I would be using a real pumpkin and real mums, since I'm way too lazy to put that amount of work into something just to throw it away in a few days. I wanted something that I could keep and use year after year. I assumed that a carveable pumpkin from Michaels (50% off) would work, so I bought one of those and some fake mums. It didn't take too long into the project with the mums for me to realize that this was a PUFFKIN, not a mumkin! What was I doing wrong? As I looked at the BHG photo more, I realized that their flowers were smaller, flatter and had a contrasting center that was visible. My mums did not. Soooo... back to the drawing board. I searched high and low at Michael's and JoAnne's for just the right color (I wanted to do more of the rich, burnt orange color that BHG had), and the right size with the contrasting center. Nothing. I finally settled on some yellow daisies which weren't what I wanted, but would work.

Once I had the right supplies, the project was relatively easy. I cut each of the flower stems short and used an awl (my husband's suggestion, but the nail I started with was working too) to poke holes in the pumpkin.

I inserted a daisy in each hole as I went along. What's great about this is if you miscalculate where the hole should be, you can just punch another one and the flowers cover it up. My daisykin definitely has more holes than flowers!

So we're done then, right? Not really. Take a look at the photo below. Notice any issues? There's NO STEM! There was an eensy-weensy stem on the original pumpkin which disappears completely once you put the flowers on. Sigh... I really wanted a stem.

So. After much deliberation about whether I should try to make one out of paper mache or something, I went to Menard's and picked up a little pumpkin pie pumpkin for $1.99 (I wanted to get one that I could actually use the pumpkin from rather than just throwing it away once it lost it's stem). I cut the stem off, scraped it clean and my husband (being the smart man that he is) took the top off of a screw and screwed it into the stem and then screwed the stem into the pumpkin.

Much better, don't you think?

I started off wanting a burnt orange mumkin and ended up with a yellow daisykin, but it's not so bad I guess. Now I'm in the process of baking my pumpkin so that I can use it to make a pie. Should be interesting since I've never made a pumpkin pie that I recall!

I apologize that this turned into such a long post about nothing but a little daisykin! :-) Hope you're having a great weekend!

(Oops! Forgot to ask this. This is obviously not an outdoor pumpkin but was thinking of using it on my front porch, which is fairly sheltered. It's possible that it may still get a bit of moisture though and I'm not sure the fake flowers will stand up to it. Any ideas for making it more waterproof? A spray of some sort that won't make the dye run on the flowers?)

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