Went out today to Bartels Farm in Fort Collins, Colorado, more specifically the Pumpkin Patch. Bartels Website I did not know that the Bartels farm had been doing the pumpkin patch for 11 years. Now I have not been to a pumpkin patch in years. The farm was packed. Cars were lined down the road for ¼ of a mile. The excitement crew as we drove closer to the farm. There were so many children running around wild with excitement. I was amazed at all the activity. The farm had a huge corn and sunflower maze.
The Bartel’s did an outstanding job of staging photo opportunity spots. The first one I came up to, was an old Blue truck. It was loaded with pumpkins all around it with the dried corn field behind it.
The next photo op was an old tractor followed by additional large old farm equipment. I found a large old wagon filled to the brim with pumpkins and a perfect photo spot. I saw they had a thing called a punkin chunkin. I have no idea what that is but, I think the kids would enjoy it. Being that it is a family run and owned farm there are farm animals for the kids to see. The farm actually had a kids’ mini straw maze. I got excited when I found that they had tons of seasonal decorations such as straw bales, corn stalks, Indian corn, gourds and a variety of winter squash last but not least enormous amount of pumpkins.
We managed to get a wagon and we proceeded to fill it with pumpkins, gourds and corn stalks. It was a lot of fun to walk around, take pictures and pick pumpkins up as we walked along. It was such a breeze to check out with all our pumpkins. It took longer to load the pumpkins and corn stalks into my tiny car. Had I planned this a little better we would have taken the SUV. Loading our booty in the car was hysterical. How to fit the long corn stalks into the tiny car? The corn stalks went from the end of my trunk to the front dash. It was fun to drive up to my house with a car full of pumpkins and corn stalks and I can’t wait to decorate the front door entry.
I had to postpone decorating today because we are on a winter weather watch… 29 degrees tonight and possible 6” of snow.
In all the prepping of the backyard for the snow, silly people that we are, totally forgot to take down our two umbrellas. So, here we were in the backyard with the snow coming down, freezing snow mind you, trying to take down our two umbrellas. In the process we discover that there is already a build up of snow on top of the umbrellas. In order to take them down, I had to push up on the underside of the umbrella with disastrous results. To the onlooker I am sure it was hysterical, like Charlie Chapin in a silent movie. Snow was flying everywhere and when the umbrella started to come down, so did all the snow. It was like watching a comedy unfold. I got snow in my coat, down my shirt and all over my head.
This morning I went out and took more pictures of the beautiful snow.
Now that the weather has dictated what activities I shall be doing today, I am doing some other projects until I can decorate outside. I am embroidering tshirts for my grandkids and will talk about those another day after I have some finished.
Now, I finally got to get down to decorating.
The finished front entrance.
Most of the pumpkins here are real. An interesting thing happened with the decorations. Some of the items I put out was dried corn on the cob (Indian corn I think it is called). I discovered something was eating the corn. Upon inspection whole sides of the corn were gone. So I had to get rid of the corn. I think it was the squirrels that frequent our yard. We actually have quite a few squirrels in our yard. There is a family of red squirrels and this year we discovered there is a family of black squirrels. I had never seen black ones before.
Here is some of the interior decorations I have started this year.
This lantern in the centerpiece on my dining room table. I wrapped autumn garland around the lantern and it is sitting on a table cloth with leaves on it. I replaced the candle inside the lantern with rock salt that is lit like a night light. Another lantern that I put the salt rock into. It is really an interesting look, other than a candle.
These are machine embroidered free standing lace pumpkins. I made them to add to my autumn decorations.
To make these candle decorations I wrapped fake leaves, not real ones around the candles and tied them with Jute.