First up, congratulations to Lisa K.  I drew her name at random to win my paint giveaway from last week.  I wish I had a prize for everyone who left a comment.  I don’t know if you guys realize how much your comments mean to me, a big thank you to each and every one of you.

I have to say, I can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that it is already November.  How did that happen?  In my head it’s still summer.

We’ve certainly had a mild autumn here in Minnesota this year, so I think that’s part of it.  It has been relatively sunny and warm and I’ve barely even needed a jacket up until this week.  I was even able to keep working out in my unheated carriage house workshop until this past weekend.

And then there was my trip to visit my mom back at the end of September.  It was still in the upper 90’s at her house in Henderson, NV.

So that certainly extended the season for me.

Although in my head it’s still summer, I’m now working on Christmas projects!  The shop where I sell a lot of my small items (Reclaiming Beautiful in Stillwater, MN) is preparing for their Christmas Open House which is taking place on Thursday, Nov 11, so I wanted to have some things ready to go for them.

One of my favorite items I finished up over the weekend is this suitcase.

You may remember that my neighbor brought home a couple of suitcases from her uncle’s estate sale for me this summer …

This is the cream colored one just in front of the green one in the photo above.

I cleaned it up, gave it a coat of spray primer in flat black and then added a quick coat of Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky over that.  You may be wondering why I opted to use a spray primer this time, and really it was mainly just laziness.  I knew I wanted to paint the entire thing, hardware and all, black.  I had black spray primer on hand.  And I knew I could get into all the nooks and crannies with spray easier and more quickly than with a brush.  So I just went for it.  I followed up the primer with just one coat of Midnight Sky, which was totally sufficient.

I used Dixie Belle’s Cashmere, one of their fall colors, for the stencil (which is from Wallcutz, if you want to find it).

I love how it turned out!  It would be perfect to just place in the foyer somewhere to greet your holiday guests.

I also painted up a couple of sleds.

Nothing super exciting to share on these.  If you’ve been following me for long you’ll know that I’ve done a bunch of these sleds over the years.

I brought both of these into the shop, but I do have one more to finish up.

I also painted up a few cupboard door signs.

Isn’t the detail on that stencil fabulous?  It’s another one from Wallcutz, and so is this one …

Those are a couple of old table leaves that I’ve turned into signs.  Wouldn’t they be adorable hung on the wall outside your front door?

I totally ran out of time to get these properly staged and photographed, but I wanted to share them here today in case any of you locals want to head to Reclaiming Beautiful this weekend to check them out.

Also under the heading of ‘where did the time go?’, in other news my sister, niece and I are heading to Florida today for our 2nd Disney trip this year.  In some ways it feels like we just got back from our Disneyland trip, while in others it feels like that was ages ago.  Either way, we fly out today and return a week from tomorrow.  Once again, I’ll be taking a break from blogging while we’re gone.  But stay tuned, I’ll be back soon and I plan to share a few more Christmas projects over the next month or so.  Hopefully I’ll have more time to stage them and get proper photos for you!