This fall I discovered Flower Fridays at Fishers Flower Farm, a small local farm. I’d seen their colorful flowers featured in my friend Lisa’s photographs for a while, but had never experienced them for myself until I pre-ordered flowers for a Friday pickup this September. The flowers were so beautiful! I arranged them into a vase to take to my mom, who absolutely raved about them. The fall colors were so lovely and long-lasting; she enjoyed them for over a week. The following week I saw DIY mini floral pumpkin kits were being offered for Flower…
Today we are celebrating six years of Gnome Decor with a relaxing yoga session in the gnome garden! An adorable set of six gnome figures from Grasslands Road made for a quick and easy gnome garden I planted in May and have been enjoying ever since. The little gnomes have a glittery finish to them and sparkle magically in the sunlight. They’re each doing a different yoga pose like lotus, tree, downward dog, boat, and side twist. For landscaping I added a pathway, mushrooms, little log with a hedgehog and his stockpile of apples atop it, and a bench…
Hallo Oktober! My gnomes are celebrating Oktoberfest in their little garden this fall! Often my favorite gnome and fairy garden designs turn out to be those with a specific theme, and I’ve wanted to make a German-inspired Oktoberfest themed fall miniature garden for some time now. The inspiration behind this garden stems from one of family’s favorite fall traditions. I grew up going to a lot of Oktoberfest celebrations at German Park in Indianapolis with my family on my dad’s side who has German heritage. I also got to see the fairground in Munich, Germany where…
Welcome to the grand reveal of all the items in the FOUR limited edition Handmade Halloween boxes made especially for Gnome Decor’s Fourth Birthday Celebration Week! Each Handmade Halloween Box contains eight one of a kind Halloween-themed items I’ve made, and are perfect for treating yourself or giving as gifts. As you’ll see below, the designs are different in every box, making each one truly unique! There is a lot of spooky sweetness in these boxes! Each Handmade Halloween box contains: Halloween Gnomies Greeting Card Purrfectly Wicked Greeting Card Lots of Little Witches…
Fall is here and autumn fairies are near! A hot, dry stretch of summer weather finally broke a few weeks ago and gave way to comfortable temperatures and rainy days, so most of my fairy gardens are greening up and thriving right now even as summer winds down. I’m hoping we have several weeks until the first frost hits, because I just finished decorating my last fairy garden for fall on Friday and would like to enjoy my new autumn gardens for as long as possible. Without further ado, here are this year’s fall designs…
Hello Gnomies! It’s been awhile since my last post, but I’m back on the blog! Today marks FOUR YEARS since Gnome Decor launched! We’ll be celebrating Gnome Decor’s birthday week from September 30 – October 6. Stay tuned for new blog posts this week, culminating in the release of FOUR limited edition Handmade Halloween boxes you won’t want to miss! Here in central Indiana, it still feels like summer, so for my first post I wanted to share one of the things I was up to this summer! One of…
Spring is in full swing and Easter is already upon us! Every year I look forward to carrying on the tradition I’ve shared with my mom since I was little to dye and decorate Easter eggs. Yesterday we colored and decorated four dozen eggs, and both agreed our favorite eggs are the gnomes! We used the handmade DIY Easter Egg Gnome Kit from Broken Sparrow Studio to make eight adorable gnomes. Making these Easter egg gnomes has been our favorite creative activity we’ve done together during the pandemic. I’m already thinking about buying another…
Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope you’re staying warm and cozy if you’re experiencing bitter cold winter weather where you live too! Welcome to my first outdoor fairy garden for Valentine’s Day. Our mild December was perfect for enjoying a Christmas fairy garden outside, so I decided to create a Valentine’s Day fairy garden in late January. But as soon as I started planning and working on my Valentine’s Day theme, temperatures plummeted to way below freezing and stayed there for weeks! What timing! I made sure to take photos soon after…
Christmas looked a lot different this year. Due to the pandemic, we didn’t have our traditional Christmas Eve and Christmas Day family get togethers. Instead I celebrated Christmas with my quarantine crew, my parents, at their house on Christmas Day. The three of us had a delicious ham feast my mom prepared, opened presents and ate dessert, and were very thankful for our health and that we could celebrate safely with each other. I missed attending our favorite Christmas events like the Festival of Trees, Christkindlmarkt and the Old World Village and Christmas Market, and did all of…
The first official week of fall turned out to be a good time to revamp my fairy gardens to match the season, after planning out the themes in early August and choosing any accessories I needed to order by early September. I spent the first day of fall adorning Acorn Hollow, conjured up Witch’s Brew the next evening and threw a Black Cat Halloween Party the day after that. Acorn Hollow Lately I’ve been going nuts for acorns as an autumn motif! I’ve been seeing them everywhere: in fall decor, outside on the ground…
Welcome to the reveal of all the items in the limited edition gnome boxes made especially for Gnome Decor’s Third Birthday Celebration Week! Each Gnome Box contains seven handmade one of a kind gnome-themed items, perfect for treating yourself or giving as gifts. As you’ll see below, the designs are different in every box, making them truly one of a kind! Five of the items are Gnome Decor exclusives and two are custom items designed by my friend Grace Turney at Little Gnome Art! There is a lot of handmade love put into these boxes…
Harvest at Newfields is back – and much bigger than last year’s inaugural event! It has expanded from a four-day weekend to 24 days in October and now features two separate daily events: Harvest Days and the all-new Harvest Nights! My parents and I went to Member Preview Night yesterday so we got a sneak peek at this fabulous fall festival that officially begins today. (You can check out our visit to Harvest’s weekend event last year here on the blog.) Entry to Harvest Nights is along a winding path under cornstalk arches where…
Three years ago today, Gnome Decor was launched. To celebrate, a week of activities is planned, starting today and continuing through October 6! The schedule below outlines all the events coming soon over the next several days. Bookmark this page and check back regularly as it will be updated each day with new information and links to posts and items as they become available. Wednesday, September 30 – Third Birthday Celebration Kickoff Let’s get this party started! Keep on reading to check out all the fun activities going on this week, September 30 – October 6, to celebrate three years…
When I was planning my fairy gardens this spring, one of the themes I was most looking forward to doing was a butterfly sanctuary. I tend to get really excited about very specific themes, and this one was easier to pull off than some of my other ideas, because there are a LOT of miniature butterfly accessories out there to choose from. Since they are both magical winged creatures that can be found dancing around your flowers, butterflies and fairies go together like gnomes and mushrooms! I quickly realized the butterflies in my garden would need extra room to spread…
The Fishers AgriPark officially opened to the public on July 28, and the timing couldn’t have been better for something new to do outdoors that everyone can safely enjoy. The thirty-three acre park offers plenty of room to socially distance. Face masks are required and attendance is limited to a small number of guests through online pre-registration and waiting lists. Ten preview evenings for local residents are being held on Tuesdays and Thursdays through the end of August for a rolling grand opening before regular park hours begin on September 1. My parents and I went…
Happy Independence Day! Today I am sharing one of my quick and easy bonus fairy gardens I made this year. I always seem to end up with more fairy gardens than I plan for initially, because they’re just so fun to do and I always have extra figures or plants I want to use. When planning my four main fairy garden themes for 2020, I kept running across my Fourth of July fairy garden figures from past years, so I set them aside in case I decided to make one again this year. Then, while browsing planters on…
What’s your favorite flower? Daisies are mine because they’re such happy flowers, but ask me in April and I might say tulips, lily of the valley in May, or sunflowers when summer starts sliding into fall. There are so many beautiful flowers depending on the season that it’s hard to pick just one. Daisies are definitely my choice though for summer’s best flower. And today is the first official day of summer! I’ve always loved daisies. I used to have them in my backyard and they were one of the…
My first fairy garden design of the year might well turn out to be my favorite. I am obsessed with this little pink and white fairy garden celebrating my sweet angel kitty named Flurry whom I was privileged to spend my life with for 18 years. She passed away a year ago in April and I miss her so much. But I have found some cheerful ways to celebrate her life, such as with this fairy garden and a cat planter my mom gave me for my birthday last year, shown below planted last summer with pink and purple flowers…
Decorating Easter eggs turned out to be the perfect stay-at-home Easter activity for me this year. I went a little crazy, decorating 52 eggs total! Needless to say, my parents and I will be eating hard-boiled eggs for awhile! My mom also used several of them in her seven layer salad recipe, a favorite Easter dish of mine. This year I used a Paas Deluxe egg decorating kit ordered online from Target that contained nine different colors of dye, and an American Crafts Easter Rabbit egg decorating kit shipped from Paper Source that reminded me so much…
March came in like a lamb (60 and sunny), went out like a lion (41 and gloomy), and disintegrated into a completely different scary beast altogether as we saw a steep ascent in the number of coronavirus cases. With our social activities on pause and daily lives disrupted right now as we practice social distancing and staying at home, it’s reassuring to know that nature is still here for us and wide open for business. Going outside for fresh air has been the best way for me to take a break from the constant scrolling on my phone for…
Happy Leap Day! I am excited to see February end, and the first month of spring begin tomorrow! I love the anticipation that comes with my favorite seasons of spring and summer stretching before me, with winter in the rearview mirror. Even though we had an extra day of winter this year, it flew by since I’ve been so focused on a project at work that’s kept me stuck indoors anyway. March can be a tricky and cold month here in central Indiana, but it always bestows us with at least a sprinkling of beautiful days…
My mom loves to spoil family and friends with home cooked meals and baked goods. She is the best cook and baker I know, and I don’t just say that because she’s my mom! With February 14 just 14 days away, I thought I’d share her quick and easy recipe for heart-shaped brownies topped with strawberry icing and drizzled with Ghirardelli chocolate. These brownies are so yummy, and the juice from the strawberries gives the icing a nice flavor and pink color without the use of food coloring. You can’t go…
The days leading up to Christmas this year were a blur. They seemed to go by faster than ever and there were several things I did not get done in time that were on my to do list. In case you were feeling the holiday stress too, there was good reason this season was more rushed than ever. There were only 26 days (!!) between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, six fewer days than last year and also the smallest number of days mathematically possible between the two holidays! I always wait until after Thanksgiving to decorate, but with so few…
My fall event highlight this year was Newfields’ inaugural Harvest, a four-day, fifty-acre fall extravaganza that featured over 10,000 pumpkins, fall displays, art, animals, kids activities, and local vendors, restaurants and brewers. Of all the wonderful events I’ve attended over the years at Newfields (previously known as Indianapolis Museum of Art), I think this one was my very favorite! My parents and I went on Friday, October 4, and it was a beautiful fall day – sunny, not too hot or cold, crisp with a woodsy smell in the air and leaves swirling around…
Happy Halloween! It’s a spooky weather day here in central Indiana, where we’ve had fog, blustery winds, rain, and blowing snow at various times throughout the day. There must be a LOT of little girls dressed like Elsa this Halloween, because we’re absolutely Frozen! I’ve had a very busy month so my fall and Halloween decorations went up late this year, and I didn’t decorate a ton, but I wanted to share some of my Halloween displays. My biggest decorating effort once again was my black cat mantel, which I debuted last…
A few weeks ago I decided I needed a system to tame all my purchases, paper piles, and other assorted items I drag home and unceremoniously dump on the floor before I put them away – often much later. I also needed a way to handle my incoming mail in an efficient way. I started browsing online for inspiration and learned what I was in search of was a command center. I ran across this photo which sparked the whole idea to create a command center of my own, since I had a similar amount of space available along one…
October 5 UPDATE! We have a winner! Katie Camden won the set of three handmade seasonal cards! Thank you to everyone who entered! Our second birthday celebration wouldn’t be complete without a giveaway! Win this set of three handmade greeting cards featuring a card you can use each month for the rest of this year. There is a Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas card included in the set. Cards come with envelopes and are blank inside for your greeting. You can enter up to three times for a chance to win. Choose one, two …
As I write this post on the first day of autumn, signs of fall are appearing despite the warm weather. Leaves are swirling down on my deck, my mums are blooming, and spider webs are cropping up all over my yard. It’s finally time for the fall décor to come out! Last week I finished transforming my summer fairy gardens into fall themed miniature scenes. Overall, the plants in my fairy gardens fared very well this year despite our hot, dry summer and I didn’t have a lot of dead growth to remove…
Today marks Gnome Décor’s two-year anniversary and we’re celebrating all week long, September 30 – October 6! Check out the schedule below for all the fun events planned this week, and be sure to join us for each day’s festivities! Bookmark this page as it will be updated daily with links to new posts and content. Monday, September 30 – Fall Shop Release, Second Birthday Celebration Kickoff, Newsletter You’ve got mail! If you’re already on the Gnome Décor mailing list, check your email for today’s newsletter, and get all the…
Is there anything more cheerful than a field of sunflowers? It’s like a thousand smiling faces quietly greeting you with their beauty. On my recent trip to South Dakota to visit my friend Rebecca and her family (more on that trip will be coming soon!), we drove past several beautiful sunflower fields on our journey west to the Black Hills, and ever since, I’ve been wanting to immerse myself in fields of golden sunflowers! On Sunday the weather was perfect so Mom and I drove up to Kokomo to see Prices Pumpkin Patch’s sunflower…