5 Imperfect and Beautiful Fall Crafts for the Busy Mom

Last updated on November 6th, 2023 at 05:08 pm

Sometimes good enough is downright beautiful.

I’ve learned this, as a recovering perfectionist.

As a parent, I’ve grown used to the unavoidable fact that not every life pursuit will be blessed by my 100 percent effort.

I’m all in on some things, the important things of life. Any additions get maybe 65 percent.

Or 30.

Or 4 percent.

And while sometimes I get stumped and frustrated and honestly a little crazy constantly adjusting the energy levels and priorities, I think it can be really beautiful what we accomplish– even if it’s not always perfect.

So I want to show you some things I’ve been creating in this busy season of motherhood!

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Floral crafts

“The Earth laughs in flowers!” me, to my confused husband.

(As far as I can help it, there will never not be flowers.)

A fall flower arrangement in a pumpkin

Materials needed:

• A pumpkin (real or artificial, but make sure it can be hollowed)
• Florals, real or artificial
• Scissors
• Jar or cup
• Water

I’ve been so inspired by the happy-looking pumpkin vases I’ve been seeing (my friend Carolyn is the queen of seasonal elegance and does this with white pumpkins!). I was itching to give it a go myself!

The first step was to procure a pretty pumpkin. I need another cup of coffee just looking at people’s pumpkin patch pictures on social media, so I was not planning to pick our rotund gourd out at one of these settings.

Instead, I went to a family-owned grocery store and made my selection. (And I snapped a cute photo of my girl in front of the display!) The pumpkin was perfectly round and nacho cheese orange, albeit a little scuffed up. Even the most beautiful among us have their scars.

It was destined to be the new vessel for gorgeous stems.

The next task was hollowing out the pumpkin. I enlisted the help of my students for this. I figured, from my experience teaching elementary grades, that kids always like slopping around and getting messy in a big pumpkin, but my students informed me that they had “already done this twice.”

After lugging this newly hollowed beauty home (and carefully setting aside the seeds for a delicious snack!) I set to work collecting my blooms.

I assembled a combination of real and artificial flowers I had around the house. (It helped that just the week before, I experienced a totally avoidable but intensely stressful crisis and had rewarded myself for surviving that kerfuffle with a fall bouquet at the grocery store.) The stems I had on hand were:

Sunflowers (real and artificial), goldenrod, mums, a few mysterious wine-colored pieces from a bouquet, and artificial peonies.

Finally, I filled a repurposed pizza sauce jar with tap water. I cut the stems to size (eyeballing it) and started piling them in the jar. Setting the vase inside the hollowed-out pumpkin, I was able to fill in remaining gaps with the fake flowers. This beauty was born!

The arrangement looks great both on the dining table and on our porch with the other flowers. It makes me so happy!

Mum’s the word

Materials needed:

• Chrysanthemum
• Pot
• Potting soil
• Water

When the temperature finally drops each year after a relentless burning summer, I admit I’m not impervious to the Mum obsession. I’m human, too.

The plan was to purchase 2-3 modestly sized Chrysanthemums to display on our front porch to welcome guests and trick or treaters.

Instead, this mammoth Mum that ate the other Mums called to me.

This large and in charge plant shows off a vast spray of sunset colored blooms– Who could resist?

The cashier let me wheel away this majestic beauty for a mere $5 because it “looks like it’s dying.”

I’ve since repotted the Golden Retriever-sized flower inside the largest clay pot I’ve every purchased. I detangled some of her knotted up roots, set her up in fresh potting soil in her new clay vessel, and gave her a good watering.

She’s not only survived, but she’s looming and displaying beautifully on our front porch. Another craft is complete. I’m just a mom beautifying her home <3

Fabric crafts

In most seasons, fibers and threads needle their way into my life in some form. Here’s what I did this month:

A no-sew strawberry costume for babies and toddlers

Materials needed:

• Red-with-white-polka-dots onesie
• Green peel-and-stick felt (I got mine from Hobby Lobby)
• Scissors

My criteria for deciding on my one-year-old’s costume this year was not remotely connected to aesthetics.

If we were going to accomplish a Halloween costume this year, ease would have to be the name of the game.

I call this the $1, 1 minute costume.

It was one dollar because we already had the red-with-white-dots onesie bequeathed to us in a garbage bag stuffed with other baby clothes. The only material I had to purchase was the green felt.

I was pleasantly surprised on this materials-gathering trip. Hobby Lobby curated not only a selection of felt pieces in each color, but they held the answer to an even quicker costume craft: a sheet of peel-and-stick felt in kelly green.

Materials procured, all that remained was to cut and stick. I snipped the felt into a front collar shaped like three large strawberry leaves. I used this as a guide to cut my back collar. Now all that was left was to stick– and we had a fresh little strawberry!

Then we had the job of getting my toddler into the outfit. She was slightly confused as to her strawberry status, but then we piled on more confusion by taking her to strangers’ houses and receiving candy. I think she had fun, though. And she looked berry cute!

Flour(less) eats

As a baker, I’m usually messing around with some flour-containing concoction. My utter weakness is layer cakes stuck together with fresh, fluffy buttercream.

But I’m trying a bit of a gluten-free kick now, so I was in search of GF recipes. Here are two of my attempts.

Chocolate Meringue Cake

Buttermilk by Sam’s dreamy Flourless Chocolate Meringue Cake had been hanging out a bit on my Pinterest boards, so I decided to try it out!

Ingredients needed:

• chopped chocolate
• butter
• sugar
• vanilla
• salt
• eggs
• cocoa powder
• cream of tartar

This wonder of chocolate, butter and sugar turned out as rich as I had dreamed up in my head. The first layer consists of a fudgy brownie that is topped by a whipped, delicate, crackly cloudlike meringue layer. I seared my tongue on the gooey confection right out of the oven, refusing to wait the proper amount of cooling time.

Recipe notes: Trying to avoid the corn starch, I subbed in 1/4 tsp cream of tartar for both the vinegar and corn starch. This worked well, I think, but for some reason I should’ve baked it longer. Was just a tad too underbaked, and that’s saying a lot from a gal like me, who fights people over the gooey middle. I also failed to get a nice swirl on the chocolate meringue because my melted chocolate was still a bit too warm when folded into the meringue. Oh well!

Butter chews

After unsuccessful attempts at making homemade chewy caramel candies in the past, I was ready to confront the challenge once more.

I caved and bought corn syrup, hoping this ingredient would take me to the sweet finish line of achieving a chewy, amber-colored salted caramel wrapped in wax paper, just like the old church ladies always did.

Apparently the church ladies keep their secrets, because I still couldn’t get it right.

Caramel is a melted sugar, buttery, creamy labor of love that also drives me totally nuts and to utter bad words while fuming over the hot stove. While I achieved the chewy texture (unlike other times, producing teeth breaking caramels) I never actually got the lavalike mixture to caramelize.

I cut these gooey somethings after cooling and tried them– caramels they were not, but they weren’t totally inedible. They were sort of good, the salt a shining star in the flavor profile. This became one of the times I had to face my imperfection and lack of achievement when it came to melted sugar confections. After two hours in the kitchen, I dubbed the candies Butter Chews and called it a night.

A beautiful handmade fall, despite its imperfections

Thanks for coming alongside me in this journey to bring seasonal beauty to my home. I like trying new ideas and crafts, and sometimes they work out splendidly!

For times these projects don’t work out, I still learn a lot and usually rebrand the mistakes as Butter Chews or some such nonsense.

What crafts are you working on? Fall is such a beautiful season– are there any decorations or traditional recipes you simply must make for your home in the fall? Let me know in the comments!