How to change the look of your house for under $80.00 Pt 1

I took off work this week to help my hubby work on getting the house ready for winter.  You know fun things like cleaning gutters, caulking around windows and doors and putting up plastic around our 1972 windows.

We made a list of what we wanted to accomplish this week then prioritized the list.  Personally I am not a list maker but I did marry one.  I always tease him that by the time he makes the list I could have done the first 3 things on it!  BUT we made a list.

One of the first things we did was to caulk and paint the vents on the roof.  I bought a can of heat resistant spray paint.  This means you can use it on something that gets hot like your fireplace front, gas grill or in our case, house vents.

We painted our house gray about 5 years ago but never painted the house vents on the roof.  I bought black spray paint and heat resistant caulk in black as well.  First we caulked then we spray painted.  I held a large piece of wood so the spray paint wouldn't go everywhere.

I think it turned out great!  For the cost of a can of spray paint, $7.99 in this case, you can change the look of your house!
Before - Ugly mustard yellow:

After:  Nice Black!

Pretty good huh!  Cheap too!

Again side by side before and after

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This is step one of the under $80.00 transformation.  Next is the shutters and door, remember this ugly red color!

It's that time of the year...

Yep it is that time of the year....

Next weekend, November 2, we set our clocks back 1 hour and gain an hour of sleep.  We also lose an hour of daylight later in the day.  Hopefully it will be brighter when I wake up at 5 am! 

I took some time off work next week to spend with the hubby who's been away on business and do those fun things around the house before winter comes.

First on the list is the vent stacks on the roof.  We painted our house a few years back a dark gray and got a new roof after a few too many hail storms.  Our roof is a gray/white/black combo of shingles but the vent stacks are still the original yellow mustard color that the house was originally painted when build in 1972!  Yep mustard yellow.  I finally got some heat spray paint and the hubby and I are going to climb on the roof and spray paint!  It will make the house look finished finally. 

Next on the list is sealing/weatherproofing doors and windows.  Caulk is cheap folks and this little step around your windows and doors can really help keep the heat in.  Especially if you are like me and window replacements keep getting pushed farther and farther down your 'TO DO' list because of money.  Windows are CRAZY expensive!  So we will caulk and put up plastic on the insides to keep us all toasty warm during the cold winter months. 

I'd also like to paint our front door and our shutters.  Right now they are red and while I like red, not this color red.  I am looking to paint the shutters black and the door a bright blue.  Off course I'll have to also change to door trim I am thinking not a full bright white but a white. 

The hubby wants to paint our back deck.  Right now it is like 4 different colors and I don't like any of them.  I'd rather they be natural wood with a stain.  We may be able to get the floor that way - it is green right now - but I don't know.  The trim and railings are red, the same red on the front door.  Finally the ballisters and railings are off white and the outside trim is gray to match the house.  YIKES!  Who knows what colors all of this will end up.  I am on a blue/grey/orange kick right now so we'll see.  I'll keep you posted. 

Then there is fertalizing the grass, flushing the sprinkler system, cleaning gutters, trimming trees, sealing a crack in our front steps and lets not forget raking leaves.  OH and let me not forget that I still need to make a candy corn wreath.  More on that later! 

I'd also like to paint our lower kitchen cabinets and get some hardware for them.  Right now they are white and always look so dirty to me.  We don't have knobs or pulls on any of the cabinets so I'd like to get those for the kitchen as well. 

A pretty ambitious list don't you think?  I'll keep everyone posted on what I actually get done! 
Tonight is Hot Tub Margaritta Friday so when the sun goes down I will be partying. 

Remember Halloween is this Thursday so watch our for those little gobblins when you are driving!  I'll share my finished outdoors for Halloween also.  BTW - have you seen the Brooklyn Limestone house online yet? 
This lady really goes all out with her decorations.  This year she is shark infested.  Take a look at the picture below and you can check out her blog at Brooklynlimestone.com

Pretty impressive! 
You may also want to check out Michaela Noelle Design blog.  She is doing an instagram challenge to fix up a space in your house each day in November.  Take a look at her list and see what you can do!  I have a link to her blog on my previous post. 
Have a great weekend.   Victoria

Michaela Noelle Designs: Joy Filled Home: Instagram Challenge Announcement!...

Michaela Noelle Designs: Joy Filled Home: Instagram Challenge Announcement!...: Happy Friday! I can hardly believe my birthday is next Friday, which is also the first day of November. It's mind blowing! How are we ...

Halloween door ideas

When you decorate for Halloween this year don't forget your front door!

Last year I did my door as a mummy.  I wrapped the door in white crepe paper.  The problem was overnight the cool air got between the door and the storm door and the mummy's wrapping drooped.  I was so upset I almost tore the mummy down.  My daughter and my husband liked it though so I kept it up.  If you want to do a mummy door I would do this on an inside door, like a garage door or bedroom door or the back of the front door.

This year I thought about Frankenstein or Dracula.  My front door is 2 colors, the outside is red and the inside is brown.  I am on a limited budget, very limited so I wanted to use what I've got on hand and not purchase anything.
Since Frankenstein is green and my door is red I decided to do just an angry face.
To do this door you will need a large yard trash bag, 2 paper plates, a cup, tape (I used packing tape) and 2 pieces of black construction paper.

OH and scissors.

So first things first... drape the trash bag over the top of the door.  I draped it so about 10-12 inches hung down.  I decided I wanted my mad monster to have fringed hair so I cut strips into the bag.

Then tape the bag on the sides so it is secure to the door.  Next, make the eyes.  Using the cup make two circles on the black construction paper and cut them out.  Tape each black eye to the center of the flat back of each paper plate.

Now take the plate and tape it to the door.  I used packing tape and made a roll and secured the tape to the curved sides of the plate and stuck them on the door.

 Next make the eyebrows.  I cut long 2 inch strips for the eyebrows out of the black construction paper and taped them to the door over top the eyes.  I angled my eyebrows to make them look mean.

Now make the mouth.  I cut another long 2 inch strip and 2 shorter ones and taped them to the door.

I think he turned out pretty good.  FOR FREE!  Everything I used is what I had on hand.

There are other door ideas you can try.

Have fun decorating your door for Halloween!  I'd love to see what you come up with.

Halloween has come to our house

I just love Halloween, not only is it the day before my birthday but I like the history behind the holiday.

All Hallows Eve or Halloween is the day before All Saints Day or The Day of the Dead.  In history the Celtic holiday of Samhain (pronounced sah-win) was celebrated at the end of the harvest season.  The ancient Celts believed that on October 31st the world of the living and the world of the dead overlapped.  The dead would come back to wreck havoc on the living, destroy any winter crops and cause sickness amongst the living.  Bonfires were lit and masks were worn to mimic or appease the evil spirits.
The custom of Trick-or-Treating could come from the Middle Ages when the poor would go door to door twice a year asking for food donations.  On All Hallows Eve, in return for food the poor would pray for the good fortune of those givers dead family.  These prayers would be given up on November 2, All Souls Day.  On November 1, All Saints Day, people would pray to the Saints for the deceased in purgatory.  People would go to the graveyards on November 1 and clean the tombstones and spend time with their deceased relatives.
In the Middle Ages people would carve out turnips, pumpkins or gourds, put a small fire in them and carry them outside when it would get dark early.  This could have evolved into the tradition of carving pumpkins.  Out of all of this over the years came Halloween!

My mantel this year is pretty cool.  I really like it.  I brought in 2 large tree limbs from our neighbors tree, they had fallen and were laying in the yard.  I strung them with some dollar store lights, 3 sets to be exact.

Next I started layering.  Remember when you decorate a mantle that the trick is to keep the eye moving so things need to be at different heights.
I added pictures, skeleton, a skull in a jar, pumpkins and crows.  Just keep putting things up, at different heights, then stand back every now and then and see if you like it.  If you like it, that is all that matters!

I got the skeleton at Wal-Mart he was $9.99, I don't know why skeletons are so expensive.  I got the black pumpkin at Michael's, the skull at the dollar store, the pumpkin man at Gordman's (he was $29.99 and my most expensive item.  He is made of metal and you can put a tea light in the pumpkins he is carrying and in his head).  I got the printables on-line and framed them.  The ceramic crows I got at Real Deals, the small pumpkins I've had for a while but I got them at Micheal's as well.  I love it.

I also did a bit of decorating on my dinning room table.

This is just the inside!  I do the outside as well.  

I do the outside in two phases.  The first phase is ghosts in the tree, spider webs, spiders and a few other decorations including a cool flag I got this year!  On Halloween I put up an entire graveyard along with a smoke machine.  I also decorate my front door.  All of that is coming later this week.  

Do you decorate for Halloween?  I'd love to see your pictures!  

Halloween Bat cave

Last year I made our house into a bat cave for Halloween.  It is pretty easy to do and the best - cheap!

I went to MarthStewart.com and put 'bat template' in the search.  You could also just search for Halloween and you will find this bat template and a really cool mouse template.  She also has many free pumpkin carving downloads.  You can download ideas for everything from how to make a snake pumpkin to using a drill and carving holes into patterns in your pumpkin.  All of these are FREE!!!!

I downloaded 2 templates, the first is a bat flying and the other is a bat that looks like it is hanging.

I used a hole punch and punched a hole in the flying bat so I could hang them last year.  I also used a copier and made them all different sizes.  The hardest part of this project is cutting them all out.  I would suggest if you are hanging these outside, as I did last year, that you make them out of card stock or fun foam.  This year we just used construction paper. My daughter and I cut and cut and cut till our hands hurt!  When we were finished we had about 100 of these cut out.  My daughter then took some glow in the dark paint I had left over and painted eyes and a mouth on both sides of each bat.  I hung them from fishing wire under the eaves outside along with ripped trash bags.  The effect was pretty cool!

This year instead of hanging them outside I decided to hang them inside and make the bats look like they were flying from the 'bat cave' out my door.
I took the flying bats and folded each wing.

Then using packing tape I stuck them to the wall.  I like them!

If you go to Martha Stewart's website you will also see some really cool mice.  They look really good on stairs.  My stairs go down so the only way you'd see them is if you come up from the basement so I didn't print them off.
BTW do you like my entry table?  My favorite jack-o-lantern scarecrow lamp from the late 60s early 70s when I was a kid and the skeleton I got from Gordman's this year.  You can put a tea light in his head and in the pumpkin he is carrying.  I use the faux tea lights so I don't have to worry about them dripping or catching fire.  The other pumpkin is ceramic that I got at Michael's 2 years ago.  I can also light this up with a candle and again I use a faux candle.  Then there is a bunch of skull's in a jar from the dollar store.  The little ceramic do-dad I got from the dollar store as well as the little pumpkins, they are wax and actually candles but I like them too much to burn.
On Thursday I'll be sharing some of my other decorating and next week I'll share my front door!
Do you decorate for Halloween?  If so I'd love for you to share on my facebook page!  Happy decorating!

Haloween decorating

TGIF all my ghost, goblin and witchy friends!

So yes, I listen to Christmas music and decorate for Halloween but hey in my defense there isn't really any good foot tapping Halloween music other than The Monster Mash and I can only listen to that so many times!

So Halloween decorating for me is pretty close to Christmas decorating. I've got a bunch of stuff that I unwrap each year and get so excited and do the, "Oh I forgot I had that!"

I've got a village and about 30 jack-o-lanterns made out of ceramic and cloth. My Mom sent me a pumpkin head scarecrow that we had as a Halloween decoration when I was young. It sits on my entry table.

He lights up and everything!  He is my favorite.
I am trying to decide what to do with my fireplace mantel right now.  It is big and long and very rustic, the mantel itself is a telephone pole squared off or a really big piece of wood stained dark.  It isn't level either so when I burn candles on it they burn funny and I must keep turning them every hour or so.
I just have so much Halloween stuff, and I mean stuff.  As I get older I am trying to de-clutter and get more streamline but with certain holidays it's just not happening!
I do love Halloween, it's my birthday the next day and growing up I had Halloween birthday parties every year.  I'm not a big fan of dressing up though but I occasionally do that for work as well.  It can be fun!
So right now this is my mantel...

I have never liked the mantel, if you look closely you will see it isn't level and it sags.  I love the fireplace just not how big and dark it is. One day I want to either replace or paint the fire box front.  Right now it is brass/gold and matches nothing in the house.  I don't mind a bit of brass or gold but I'd prefer not.  The framed sayings I printed on-line.  If you go to Google and type in Halloween free printable or Halloween free images you will get a lot of returns.  Google Images has pages and pages that you can just print to a colored printer.  I need to update them, they are blah, just blah.  I first need to straighten them!  WOW they are crooked in the frames.  I may add some stickers to them to brighten them up.  Something I've already got in my scrapbook pile will have to do!  I'll show you when I'm done. 

The head in the glass jar is from the dollar store and the glass jar I got at Home Goods for $14.99!  Wait till you see what I do with it for Christmas!  The skeleton I got at Wal-mart for $9.99 - speaking of skeletons, why are these dang things so expensive!?  The larger ones are like 40 bucks!  I don't have that kind of cash to spend on a skeleton that is out once a year.  

The Pumpkin skeleton holding a pumpkin I got at Gordman's along with the fat little pumpkin head thing.  They are metal.  I just love them and they are my splurge items this year at $30.00 each!  The heads and what they are holding are for tea lights and I think they will look pretty cool lit up at night.  Now I don't use real tea lights any longer, I use the faux ones.  Much safer.  

I don't know if this is how my mantel will stay I like it so far but it needs something... I just don't know what yet.  It isn't like I don't have a lot to pick from still...

Yes, this is all Halloween!  Well except for my work briefcase there.... I also have some items on my buffet that you can just see.  I've got two trees, a witch I made, two black cats, a bust and 3 large light up pumpkins PLUS and entire spooky village!  The there is the outdoor things.  You can see the box for the tree, it is thin and green.  I've got lights, a flag and lots of tombstones.  I don't put the tombstones out till Halloween day along with the smoke machine and the crazy scary best ever decoration of a clown because of the wind here in Colorado.  Like today, it is crazy windy in October and those tombstones would probably blow away.  OH and I've got bats, I got the template from Martha Stewart and I bend them so they look like they are flying.  I put them in my entry on the wall.  They have glow in the dark eyes that I painted on.  I've also got some plastic bag ghosts that I hang from the front yard tree and the door to decorate!  I'm thinking Frankenstein this year.  Last year I did a mummy, I wrapped the door in crepe paper but each night the paper would sag and I just wanted to rip it all down so this year I'm thinking Frankenstein made out of paper plates, construction paper and a trash bag.  I'll show you everything step by step in the upcoming weeks!  

Do you decorate for Halloween?  Peruse the Internet and get ideas and inspiration!  Or maybe just head to Pintrest!  Happy decorating everyone and have a great weekend!  

The International Space Station, Halloween and Maryland my Maryland

I saw the International Space Station fly over on Tuesday night.  It flew practically right over my house.  It looked like a fuzzy butterfly.  I tried to take a picture with my phone but it didn't turn out.  I could tell it wasn't an airplane because of its size and there weren't any blinking lights on it and it was much higher than the airplane that flew over at the same time.  Pretty cool.

I started decorating for Halloween also on Tuesday night.  I took down all the fall things, packed them up and put them all away.  I slowly unpacked all the Halloween including some new things I bought and put them all on the table and then started decorating.  Well I tried to start decorating.  I put on some Christmas music and tried to decide where to put all this stuff.  Yeah, I said Christmas music.
The problem was the Christmas music made me nostalgic.  My cousin recently passed away and the music started making me think of home and holiday's past.  So needless to say, I didn't get very far with decorating.

I am from Maryland, I grew up in an area just south of Baltimore named Glen Burnie.  Now first I have to teach you to pronounce Baltimore Maryland.  Say it with me - Bawlmer Merlin.  The people of Merlin tend to slur words together and even change the name of words entirely.  A good example would be the movie, the Blair Witch Project.  The Blair witch is an old tale from Blair Merlin, an area northwest of Bawlmer.  The problem is that you won't find Blair on any map of Maryland because it is Bel Aire but the locals have changed the name to Blair!

The people of Merlin have a very special way of speaking, I can't begin to describe the accent but it is very distinct.  In Merlin you don't have a name you are 'Hon' everyone is 'Hon' in 'Hi Hon how are you today?'
If you search You Tube for Baltimore accents there are some really funny video's of people from Bawlmer talking.

I grew up in Glen Burnie where I lived in a small house with my parents and brother.  My Mom is one of 17, yep 17 so I had lots of cousins to grow up with.  My Uncle was an undertaker and had part ownership in a cemetery so I grew up understanding death and what happens.  My friends and I use to even hang out in cemeteries where we'd take ghost pictures.  The older SLR camera's had a bulb setting that would hold the aperture lens open for as long as you need it to.  So we'd slowly walk across the camera's field of vision or stand in one spot for a few seconds then run off quickly.  The result is a ghost image on the film - pretty cool.
Every summer our family and 2 or 3 of my Mother's sisters and a brother and their families would travel to Oshin City - yes pronounce it with me Oshin City Merlin.  We'd go down to spend time on the beach and swim in the werter, yes werter, ride the waves and even surf.  My cousin taught me to surf when I was 13, he surfed to impress the girls and taught me for the same reason.  I was the little sister who was bugging him.

Driving to the Oshin was really an experience, us kids always had to drive with Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Bob because Aunt Kathleen could never remember how to get there so it was up to us kids to direct her on how to get to the Oshin.  I can remember being 8 or 9 and directing her how to get there.  Not hard, find US 50 and head east and you will eventually hit the ocean.  You'd think she'd remember since we went there every year.
I remember one particular year when my cousin Dan had gotten his drivers license.  He lived in downtown Bawlmer near the baseball stadium - when the stadium was Memorial Park, when the Colts played in Bawlmer.  Anyway, Dan had just gotten his drivers license and we were going to the Ocin Hon for our annual 2 weeks in August before school started.  Since Aunt Kathleen didn't like driving over the Bay Bridge and Uncle Bob didn't drive, she stopped her car and let Dan drive.  I can remember my cousin Larry holding my hand and freaking out, "He doesn't own a car!" was all he kept saying, and no his family didn't have a car.  His Mom, my Aunt Anna, didn't have a drivers license; she rode the bus back and forth to work every day.  We obviously made it over the bridge that year!   Dan did well, there was no plummeting to our death over the 2 mile high and long bridge over the Chesapeake Bay.
We'd spend every summer at the oshin and even survived a hurricane.  I can remember walking on the beach, the wind whipping the sand so hard it hurt your face and anything exposed.  My cousin Skip and Dan had to hold my hands because I could hardly walk against the fierce wind.  The apartment we were staying at creaking in the wind while the rain pounded on the roof.  We all hunkered down and played Monopoly for hours on end by candle light since the electricity had gone out.  I was excited to wake up the next morning to see what destruction the hurricane had done and found that the oshin had met the bay.  Oshin City is a strip of land with the Atlantic Oshin on one side and a bay, Assawoman, yep, Assawoman Bay on the other and no I'm not changing the name the Merlinders don't change that name.  In parts this peninsula call the Del Mar peninsula is less than a mile wide.  The peninsula is attached to Merlin on the east side and hooked to Delaware.  I love the beach, still do, and miss those times.
Is there anything, music, smells or movies that remind you of childhood memories?
I'll share more later... thanks for reading and laughing with me about the silly Bawlmer accents.
Victoria

Cleaning did you know?

Sorry for the late post it has been one of those weeks....
I have always wondered exactly how to clean the proper way, you know like an expert.  I know you are asking, "WHY!"  I've got kids, a husband and dogs and I never feel like my house is clean, you know like those magazines you look at and go wow how did they get that house so clean?  Not a speck of dust!  I have a large dust problem, it's big, almost as big as the dog hair problem.  No matter how many times I dust or sweep I turn around and I've got dog hair and dust everywhere.  I thought getting our backyard landscaped would help but so far nope.... I've looked to some 'experts' on cleaning and did you know there is a right way to clean?  Heck there are books about it!
These 'experts' say you should start from the top and work you way down.  That means ceilings first.  I don't know about you but other than a stray smudge from killing a moth I don't clean my ceilings.  I do clean my hanging light fixtures, I dust them and the one in the dining room I take apart and wash the globes but in the dishwasher off course! However, I do wipe down my walls 3 or 4 times a year and I dust the corners every month.  Martha Stewart says you should dust first and suggests that you use a furniture polish regularly to keep dust from accumulating.  She also suggests that you use a damp soft rag and use olive oil (yep the kind you cook with!) almond or walnut oil.  Interesting....  Martha also suggests that you can experiment with a combination of olive oil and white vinegar or olive oil and lemon juice.  If you do this I would try it on a small section of the item to see how the polish interacts with your wood.  Nothing would be worse than to clean an entire surface only to have it stain or react poorly to the polish and ruin your furniture piece.  So try it on a small section that you can't see every day like a back leg or foot.
Finally you do the floorboards and the floor.  Do the molding first.  Now, you can get on your hands and knees and use a magic eraser to clean all the molding or you can try using a dryer sheet on the end of a mop or duster.  A dryer sheet will actually pick up dog and people hair as well as dust.  Yep a dryer sheet!
While I am on dryer sheets did you know that a dryer sheet is phenomenal to clean TV screens?  You don't need to use a new one, when you pull that old one out of the dryer (if you are like me you've got 5 or 6 in the dryer at any one time!), before you throw it away take it and clean the TV screens.  It won't scratch your screen and will still pick up all the dust without leaving streaks or a film.  Pretty cool!
To clean the floor I use a swiffer. We have hardwoods throughout our main floor and with the dog hair the dry swiffer really picks up all the dust, dog hair, sand and dirt.  Then I use the wet swiffer to clean the floors.  I do this weekly with the dogs during the spring, summer and fall and every 2 weeks in the winter.  At the start of each season I really clean the floors.  First I sweep with the dry swiffer then vacuum  and finally use the restore cleaner and finisher (satin finish) to clean and buff the hardwood floors.  Restore is a brand name I get at Home Depot.  The floors really shine when I do this.  For the areas that are carpeted I vacuum weekly or at least I try to.  With all the dog hair in the spring and summer I need to do this weekly!  Once a month I buy Arm & Hammer carpet deodorizer for pet odor.  I sprinkle it over all the carpeted areas and vacuum!  It really does well eliminating the pet odor especially in our bedroom closet where the shedding dog sleeps!
I also wash the dog beds at least once every 2 months, they can just get smelly especially since the bigger dog likes to wash his feet at night and makes the bed really wet.  YUCK!
I clean the windows, sliding glass doors and front door window at the change of each season.  Just when I've cleaned that front door one of the dogs smudges it with his nose!  To clean these I use a combination of warm water and white vinegar in equal parts.  I will drop one or two drops of dish liquid in the bucket as well.  I get a sponge and wipe the cleaner on the windows and I use newspaper to wipe it off - streak free!  You can also buy a squeegee to wipe off the cleaner if you prefer.  My grandmother used newspaper and that is what I use.  She even used newspaper to put the cleaner on but I find the newspaper falls apart too easily.
I do use a squeegee in the bathroom on the tile where I use tea tree oil to clean the tile and tub.  I use 2 drops of tea tree oil to 1 cup of water and put it in a spray bottle.  I find it cleans the tub and tile easily.  Tea tree oil is a natural antiseptic and fungicide.  It also prevents and kills mold.  I spray the cleaner on the tile and in the tub then spray a bottle of just water over that and use the squeegee to wipe it down.  It is really easy.  To clean the toilet I also use vinegar - I bet you think my entire house smells like a pickle by now but no it doesn't.  Did you know that vinegar had so many uses?  I add a 1/2 cup of vinegar to the toilet bowl and let it stand while I clean the shower/tub.  Then I put on my gloves and use a sponge marked T for toilets and wipe the inside of the bowl and flush.  I only keep the sponge 2 months then I buy a new one and mark it with a T in black marker and it stays in a zip-lock bag in my cleaning bucket till I use it.
  I have one rule, each night I pick up anything on the floor; shoes, socks, dog toys, book bags, backpacks and books.  To me if the floor is picked up the house just seems cleaner.    I try to clean a room each night and the kitchen gets cleaned every day.  I have white cabinets and no knobs or pulls so the cabinets get dirty very quickly.   
I don't like cleaning, I don't think anyone does but it needs to be done.  It's a dirty task but someone has to do it!  I try to make it as easy and fast as I can. Do you have any tips or tricks to clean? I'd love to hear them and try some in my own home.

Fall in Colorado

For me, fall is my favorite time of the year.  Fall just smells different don't you think?  Fall is beautiful anywhere in the USA.  I've lived on the east coast, Maryland, Virginia and New York.  Fall on the east coast is very pretty, the leaves turn orange, yellow, red and several colors in between.  The hills and roadways are ablaze in color.
I've been privileged to see fall in New Hampshire and Vermont.  I can't begin to describe the black roads running through the mountains and hills until you come up onto a covered bridge over a running brook.  Entire hillsides in Virginia with so many colors you don't dare look away only to turn the corner and see even a better and more spectacular view.

Here in Colorado we don't usually have much red, some of the scrub oak will turn red and every now and then some of the aspen tree's get a bit of red on them.  Never any orange but lots and lots of yellow amid the very green evergreen pines.  The hills and mountains will get glowing in yellow as the stands of aspen and cottonwoods glow amongst the pine.  Every now and then a single tree, possibly a maple, will be seen peeking out yellow in a large stand of pine on the side of a mountain.  Almost as if Monet had used a single brush stroke to paint the tree in.  This time of the year the mountains are even more beautiful with the color of the hardwood trees ablaze in their dying glory.  Their leaves give one last hurrah to the world as they exit in a blaze of color to signal the end of one cycle and the beginning of another .  However, in Colorado you can't simply drive to the next town to see, really see, the trees in all their glory.  Nope in Colorado you have to drive into the mountains, sometime up to mountain passes, to see the trees.  We aren't like the East Coast with trees by the thousands along the roads our trees take a bit more effort to see, unless you stick to your neighborhood but who wants to do that!
There are several drives you can take and you don't need a 4 wheel or even an all wheel drive vehicle to drive on.  Ohio and Kebler pass are near Crested Butte Colorado and are nice flat forest roads with few bumps and NO rocks or need for a high clearance vehicle.  I recently went over Kebler pass in my Subaru Outback.
When you Google best color drive or supreme color drive in Colorado, Kebler Pass comes up as number one.  Not only does Kebler have the largest stand of Aspen in the state but North America and the world.  I wanted to see this because as those who live in Colorado know an Aspen is a single tree and to see the 2nd largest single organism in the world, well heck I was in!  
Kebler is easy to find just outside old town Crested Butte, just follow the 'scenic route' signs once in old town and you'll find it.  Part of the road is paved and the balance is nice flat forest road.  You travel up and over the pass through stands of majestic aspen and evergreen into valleys of rolling hills.  There are streams that support beavers, deer, moose and elk.  Don't forget the mountain views either - they are spectacular.  These long standing sentinels of granite peak out of the forest, some covered with snow. Last weekend was 'supposed' to be the peak weekend, however you will see there were a lot of aspen still to turn yellow.  I think this upcoming weekend and the weekend after that will be even better.
There are a lot of pictures but I hope you enjoy them.

This is the beginning of the road, nice and paved with a peak of the yellow aspen views to come.

Soon the road turns to flat forest dirt road.

Beaver hut and damn.

Part of the largest single Aspen.  The 2nd largest organism on earth and the largest stand of aspen in the world.

Aspen still left to turn their glorious yellow. 

These pictures don't do the colors justice, this is a must see and well worth the 4 hour drive!  Kebler and Ohio Passes are just two of the many accessible mountain passes that you can drive in Colorado, however, these 2 passes can be driven in a car.  No special clearance or 4 wheel anything is needed.
If you are more adventurous and want to 4 wheel it you can try Cinnamon or Engineer pass between Lake City and Ouray.
If you are looking for something closer to home you can try the road to Cripple Creek.  Here you can view the trees right along the road, they should be at peak right now.
So will you take the challenge and get out and see the leaves?  Let me know where you like to go!   If you take pictures I'd love to see them, share them on my Facebook page.