Halloween Costumes

Saturday's Halloween Treats

We had our annual church Trunk-Or-Treat party today, so we had a Halloween treat filled day. We started with Pumpkin pancakes (I added some pumpkin pie filling in).  I forgot to take pictures.  Then for lunch we made slimy macaroni and cheese(homemade mac and cheese with some green food dye)

with ghoulish smile apple slices (apples, peanut butter, and candy corns).

Then we topped it off with some ghost and mummy cupcakes.

(I made my own fondant using a marshmallow fondant recipe.  It tastes yummy and is fun to decorate with.  For the recipe I used, click here.)

More fun treats to come for dinner on Monday night!

Candy Corn Pancakes

I've seen these popping up all over. Clever!  I used my round waffle maker and put regular batter in the middle.  Then made a circle of yellow batter around that and orange batter around the edges.  A big hit for the kiddos.

Flying Ghosts

We actually made these ghosts at Cub Scouts.  I have made similar ghosts out of face tissues before, but I thought it was clever to make them out of recycled plastic grocery bags.  Plus, it makes them perfect for outdoors.  I hung our outside over our entryway to greet our guests.

So simple the kids can easily do this craft.  You cut some (imperfect) squares from white plastic grocery bags.  You crumple 2 of the squares, place them in the middle of a 3rd square and tie a piece of yarn around it like a head.  I love that they blow spookily in the wind by our tree.

Chocolate Cut Out Cookies

I've never made chocolate cut-out cookies before, but it sounded good. I got the recipe from Our Best Bites.  They were good - not a chewy moist chocolate cookie like I normally want from a chocolate cookie,  but good for decorating.  I rolled them in cocoa powder like she suggested which gives it more of a dark chocolate flavor.  Regular sugar cookies are still my favorite, but these are fun for Halloween or Thanksgiving when you think of dark rich colors and flavors..

Yarn Spider Web

Saw this post by Dana at Made. I knew I had to have one.

All I have to do now is stick a big spider in it.

Plaid Dress

You know that I'm a sucker for the remnant bins at JoAnn's.  My latest find was some cool green and brown plaid material.  Here is what I did with it.

I added a flower embellishment for fun.

Perfect for the cool autumn season!

Dirt With Worms

This is a fun easy dessert for the kids. It's chocolate pudding with crushed oreos (for dirt) and gummy worms. 

You can tell its good by how much pudding is on their faces.

Can't Believe I Have a 9-Year-Old!

Happy Birthday, Buddy!

I asked for a silly face and I got an "eye roll."   Now I know he's getting too old (below).

Carmel Apples

Yummy Fall Treat from last Friday:

Carmel is my favorite! 

Baby Size Referee

A dear friend of mine contacted me because she wants to have her baby boy be a referee for Halloween.  The only problem is that it's a really hard costume to come by in a size 9 months.  Luckily she had an old referee shirt that could be transformed.

I started with this adult sized shirt.  I pinned in the collar at the seam to shrink it down to baby size (using a 9 month shirt as a guide)

then I turned it inside out and sewed along the existing seam where I pinned.

I trimmed off the excess and grabbed my 9 month shirt again to use as a pattern.

I lined it up to the center of my collar and pinned it in place.  Next I cut around the shirt (through both top and bottom layers) leaving about 1/2 inch around it to allow for seams.  Here's where I am so far. Notice, I cut the bottom in a curve like the original shirt.  To get it right I cut it out on paper first, then pinned it on.  I also made the length of the shirt about 3 inches longer to allow for the curve.

Next, I used the existing sleeves to create smaller sleeves. Lining up with the top side of the sleeve. ( I used my 9 month shirt to cut out a little template of the sleeve)

Although I didn't take pictures of the next part, you basically just sew all the pieces together at this point.  I opened up the shirt and pinned on the sleeves.  You sew the top of the sleeve on first then sew up the bottom (like in a standard pattern).  Once I had the sleeves on, I sewed up the sides of the shirt and hemmed the bottom.

The end product is a miniature referee shirt.  It even looks store bought with the tag still in from the existing shirt.

Hope it works out well, Annette.  Super quick and fun way to get a costume together.  You could use this same method to turn just about any old shirt you have into a baby sized one.

Eek! The Bats Are Back!

The kids have been waiting to get to put up our bats again.  We found time and put them up today.  So fun.  For a tutorial and pattern see my post here.

Fall Clothes

It's getting a little cooler (or at least it was last week) and my baby girl is moving up to a new size so I got my sewing on and made her some leggings.

I made the black pair shorter like capri pants.  The nice thing about making them myself (other than saving a little $$) was that I could pick the color and length.  I also gave her a little extra length in her caboose so they stay up over her diaper better.

I used a pair of her pants to make a pattern. You can see my tutorial here to find out how I made them.

Autumn Treats

Holiday time starts in October for me.  One of my favorite things about the holidays are the treats.  Our family does dessert twice a week (one for family night on Monday and one for Friday night).  That way my kids don't expect dessert every day after dinner.  So I put together a little Holiday Goodies Chart to make sure we get in all the good stuff.  

Each Monday and Friday, they get to pick one of the treat cards out of the chart to make together and eat. 

This past Monday we made these Orange Kissed Cookies.  It's a new recipe I got from Our Best Bites blog that I wanted to try out.  I added some black sprinkles on top to make them a fun Halloween Treat.    They were oh, so good that I wanted to share them with you.

More yummy treats to come. . . .

I finally did it!

I started an etsy shop for some of my stuff.  I've lagged on this for so long, but I finally decided to just go for it.  Couldn't hurt to earn some money to feed my crafting habits. Check out the link on the right side to see my shop and what I'm selling now.

 

Halloween Lights

I've been saving up my milk jugs just so that we could do this fun project on our porch.  By Halloween time we hope to have many more jugs with silly faces.

My kids had fun helping me design the faces.

Headband Holder

Instead of a free for all mess on my daughters dresser, I saw a perfect solution for keeping her headbands organized.  ( I need to make myself one next).  I used an empty Countrytime lemonade canister.

I covered it with some cute paper using mod podge

Then I hot glued some lace around the top for a little added frill and it's done.

The headbands fit snugly around the canister and stay put until you need them.

This is a much better feature on her dresser than a jumbled mess of headbands.

New Skirt For Me!

I saw some cute fabric screaming to be sewn into something wonderful and I made myself a new skirt.

For this simple skirt, I darted the top all the way around to fit my waist and inserted a zipper.