Hi everyone!  Can you all believe we’ve started a new month again?  And now I believe we can say that the holiday season has officially started.  I’m not sure I’m officially ready for it! I’ve been seeing Christmas products out in the stores for quite some time already, but was a bit taken aback today to see the giant Christmas tree going up at our local mall.  Guess that was just a reminder of how little time is truly left.

I am a bit behind schedule already this holiday season. Usually I have all my Halloween decor down and all my Thanksgiving things up by November 1st.  But this year I am slacking.  Here it is the 2nd, and I still have half my Halloween up.  Terrible!  At this rate, I’ll never be ready for Christmas on time!

I do, however, have a crafty project to share today to help welcome November and the season of harvest.  It is a wall hanging I made from a plaque I found recently at the craft store.

The wall hanging measures approximately 10″x7″.  I covered the front with patterned paper from Webster’s Pages and Pink Paislee.  Added a fun die-cut frame from Little Yellow Bicycle’s fall line, a large crepe paper leaf, an autumn pick from the craft store, and layered ribbons.

And finally, I created a Welcome Fall greeting with a combo of tiny American Crafts rub-ons and chipboard Thickers.

You can find this fun hanging and lots of other Fall projects at our Etsy site, Your Crafty Friends.

I also want to tell you all about a very fun event that is coming up soon at Webster’s Pages community blog site, inspireME.  You won’t want to miss out on this!

The Webster’s Pages 12 Days of Christmas Crop is 12 days of projects meant to inspire you! Each day a new project will be featured. And although we are calling this our 12 Days of Christmas Crop, there will be a wide range of projects from a Christmas gift to a Chanukah project to holiday decor to scrapbook pages and cards!

We will also be having chats, games, prizes and an opportunity for one participant to join our design team for 6 months!

Supply lists and sneak peaks will be available before the crop begins on November 12th.  All the information you need, including sneak peeks of the projects and supply lists, is here.  Can’t wait for this party to get started!

Thanks for stopping by everyone!  I hope your Novembers are off to a fabulous start.

Well here we are, day 31 at last!  Halloween is here!  The final preparations have been completed and the festivities are soon to begin.  It is with both sadness and joy that I sit here watching the sun start to sink over the horizon.  Just a few more minutes and the trick-or-treaters will start arriving.  I can so clearly remember the excitement I felt on this evening when I was a kid.  And now I have the pleasure of watching the same excitement in my kids’ eyes.  What a wonderful day.

Pete has decided he is too old to go trick-or-treating this year.  Kids grow up so darn quickly.  However, I was able to get him to carve a pumpkin this afternoon.  I sat glued to him the entire time, wondering in my heart if this would be the last time I will ever take in this particular site.

I hope to get another photo of his pumpkin in the full dark, but here it is out on the front doorsteps, all ready to go.

Nik, on the other hand, is still in full Halloween spirit.  She and her friend Megan are all dressed up in their witch costumes, just waiting for the cover of full dark to descend.

I cannot help but smile so big when I see Nik dressed up in this witch’s costume that my mother made for me when I was a child.  Now two generations of our family have worn this outfit, and Nik told me tonight that she’s saving it for her daughter. 

Well gang………this officially ends my 31 days of October.  I want to thank all of you who have been tagging along with me on my little blogging journey.  I will give you all a little break now…..

maybe………

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Evening!  Just one more day until Halloween!  My countdown is almost over.  It has been a very fun process for me, documenting the entire month with a daily Halloween post.  I think I’m going to miss it some.   But I also know that taking a moment each day to celebrate the season has made me appreciate it that much more, and for that I am thankful.

Today we had a very busy and eventful pre-Halloween day.  How nice that the kids had off school so that we could do some special things together as a family.  This morning, Nik and I carved her pumpkin.

Nik’s pumpkin carving motto……..no guts, no glory!

And this afternoon, we did make it out to the corn maze.  Ken’s Korny Corn Maze has been an annual stop for us since the kids were little.  I can still remember pushing Nik around the maze in a stroller.

6 acres of corn maze and over 2 1/2 miles of paths.  We did the maze in only about an hour this year.  Think that might be our best time yet.

After the maze, there was pumpkin checkers to play, and hay to climb on.  A smaller rope maze, and miniature golf.  Much fun was had by all.

And after a long and fun day, we lit up our Halloween jack o’lantern for the first time.

Have a great night everyone!  Thanks for stopping by!

Hi everyone!  We are down to just the last few days before Halloween now, and we are in full Halloween swing.  There is still so much we would like to do, so many fun things happening at this time of the year.  We still have pumpkins to carve and costumes to try on and sort out.  Nik wants to be a witch, but wants to put her special touch to her outfit, so much fussing needs to yet be done.  We also would love to get to the corn maze in the next couple of days.  It just wouldn’t quite feel like Halloween without our annual visit.

I got to participate in a new event last night that was so fun I would love to have it join our yearly line-up of activities.  Our local outdoor amphitheater is showing spooky Halloween movies at night all this week.  We saw Night of the Living Dead.  How fun that was to bring our chairs and our blankets and a picnic dinner and sit outside at night watching a creepy movie on the big screen.  My girlfriend brought the most fun Halloween cocktail that I thought I would share with you, called a Dark and Spooky.

Dark & Spooky
Juice of 1 lime (about 1/4 cup)
1/4 cup dark rum
1/4 cup ginger beer or ginger ale
1 black gummy spider
Combine lime juice and rum in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake vigorously. Pour into glass and top off with ginger drink. Add gummy spider.
Rim top of glass if desired using a lime wedge and black rimming sugar.

Tonight they are playing Casper, and tomorrow is a double-header…..Frankenstein and Dracula.  Toooooo much fun!

And now I have a scrappy project to share.  Today is my dad’s birthday!  I have the most wonderful father.  I cannot tell you how this man has been there for me and supported me throughout my life and how lucky I am to have him.

Being a Halloween baby, I of course had to make him a card with a bit of a Halloween twist to it.

This Melissa Francis paper remains my absolute favorite Fall line yet.  Paper, chipboard leaf, and today cardstock sticker are all MF.  I covered the leaf in paper and outlined the edges with marker.  Added a touch of ribbon and some wire curlie-q’s for detail and then popped a metal bat charm on the leaf for a bit of Halloween fun.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Thanks for stopping by everyone!

Happy Wednesday everyone!  Just a few days left until Halloween.  Feels like the days are slipping away extra quickly towards the end of the month now.  I’ve only got a few days left to get in all my Halloween photos and projects, and still quite a bit to share.  So today, I thought I would post a few more photos of my haunted Halloween house.

I’ll start in my dining room.  I’ve shown glimpses of the glittered skeletons hanging on my Halloween tree already, and now here’s a larger view of my table decor.

And on my sideboard in the dining room, I filled my antique Ball jars with an assortment of Halloween candies.

Makes me think of an old-fashioned candy store.  Nik loves opening up the jars to get a “special” piece of candy, and I have a fun use for the jars that were once my grandmother’s.

And now moving into the sunroom.

I got this tree at Pier 1 several years ago.  The leaves are made from rectangular black sequins and the stem is wire.  I’ve hung my collection of Department 56 Halloween ornaments on here.

This tree reminds me of the Whomping Willow from the Harry Potter books.  It is made from very small twigs that have been bunched together with wire. I’ve got my pair of vintage-inspired crows here.

And here are a few more decorations that little Miss Nik has made over the years.

Pipe cleaner jack o’lanterns, lovingly taped to a window by the Little Miss herself.

And the Itsy Bitsy Spider Nik and I made together in art class when she was two.  It is made from a paper bowl, paint and lots of construction paper.  Fun and easy project for you to make with your own kiddos at home.

Thanks for stopping by everyone!  I always love it when you drop by!

Hi everyone!  Although there’s only a few days left until Halloween, it seems that it’s not too late to decorate and get ready.  As a matter of fact, something spooky happened to the outside of my house yesterday afternoon.  Appears that several spiders attacked the house and yard while I was busy crafting away, happily oblivious in my scrap room.  Now I will warn you………these spiders are big.  Here’s one now.

Yuck, huh?  Look at all the mess they made.

Amazing how much damage those spiders could do in such a short time.  Here’s another of them now.

You know, for a bug, she is pretty cute.  I decided she could stay awhile.   Spook up the yard for Halloween.  The spiders did get into the house just a bit, too, but that’s okay.

Thanks for stopping by everyone!

Evening everyone!  Things are just starting to wind down here after a very fun day.  Spent the day hanging out, scrapping, shopping, and eating.  It just doesn’t get much better than that.  In shopping today, I found the perfect pair of Pilgrims for my Thanksgiving decorations.  So hard to believe that this weekend will be the 1st of November already.  And in scrapping, I started a project that has me very excited.  I was so hoping to get this done in time for Halloween, and although it’s not finished, it is far enough along that I can set it out and enjoy it as is.

I was inspired to make this project after visiting one of my favorite scrappy blogs recently.  Linda Albrecht absolutely stuns and amazes me with her creativity and talent.  I fell  in love with her “little pumpkin head” immediately and knew I wanted to give it a try.  All the directions are on her blog if you would like to play along, too.

The base of my little pumpkin head is a plastic gourd I found at my local dollar store.  It is approximately 3.5″ wide and 3″ tall.  I found a second one that’s a little taller that I picked up also.  The first step is to paint the entire pumpkin orange, which is a big improvement over the original, trust me.

The next step was creating the cone hat.  I used patterned paper from Making Memories’ Spook Alley, buttons from Foofala, a silver bell, a bat charm, and some metallic pipe cleaners.

The next step was painting the face,  which turned out perfectly thanks to Linda’s great directions. Lastly, I made the pleated collar for the base of the pumpkin using paper from Spook Alley and Basic Grey’s Eerie.

LOVE this guy!  Ultimately, he needs to go into some sort of container or on top of a box, but he looks pretty good in the mean time, too.  And remember, the complete directions for all these steps are on Linda’s blog. Just scroll down to her post dated September 21st.

Thanks so much for stopping by everyone!  Have a great evening!

Hi everyone!  Less than a week now until Halloween.  Times always flies by so quickly, doesn’t it?  Seems like the weekend just started, too, and now it’s winding down.  Sunday nights are good, though.  I’ve become fairly addicted to the Amazing Race and the Next Iron Chef.  Good TV viewing night.

For today’s 31 days of October post, I would like to share some kids craft projects for Halloween.  Thought perhaps some of you with kiddos might enjoy a few ideas for things you could do together this week.  I know that some of my favorite decorations are the ones that my kids have made over the years.  They just become more and more sentimental to me as times goes by.

The first project is a yarn and felt jack o’lantern made using a balloon.

This project is messy, but easy for any age child to do.  Blow up a balloon and tie off the top.  Using that as the base of the pumpkin, wrap orange yarn that is soaked in a white glue solution (1 part glue to 1 part water) around and around in all different directions.  Allow to dry overnight, and then pop the balloon.  Decorate your jack o’lantern with felt pieces and green pipe cleaners.

This guy is made from panty hose.  Cut a tube of hose from one leg.  Tie off the bottom and stuff with remaining hose.  Using a thread and needle, stitch “sections” into your pumpkin by bringing the needle up through the top, down around a segment of the pumpkin, and back up through the bottom to come out the top again.  You can make these stitches as loose or taught as you wish, which will affect the shape of the gourd.  Paint orange, and decorate with felt and ribbon.

This last guy is my favorite.  Nik and I made him together in an art class when she was just 2 years old.  It is made from a brown paper bag that has been stuffed with newspaper and twisted closed at the top.  Paint the bag and  decorate.  We used a combo of fun foam and construction paper for the face.  Tie the top closed with tissue paper leaves and a raffia bow.

I hope these ideas give you some inspiration for things to try with your own family.  And if you all have any other crafty ideas for kids’ projects, I would LOVE to hear about them!  I’m always looking for fun things to do and new things to try.

Thanks for stopping by everyone!

Hey everyone!  The countdown has begun.  Halloween is exactly one week away.  Only 7 more days for me to post my Halloween goodies for my 31 days of October.  7 more days for me to get everything in.  7 more days until the Main Event.  8 more days until Halloween gets packed away, and Thanksgiving comes out.  I will not bore you all with attempting to do a 30 days of November spree….don’t have near enough things to blab about in November. But I may torture you all again at Christmas.  We’ll see……………….

I can hear the groans now.

For today, I have another crafty project ready to share.  We’re having a very dark and gloomy day here, so please forgive the photos.

This is my gang o’ skeletons, all glittered up and ready to spook.  I got these wooden guys from my local big box craft store in the seasonal section.  Dressed them in different colored Martha Stewart glitter, and added a simple embellishment to each.  The white skeleton, which actually has glow-in-the-dark glitter, is holding a black cat charm.  The orange fellow has a bat bow tie.  Mr. Black is holding a Halloween banner, and Gouly Green has his own bat.

I connected the body parts with silver jump rings.  Used a micro-punch to create the tiny holes in their hands to thread fine gauge wire through to hang the charms.  I painted the backsides black to give them a finished look, and added a ribbon loop for hanging.

A simple and fun project that you can whip up in no time.  I’ve hung them on one of my Halloween trees gracing my dining room table this year.

Thanks for stopping by everyone!  See you all tomorrow!

Good evening everyone!  Happy Friday to you all!  So glad another weekend is rolling around.  I love being able to turn off the alarm clock and just sleep in for a few days.  What bliss.  Especially after my 5:30 am wake up call this morning to get Nik ready for her big rock-mining/gem-panning school field trip to the NC mountains.  She was so excited last night she could hardly get to sleep.    I think I’ll probably go out like a rock tonight. Har Har!

Not much going on crafty-wise these last few days.  Yesterday was a day of errands and today has been mostly a day of cleaning.  I do have a fun glitter Halloween project I’ve been working on that I’m hoping to get done for tomorrow’s post, though.  If I don’t get it done soon, I won’t have time to enjoy it this Halloween.  Can you believe we are down to about a week away now?

I do, however, have some fun photos of Halloween goodness for day 23 of my 31 days of October.  You remember the photos I posted on day 1 of my trio of smiling jack o’lanterns on my front doorstep?  Well here they are tonight, welcoming all passers-by.

I just love how they look lit up at night.

And here’s a couple other of my favorite lighted pumpkins.

Big Jack.  One of my very first Halloween decorations.  This ceramic piece Nik and I painted together at one of those studios when she was just 3.  She painted all the orange part, and I painted the green stem and leaves.  As you can imagine, this guy makes me pretty sentimental.

Gordy, the carved gourd.  Mom got him for me for my birthday several years ago.  Don’t you just love how each decoration tells a story?  I think that’s what makes them so special.

Thanks so much for stopping by everyone!  Hope your weekends are off to a great start!