Happy Thanksgiving

Hi all, I hope you all have had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I know I am a day late, but I spent all day cooking and doing dishes and just crashed in the evening.  I hope you all had a wonderful time with your family and friends. 

Guest Post for Exploring Circut - Mini Recipe Book

Good Morning and Happy Monday everyone.  I hope you have had a fabulous weekend.  Today I am so excited to be guest posting over at Exploring Cricut.  They really have a fantastic blog with so many inspirational projects using the Cricut.  I hope you will stop over and check out the fun.

Today I am sharing a mini recipe book I plan to give as a Christmas/Teachers gift to my daughters' preschool teachers.  Every year I make all the teachers a breakfast as the Christmas gifts.  I have been asked several times for some of the recipes so I thought this year I would make them a mini recipe book to go along with the breakfast.  This way I don't fall behind on emailing them out (which is what usually happens).  So here it is:

Book Recipe:

• Outside covers printed from Mr Frosty Imagine Cartridge and cut at 4 1/8" x 5 3/4"
• Inside recipe pages printed from Kate's Kitchen Imagine Cartridge and cut at 4" x 5 1/2"
• Recipe label printed from Kate's Kitchen and cut at 1" x 3 7/8"
• Sentiment tag cut from Craft Room Basics at 1" x 2 1/2"
• Oven Mitts printed from Kate's Kitchen and cut at 2"
• Stamped sentiment from Michaels Recollections Christmas collection
• Stamp Ink is Quick Quotes Chalking Ink in Maraschino Cherry
• Corner chomper to round all the edges
• Inked all edges with Tim Holtz Vintage Photo distress ink
• Used 1/8" eyelets and the Crop-a-dile 
• Red and white bakers twine to bind the mini book
• Ribbon on cover from Celebrate It at Michaels

Well that is it.  I hope you have enjoyed and are not to shocked that I have already thought ahead to Christmas.  I still haven't started our Christmas cards yet, but did you really expect me to get started in July like I said that I would???  Don't forget to stop by the Exploring Cricut blog.  Thanks so much Diane for the opportunity to be a guest blogger today!!

Halloween in our House

Hey all hope you are having a good Monday.  I am having a great one because I just got back from a much needed girl's weekend with one of my best friends.  I only do it once a year and this one was some much needed R&R.  We went to a great resort in VA and played golf and talked and did puzzles into the wee hours of the night.  I was fantastically low key and just what I needed to get ready for the holidays.  So that is why I am posting Halloween a few days late.  This year I made the costumes for the girls and I.  It was an ambitious feat but I got it done and think it turned out great.  Here is a pic of the whole family.

We were the three witches.  That spooky guy is my husband.  The torch he is holding is real and got accolades while we were out trick or treating.
So for the witches costumes I made the t-shirts and the tutu's.  Here is a pic of the shirts.

These shirts were made with bleach.  I cut out the words and image from the Happy Hauntings cartridge.  I cut them on freezer paper and them ironed them onto the shirts.  I then mixed a solution of 70% bleach with 30% water and sprayed the shirts with the bleach.  I let them sit for a couple hours and them rinsed them in the tub with cold water and put them through the wash.  The bleach didn't bleed and has not through two washes!!!  I love how it looks like the witch is flying in front of the moon.

The skirts were made with purple, green, orange and black tulle.  I think I used about 40 yards of tulle for all three skirts.  The girls loved them and they are now in the dress up bin!!!  The hats that the girls are wearing actually came as headbands from Jo-Ann's.  I knew they would be constantly falling off, so I cut the headbands out and hot glued clips to them.  It worked great.  Interesting enough, with all the accessory's and t-shirts I spent about $25 per costume.  I think this is the same or even less than I would have spent on store-bought costumes. 

So that is all I have tonight.  I am off to work on a project for another blog that I love.  It will be up later this week.  Hope you have a great week. 

BOO-Marks for Halloween

Hi all, I hope your week has been going well.  We made it through Sandy without losing any power or damage to our home.  I really think that we picked the perfect house because in the 8 years we have owned this house we have never lost power!!!  Amazing I know.  I have spent the time getting ready for Halloween.  I made our costumes this year, so I was finishing up those.  I will share those tomorrow or later in the week.  Today I am sharing the Boo-marks I made for my daughters treat bags at her school Halloween party.  Get it Boo-marks, bookmarks.  My daughter has started chapter books this year and has been begging me to make her some bookmarks for her books.  I thought that this would be the perfect non-edible treat for the favor bags.  So here they are:

I made three for each child in the class (a total of 42).  Here is how to make these bookmarks:

• Cut a 3" x 6" sheet of cardstock and fold in half to make a 3" x 3" card
• Cut each card in half diagonally - when you cut, you will end up with one section that stays together and the other section ends up being two triangles
• Cut a 3" x 0.5" sheet of cardstock and fold in half width wise to close the end of the card - I used two strips to adhere the single triangles together
• Decorate as desired
• The tags are from Happy Hauntings cut at 2"
• The monster and spider is from Create a Critter 2 cut at 1.5"
• The ghost is from Simply Charmed cut at 1.5"

Here is what the bookmarks look like on a book.  The ghost is my favorite because of the googly eyes.  They sound complicated to make, but once you do one they are quick to put together.  

Here is a picture of them packaged for the favor bags.  I made the toppers using my Cricut Markers and the Happy Hauntings spooky font.  Here is a picture of what my craft space looks like when I am working on a project of this size:

Super messy huh!!!  I will clean it up tomorrow when the girls are at school.  So that is all I have for you tonight.  I hope you have a safe and Happy Halloween.  Thanks for stopping buy.

Cake-Pop Favors

Hi all, Happy Friday.  Hope your week was fun.  Ours was the end of the Birthday madness month around here.  We celebrated our youngest daughter's third Birthday Tuesday.  We had a fun family day at a local fall festival.  Today I have to share with you the cake pop favors I made for the kids birthdays at school.  I think cake pops are the perfect treats for kids at school because they are really only two bites of cake.  So here they are:

The toppers above I made by cutting the base tag from the Birthday Bash cartridge at 2.5 ".  The circle part of the tag is actually made using the Avery round labels and their online design software.  It was a quick and easy way to make a bunch of tags at once using my printer.

These tags are made using the same base tag as above.  I then used my Cricut markers and my Cricut to draw the images and text on the orange circles.  I used the Create-a-Critter cartridge for the pumpkin and the Once Upon a Princess cartridge for the text.  I think these came out super cute.

We that is all I have for you today.  We are off to get pumpkins for carving tonight.  There is supposedly a big storm headed this way for next week so want to get this done today.  Next week I will share the costumes I made for my girls and I.  I think they are coming along great and will be very cute.  Have a great weekend.

Fall in Skyline Drive

Hi all just thought I would drop in to share some great photos I took at Skyline Drive today.  The colors were absolutely phenomenal.  From bright yellows to deep reds and everything in between.  It was inspiring, and I may be incorporating some of these colors in future projects.  So here they are:

Thanks for stopping by.  Hopefully you can find some inspiration in your neck of the woods!!!

Cupcake Party: Part 4 - Cupcake Game

Happy Friday everyone!!!  So excited it is the weekend.  We are going to enjoy some quiet family time, maybe check out the fall foliage on Sky Line Drive.  So today is the last installment of the cupcake decorating party series.  I am going to share with you a giant felt cupcake that I made for the kids to play pin the sprinkles on the cupcake.  It was super easy to make, and incredibly inexpensive.  I am talking, I only spent about $5 to purchase the felt needed for this project. 

So the way I made this was I decided that the whole game should be about 3' tall.  My youngest is only 38" and I wanted her and her friends to be able to reach everything.  I then made myself a small sketch on paper and followed it as a guide when I cut the felt.  I then hand cut all the sprinkles and the cherry out of different colored felt.  We hung it on the wall, put a blind fold on the kids and spun them until they were pretty dizzy.  All the kids had a blast playing the game and it gave some friends time to put out all the decorating supplies for the real cupcakes.  Here is my cutie playing.

So that is it, super easy and super cute.  I may try to make some felt envelopes this weekend for the girls to play mail with.  I have a ton leftover.  I will leave you with some other photos from the party.  I hope you have a great weekend.