Halloween {2011}

Well, I have gotten absolutely nothing done this whole week.  I feel like sleeping until the rest of the week (and weekend) is over and starting fresh next week.  But I would want to wake up to everything I didn’t get done magically done for me. That’s my fairytale.   Am I the only one who had a week like this?  I have decided that if I have an unproductive Monday (unproductive meaning: not my normal routine) then I might as well kiss the rest of my week goodbye. 

At least I can blame it all on Halloween!  I guess it was worth it. :)

I took the kids out on Sunday night for some unrushed costume photos.  This helped to make Halloween not quite as crazy.  I could relax knowing I got some decent pictures already and whatever else I snapped was just a bonus.

Kaylee was a nerd.  A very cute nerd, I might add. 

It was funny that her glasses matched the ones on her shirt exactly.  Not planned at all! 

Next we have Mr. Jake.  The serious and mean looking mafia gangster. 

Then the fighter Drew.  Accompanied with a bloody nose and black eye.

And lastly,  our sweet (hahaha) Strawberry Shortcake, Ady.

Who couldn’t stop thinking about the candy left in her bag from trunk or treating.

  

Here are some snapshots from Halloween night. 

We were getting ready to go trick or treating with the Dickamore’s. 

Ady was still thinking about that candy.

My BOO shirt was as festive as I got that night.

I think photos of the kids trick or treating are so much fun!  There is such a whimsical feeling when you look at them.  I had plans, but failed miserably.  This is the only one I got.  Next year people.

Casey stayed at home to pass out candy while we went out for a little while.  When we got home from the Dickamore’s he took the kids and I stayed home to pass out the candy.  He loves taking them trick or treating. 

I swear, the second they made it to the family room their bags got dumped.  Time to sort!

     

As a child, sorting was always one of my favorite things after trick or treating.  It falls under the organizing category…no wonder.

Jake enjoyed telling jokes as he ate his Laffy Taffy’s.

This apple looked a little out of place among all of the other crap candy.  At one of the houses they had the choice to pick a piece of fruit or candy. 

Do you notice anything about the picture below?

Jake barricaded his candy area.  This had me laughing so hard.  Silly boy.  NO ONE was going to mess with his stash.  We guard things with our life around this house!

The last of the Halloween Decor.

It is time for me to go to bed and I am exhausted.  Ady had a cold when I got home from my trip and she has passed it on to me.  Yesterday and today have been the worst of my sick days, but I can tell it is getting better.  I spent the majority of my day running errands, which is my least favorite thing to do anyway, but doing that while not feeling well is really no fun. Why do mom’s get sick?  And why does life have to keep going when we are sick?  It should be against the rules!! 

Posting always makes me feel better, so this is the last thing I am doing before going to bed.  Here is the Halloween decor I told you I found the other night.  In the rush of Ady’s birthday and going out of town, I guess I forgot to post this.  Which is funny because this is my favorite room.  You might be COMPLETLEY sick of my dining room by now, but I still love it!  It is my favorite room in the whole house.  Here it is ready for Halloween.

These are the bats I mentioned in this post.

It is the perfect simple touch to my white plates.  I am glad I added glitter.

My chandelier with Spanish moss, of course.  My new favorite thing.

And lots of spooky (gross) spiders.

All of the white pumpkins I have this year, I painted.  I really like the look of white pumpkins, but I do not like paying for them. 

More dollar store crows.  I could not get enough of those and spanish moss this year. 

 

To paint my pumpkins, I taped off the stem.  I have seen them where the stem is painted the same as the pumpkin, but I wanted the stem to stay the same.  After a couple coats of spray paint and the pumpkins were completely dry, I took my block sander and sanded the edges of each pumpkin a little bit.  I wanted a textured, imperfect look, especially since anything handmade is never perfect.  It made me feel better about any imperfections. :)  I really love how they turned out and it was so easy to do.  I can’t imagine anything but white pumpkins in this room.  Clean, fresh and simple.

Halloween/Fall Decor. {Part 4}

Today you get a two for one!  How’s that for generous?   Two fire place mantles in one post.  I am a lucky girl who gets to decorate two mantles for the holidays.  That can either be a huge headache or lots of fun.  When it comes together it’s lots of fun.  One is a faux fireplace, but many people think it’s real at first glance.  I guess that is the whole point of a faux fireplace. :)  Back in the day, when Casey and I were living in our first home years ago I was distraught over not having anywhere to hang our stockings for Christmas.  I survived our first Christmas by hanging them from a bookshelf in our family room.  It was fine.  One weekend I went out of town to visit my family, leaving my husband behind for a couple of days.  When I got home, there was a surprise waiting for me.  Any guesses on what it was?

Yep.  It was a mantle.  He had made me my very own fireplace mantle.   Somewhere to hang our stockings.  How sweet!  He made our home feel so cozy and had one happy wife.  This mantle has been moved around in different houses over the years.  It has been in our family room, then in our bedroom and now it is in the office/study.  I still love it. This was the first of many woodworking projects Casey has done for us. 

Here it is ready for Halloween.

It is ready for fall too.

All I plan on doing is taking the cat and mason jar of skeletons down after Halloween.  That will leave me with pumpkins and pinecones.  Perfect.

This is the mantle in our family room.

This room has recently gotten a face lift.  This was one of our summer projects.  I haven’t shared any of yet because it is still in the works.  This room is never ending!  Anyway, the alcove that the clock is sitting in used to be a terracotta red.  I can not believe it has taken me this long to paint over it.  It is so much better!!

Back to the mantle.

The trick or treat banner was from last year.  It was still a keeper.  I added LOTS of spanish moss here to make a fall garland.

When I picked the twigs for my entry table, I used the extra for my mantle.  I added the twigs first and then put spanish moss over the top.  I love the texture it adds.

This is another one of my painted pumpkins.

I printed the owl from the Graphics Fairy and made the BOO frame a couple of years ago.  I just printed BOO on newspaper.  It doesn’t get much easier than that.  Those are my favorite kind of projects.

Happy fall!  It is raining as I type this. :)

Halloween/Fall Decor. {Part 3}

Ok.  I am moving forward with my Halloween theme this week.  Lots to share!  However, we did start celebrating Ady’s birthday yesterday.  It is her birthday WEEK.  It is a lot more fun to have a birthday week than a birthday.  More to come about Ady’s birthday soon.

For now, here is my kitchen halloween table scape. 

Candy corns and pumpkins.  It doesn’t get much better (or easier) than that!

 Skeletons, crows and spiders too.  With more spanish moss.  By the way…I purchased my spanish moss at Dollar Tree.  I used 2 and a half bags and I have it everywhere.  It goes pretty far. 

I was lazy this year and didn’t do a table runner.  I have some black and white fabric I was going to do something with, but when it came down to it…I just didn’t feel like it!

Pumpkins are my favorite.  I can’t get enough of them.  Layering them in bowls on my table helped to add different heights and texture.  I painted the white pumpkin.  I love white pumpkins, but didn’t want to pay the price.  I did last year and said I was NOT going to do that this year.  I spray painted a lot of pumpkins this year.  More to come about that soon.  :)

Since I shared about our kitchen in this post, here are two small treats to go along with it.  We will be making these sometime this month.   

Monster Hot Chocolate.  How easy is this???   Whenever it really decides to cool down a bit, my kids will be getting their first mug of hot chocolate for they year monster style.

 

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 Cute pretzel ghosts.

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We dip pretzels in white chocolate every year.   Usually it’s the pretzel twists.  This year we will try pretzel sticks instead and make ghosts.

Next up…my fireplace mantles.

Halloween/Fall Decor. {Part Two}

We have had a fun and productive weekend.  Those are the best kind!  Saturday morning we spent at the football field with the boys.  Football has started for them and they are loving it.  It seems to be Jake’s thing more than baseball, which kind of breaks my heart because I have a soft spot for baseball and baseball players.  I married one.  It’s only our second weekend with football so it’s a little early to tell, but his body language is much more focused and confident on the football field.  I’m just glad they both are having so much fun.  Later in the day we ran lots of errands.  We finalized Halloween costumes.  Here is the line up:

Kaylee – a nerd with one of her bff’s.  They are making all of the costume arrangements.  Should be interesting.

Jake – a mafia gangster

Drew – a boxer/fighter

Ady – Strawberry Shortcake

What I like the most  is that we have everything for the costumes.  I told the kids this year we weren’t buying costumes.  They had to have the majority of the costume in the house.  We bought Jake a machine gun to finish his costume. Kaylee needed some glasses.  We are making Ady’s costume and Drew already had his boxing gloves.  We are ready to go! 

Ady’s birthday is this week.  She is going to be the big 2.  We are going with a Strawberry Shortcake theme, presents and all.  That girl eats, drinks and sleeps Strawberry.  “Watch Strawberry Shortcake” is the first phrase she says every morning, besides telling me it’s time for lunch (which means breakfast).

I made these super yummy Oreo cupcakes Friday night while Kaylee was having a dance party with a friend in our family room.  It brought back LOTS of childhood memories.  I remember so many fun times like that and it is only the beginning for her. 

We have been lucky to enjoy a little fall weather here.  We even had a late night on the trampoline last night as a family.  It was fun.  It felt like we were camping laying on the trampoline watching the moon and talking.  We need to do that more often.  The kids even talked about it today. It has been gloomy and rainy all day today.  Which is great because we need the rain even though I am personally NOT a fan of the rain.  I don’t like dark days.  It does make it feel a little halloweenish though.  I took these pictures of our entry table the other day before it got dark and gloomy.  I thought I would share them today and celebrate this weather.  Here is our entry table:

I had so much fun decorating for halloween this year.  I learned a new trick out in blogland.  It is called spanish moss.  Of course the idea of spanish moss isn’t new to me, but using it to take the place of spooky cobwebs was new to me.  Super fun!  Although it is extremely messy…just warning you!

I made this candy corn banner last year.  I still love it and was excited to use it again.

I made this little pom pom last year too. It is the perfect size to hang from my lamp.  It’s made out of orange cupcake liners all scrunched up together and hot glued onto a styrofoam ball. 

The crow is from last year too.  I went back to Dollar Tree this year and got a lot more.  They are all over my house. 

 

I found the orange spider juice bottle at Michaels one day, on sale for $2.99.  It was a fun addition. 

The skull was at Michaels too for $1.49.  I bought two of them.  I found the little glass whatever it’s called that the skull is in, at Marshall’s one day for $6.99.  And to think that I wasn’t going to get it.  What was I thinking?  It is so versatile and can be used for anything.  Definitely a fun buy.

I printed out the 31 onto scrapbook paper I already had.  Such an easy addition.  I was searching for a fun Halloween printable, but I couldn’t find anything that worked quite right so this was my easy fix.  The bat finishes it for me.  Andrea inspired me with her bats, so I had to give them a try.  I added glitter to ours for a little blingage.  We have them flying around our dinning room too.

More to come soon!  I am loving Halloween this year.