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.

 

Source 

 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. 

Fall Decor. {Part 1}

I have lost track of my days this week.  It’s all been one big blur.  I pulled out my Fall and Halloween decorations earlier this week.  A week later than I had planned.  Oh well.  It has been spread all over the house since then.  I am finally getting it all wrapped up today.  Yesterday was the first day I was able to dedicate to the house, mostly.  There are always other things to do. :)  I spent a lot of my free time outside in the front.  I am finishing the inside today.  And then the cleaning starts!  Ugghhh.  Cleaning after pulling out holiday decorations is such a to-do.  Why does it always have to make such a mess?   Maybe I am just a messy decorator. 

Anyway, I thought I would dedicate the rest of this week and most of next week to Fall/Halloween decor.  I will share a space each day.  That is the plan…but we all know that plans usually change.  SO, I will post and share when I can.

Here is my front entry.

 

I started out by re-purposing my previous fall wreath.

Here is the wreath I’ve had for a couple of years.

And this is the same wreath this year. 

Such an easy and inexpensive fix.  I wanted to switch it up a bit, but still keep the same general idea.  When I saw this wreath on Pinterest, I knew exactly what I was going to do.

The only thing I bought were the feathers, which is what inspired me when I saw the wreath on Pinterest.  I used my Micheal’s 40% off coupon, so this new wreath cost me $2.00.  I had everything else.

While I had it all pulled apart I spray painted they yellow gourds cream.  It freshened it up so much.  After that was done, I rearranged it all and stuck the picks back in the grapevine wreath.  I added spanish moss, one of my Dollar Tree crows, our monogram and some burlap. 

I cleaned out my planters and added fall color to them. 

I made a glittery 31.  That is my contribution to Halloween on the porch.  My kids would love to carve pumpkins, but I don’t let them.  Mean of me.  I like to save my pumpkins and have them out through Thanksgiving. 

 

Now I feel ready for the fall!

Caramel Apples

Last Thursday I was in charge of a caramel apple demonstration at church for Relief Society.  I have never made a caramel apple before in my life!  Shocking, right?  I’m sure a bazillion of you have made caramel apples before, but I have not.  I have eaten plenty, but never made any.  This wasn’t just about teaching the women how to dip apples in caramel, it was a gourmet caramel class.  When I was asked to take this assignment, I made sure they all knew that I had never done this before.  They told me it was easy.  OK. 

So now I am here to tell you (those of you that were like me and had never done this before) that it is EASY and so fun!  For years during the fall I have thought about doing caramel apples, but never have for lots of reasons. 

I didn’t know how.

I thought it was hard.

I thought I had to have a perfect caramel recipe.

It seemed way too messy.

It is not hard at all!  It may be a little bit messy, but nothing bad at all.  That should say a lot coming from someone who seriously hates messes.  After doing some research about the process of gourmet caramel apples I was ready to go.  I had a practice day at home first. 

I learned a lot from this site.  My pictures are hit and miss, but I will show you what I learned and how I did it. 

1.  You first start with 8-10 small to medium sized apples.  Granny Smith or Fuji are the best.  I prefer Granny Smith.  Smaller apples are better.  They are easier to work with and it makes the caramel go further. 

2.  You have to wash them very well to get the wax off store bought apples.  This helps the caramel stick better to the apple.  There are a couple of ways you can do this.  Dip them for a second in boiling water.  Lightly sand them, or give them a baking soda bath, which is what I did.  I filled up my sink with HOT water and poured some baking soda in.   Then I scrubbed them with the rough side of my kitchen sponge and rinsed them in hot water. 

3.  I dried them with paper towels and then set them out to finish drying.  They have to be completely dry.  Which is why this should be your first step.  They can dry while you prepare everything else. 

4.  Next, I got all of my supplies out and toppings prepared. 

Supplies: apples, caramel (not pictured) sticks, toppings and wax paper.  You can buy the sticks at any craft store, possibly any grocery store.  I purchased mine at Walmart while I was there getting everything else. They were in the cake decorating isle.  There are short, medium and long sticks to choose from.  I bought the medium ones.  I will get to the caramel in a minute.

As for the toppings…I went with chopped peanuts, M & M’s, Heath Bar bits (these were all ready in a bag by the chocolate chips) crushed Oreo’s, chopped pecans and miniature marshmallows.  View the same site I mentioned earlier for other topping ideas.

5.  Then it is time to put the sticks in the apples.  You want to remove the apple stem first.  Putting the stick in was a little bit tricky.  Sometimes they were really difficult to push in and the stick would bend, but you can bend it back easily.  The palm of my hand was starting to hurt from pushing the stick so hard.  I got about half way through with the sticks when I realized that it didn’t have to hurt me like that.  Sometimes it takes awhile for things to click!  I used the rubber thingy that I use to open glass jars with to cushion my palm.

 

This helped a lot. 

I’m sure a kitchen towel would work too.

Here they are.

The apples are ready, the toppings are prepared so now it is time to do the caramel.

6.  You can melt the caramel in the microwave or on the stove.   There are several different caramel recipes.  Once again, I used this site to figure out which recipe I wanted.  I opted not to go for homemade, but to go for easy.  I bought the packages of Kraft Caramels.

 

Using the Kraft Caramels, you need to individually unwrap 2 24 oz. packages of caramels.  Melt them on the stove at a medium heat with 4 Tbsp of milk.  It says whole milk, but I used 2%.  Just like it says to use a double broiler, but I didn’t.  They worked fine.  If you melt them in the microwave, follow the same instructions only stopping to stir every 30 seconds until melted. 

7. Then it is time to dip the apples in the caramel.  Dip them straight in to get as much apple covered as you can and then turn sideways to get the top edges better. 

I put the caramel in this bowl to dip, but it would actually be much easier to dip them in the pot you use to melt the caramel on the stove with.  The pot has a handle so you can rotate the caramel better and get better coverage plus you can put it back on the stove to keep warm in between apples.  If you melt in the microwave use a big measuring glass or bowl that has a handle and you will be able to rotate the caramel better also.   When you are done dipping the apple, pull it straight up and let the extra caramel drip off.

8.  As soon as you are done dipping one apple, roll it in your topping right away.  The caramel sets quickly.  

I learned to have my wax paper on a plate ready to go in the fridge.  You want to allow to set up in the fridge as soon as you are done topping it.  If you top your apple with something heavy or big, like M & M’s or marshmallows and leave it on the counter to set up it will drip to the bottom and not stick.  That was my experience.  So they all went straight into the fridge. 

9.  After each apple was rolled in a topping and chilled in the fridge I drizzled them with milk chocolate or white chocolate.  I melted the chocolate in a bowl in the microwave and then scooped them into their own zip lock bag and snipped a tiny corner off to drizzle with.  This was the finishing touch. 

Aren’t these so fun?

I was really happy with how they turned out.

 

They were so yummy and delicious too.

My kids were so excited when they got home from school that day and saw such an unexpected treat.  I had all of my practice apples cut up on a plate ready to go. 

They thought I was pretty awesome that day. 

Some other things I learned was to chop up my M & M’s.  I chopped them with my Pamper Chef Chopper.  The M & M’s whole were too heavy.  Also, read the tip on that site for dipping in chocolate after dipping in caramel.  It sounds yummy!  If you are going to do any of this with kids, I would DEFINITELY have it all prepared before you invite the kids to help.  I am talking caramel done and everything.  I don’t think it would be as enjoyable to have the kids in the kitchen for the whole thing.  It actually sounds like a big fat headache to me! 

I think this would be such a fun thing to do with or with out kids.  I loved my day in the kitchen playing and learning something new.  Having said that, I am going to give this a try with the kiddos this weekend.  It’s time for us to start celebrating the holidays and I think this is a great start.   Hopefully it doesn’t turn into a disaster.  It will be interesting!

Linking up to:

  Tatortots and Jello Weekend Wrap Up