Happy Halloween!

I love Halloween! What a fun holiday. This year we didn't really decorate very much for it. What we did do a lot of, is dress up.

Last weekend we attended The Crossing's Fall Family Fling. My daughter wanted to be Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's so we made it happen.

 My oldest and youngest decided to put their pirate day costumes on. I love easy!

I really love doing hair and makeup. This is one of the many reasons I am thankful for having girls, although I do think it would be fun to dress up a little boy. The Mr. says it's not going to happen.

We also went to our school carnival this past Friday. Taylor wanted to be Little Red Riding Hood so I whipped out her cloak on my new sewing machine the morning of the carnival. I was very pleased with how it turned out. I would've preferred a heavier material. Instead I went for budget since it probably wasn't going to get worn after Halloween.

My baby couldn't decide what she wanted to be so she dug out an old costume from the dress up box and made herself a witch. Again nice and easy, I love reusing old costumes.

Paige didn't want to be Audrey Hepburn again. Her best friend was going to be a Flapper and it just so happened that I had bought one from the Wal-Mart clearance after Halloween last year so they decided they'd match.

Then yesterday, my girls and their good friend Carson, took a break from building forts around the house to have a tea party.

They dressed up for the occasion.

And tried their best at pointing out proper etiquette, but by the end of their tea party were completely lacking in any sort of etiquette. Notice Paige's pinkie, she said sticking your pinkie out was the proper way to drink tea. Cute!

They enjoyed a nice meal of waffles and chocolate milk on my grandmother's china and I totally enjoyed watching and listening to them play. They weren't thrilled about "Mamarazzi," as they like to call me, but I couldn't pass up the cute little photo op.

Happy Halloween, not sure what my girls are going to be tonight, but last minute costumes are just how we roll. 

Stay safe and warm out there!

**Updated to add Halloween Evening Photos**

Well my girls figured out what they were going to be. Little Red Riding Hood, a dia de los muertos witch, which I thought was perfect since they learn about this in Spanish Immersion, and Mario.

Riley was torn between a witch and something spooky like a ghost, so we combined the two.

Paige wanted to be Mario, but as usual I didn't buy the costume in time, so I borrowed a pair of bibs from a friend, size wasn't an issue since we knew she'd be wearing her snow gear underneath. I stuck my red fleece jacket on her and whipped out her Mario hat, using this tutorial, a couple hours before they headed out to go trick-or-treating.

Not sure who had more fun, me or the kids.

It didn't matter that it was cold and snowing out, they were determined to get their candy.

And that's just what they did.

At the end of the night, Mario found his lost pal, Yoshi.

All in all it was a Bootiful . . . 

. . . and Spooktacular night

Next year I will try my very best to put together costumes ahead of time. In the mean time, off to raid their candy bags!

Halloween Apron

I actually finished a project!  I say this with excitement because more often than not, I start a project, get bored, and move onto the next before I've completed my original project.

It is far from perfect and certainly not a pattern I love.  I don't know, it could be because I decided to wing it and not use a pattern. I'll be looking up some tutorials for my next apron attempt. Nice thing about the way I sewed this, is that it's reversible and completely finished on both sides. The other side doesn't have a Halloween theme so it could be used year round.  It's late, I didn't have a model so I'm sorry for the lame photos. 

My new machine and the fact that I've been completely glued to it, has put the sewing bug in my nine year old. She made a deal with me two years ago that if I ever got a new sewing machine, she would get my old one. Well she reminded me of our deal last night. I pulled out my trusty old machine and she got busy making this cute little hand bag for herself.  We started with something simple for her first project and I made sure to put my control freak self aside and just sat next to her giving her direction. I have a feeling my fabric stash is going to dwindle quickly with three sewers in this house. Guess I can't complain though, it does count as family time, right?

Sew Much Fun

For my birthday my husband and kids gave me an awesome new embroidery machine.  So I immediately put it to use and made a quilt for my Linus baby. I used a charm pack she chose from Wal-Mart. . . BIG MISTAKE!  I will stick with Moda from now on. Each square was so off. Unfortunately I didn't realize it until I was about half way through with the quilt and ready to piece my rows together. 

I was quite discouraged and the perfectionist in me wanted to abandon the project, but I had my baby asking me every few minutes if her new blankie was done yet. I not only failed to use a pattern, but I ended up having to improvise on all my measurements because of those horrible cheapie charm squares. It's quite possibly the sloppiest job I've ever done, but I kept telling myself to be okay with that fact. It was my first attempt at actually using the binding method. I will say that I proudly cut my binding, sewed it together to form a long enough strip to go around the entire quilt, and hand stitched it to the quilt. It's perfectly imperfect and I love it.  I'm also totally in love with the happy colors.

Oh and I've got a few other projects going.

So stay tuned to see what these are going to be!

Recycled Pumpkin Crayons

I've been seeing so many fun recycled crayon projects in blog land that I wanted to give it a try myself.

We dug out all our broken pieces of crayons we've accumulated over the years, sorted them by color, and placed them into tin cans we had been collecting.  We placed the cans on top of a cookie sheet and in the oven at 250 degrees and baked them until the crayons were melted thoroughly.

I used craft sticks to stir each color before pouring them into the molds. The melted crayons dried on the stick, so the girls used the craft sticks to color with.

We carefully, using a hot mitt that wouldn't slip, poured the melted crayons into the molds one color at a time.

It's best to keep the tins in the oven until the melted crayons are going to be  poured into the molds. It's also best to pour each color after the previous color has cooled for more even layers. When we poured colors over other layers that hadn't cooled off yet, we got a neat marbled look on some layers and a blob of hot mess for other layers.

Overall we were pretty pleased with the end result. We only had large pumpkin molds, but I think I'd like the molds with the smaller shapes better. 

This is something we will definitely do again. It's a quick and fun project.

Important Things In Life

Today is the day that all eligible Alaskan residents receive their Permanent Fund Dividend, more commonly referred to as the PFD or free money. For weeks now retailers have been advertising PFD specials and thousands will be anxiously flocking to the local stores or visiting their favorite online shops to spend their money. So when a family member posted a photo on her Facebook page, with the following message, I thought I would use the same message to design a printable.

Reduced version for the web.

Whether you're Alaskan, religious, or neither; this is a great reminder to remember the important things in life. Don't forget to show and tell the people around you how much they mean to you today and every day.

Full resolution version for print. Will print as an 8x10.