Halloween! (31 Days: Day 30)

Happy Halloween!  It's almost time for some Trick or Treating!  (yeah, that sounds so much more fun when you're 6 than when you're 30, right?)  We will be headed out for that shortly, but I wanted to take a quick minute to document some of the fun we've been having with the holiday.

Last night before carving up the pumpkins we had a fun Halloween theme dinner with mummy wrapped hot dogs and spiced apple cider.  It was the perfect thing to set the stage for the main event - the pumpkins.

I suprised the kids with some fun things in their lunchboxes today - mummy wrapped drinks, Halloween jokes, single serve mandarin oranges with pumpkin faces drawn on them, and spider rings in their sandwiches.

And there you see my little cowboy and rodeo queen.  In order to be able to dress up for school they had to pick something that went with the school's dress up day theme for Red Ribbon Week, which was What I Want to Be When I Grow Up.  I was pretty happy when Tyler suggested the cowboy because we already had everything we needed.  And don't they both look adorable in their hats?

Again - Happy Halloween!  Here's hoping they get some good candy for me to steal ;)

Pumpkin Carving (31 Days: Day 30)

(no I didn't forget to write anything - I just figured the photos spoke for themselves.  Happy Halloween Eve!)

Always something to be Thankful for (31 Days: Day 28)

Since I had all the supplies out the other day I decided to go ahead and make one of the Thanksgiving decor ideas I ran across on Pinterest.  Love that saying!  Might be one I need to keep out more often than just the month of November.

Trick or Treat Glass Block (31 Days: Day 27)

Ready for one more candy corn Halloween decoration variation?  Yup, me too! :)  The original inspiration from this one came from here via Pinterest.  Looks pretty simple, right?  Well, you'd be right.  They carry these great glass blocks at most of the big craft stores, complete with a nice little opening in the bottom.  I think mine was $12 before the 40% off coupon.

I used that handy hole in the bottom to stuff some lights and colored tissue paper inside.  I didn't worry too much about the back, but you could cover it up if you wanted to.

I added some vinyl lettering (that Silhouette machine is really earning its keep this month!) and some black tulle.  That it!  Another 5 minute, under $10 project.  I was on such a roll yesterday :)

 

Candy Corn Shadow Box (31 Days: Day 26)

I was on such a roll with this 31 Days thing - until this week!  It's just been go, go, go one day after another.  The blogging had to take a bit of a back seat and I completely ruined the posting streak I had going on.  *sigh*  Oh well.
That isn't to say that I haven't been crafting.  In fact, today I got in a little unexpected craft time.  You see a friend and I were supposed to be doing a craft show tomorrow so a lot of my day was going to be devoted to last minute things for that.  But it looks like some bad weather is headed our way, and with NC being extra catious about that sort of thing they called everyone and rescheduled it.  Kind of a mess actually, as I had other plans for my Saturday next week and will now have to miss the wedding I was going to, plus the husband will be working so I was stressing a bit until a friend stepped in and offered to watch the kids for me.  Once I had my head wrapped around the new plan, (if you know me at all, you'll know that I hate having my plans changed) I was able to then enjoy the fact that I had the rest of the afternoon that didn't have to be spent tagging items and loading up the car.  Woohoo!  I watched or show or two that had been waiting for me on the DVR, then decided to finish up some of the small holiday decorations I hadn't gotten around to yet.  Like this fun little shadow box.

I have two or three holiday shadow box variations, so of course I had intended to add a Halloween one to the collection at some point.  I think the vinyl haunted house is a fun touch.  I love that there are so many great dingbat fonts out there that I don't even have to buy special designs to use for stuff like this.  And since I seem to have found a bit of a candy corn groove lately, why not put them in the shadow box? 

Not bad for a 5 minute, under $10 project.

 

Corn Maze (31 Days: Day 21)

When we have a free Saturday or Sunday with nothing scheduled and no big projects on the agenda we like to get out of the house and do something fun as a family.  This week's family fun activity - a corn maze!  There are few things that shout fall more than getting yourself lost in dead stalks of corn, right? :)  I'm teasing - we started taking the kids to a corn maze and all the related activities when they were little and we enjoy them enough that we've managed to do one every year since then.

The bonus this year is that both kids are now old enough that the corn maze kept their interest the entire time - no complaining they were tired or needing snacks or wanting to be carried!  Instead we all took turns being the leader and found all 10 checkpoints in a record (for us) 30 minutes.  Actually the kids found them - when it was my turn with the flag it took me forever to find a checkpoint while the kids seems to unerringly know which way to turn.

Sam insisted that we hadn't had enough time wandering around the corn, so we spent another 20 minutes getting ourselves "lost" again before exploring the other activities.

There were animals to see and feed, bouncy houses, tractors and piles of hay to climb on, etc etc.  I think Kaitlyn's favorite was this sledge-hammer thing.  She went back to it at least 5 times, getting to within one mark of the top by the end of her last turn.

We didn't forget the obligatory "hay" ride - a nice little break to sit and enjoy the scenery.  It still strikes me as strange that here in NC you can find places that look like this nestled right next to all the houses, condos, and businesses.

As we near the end of October I find myself wondering what other fall activities we don't want to miss out on.  We "cheated" with the pumpkin patch thing knowing that we wouldn't have time to visit a pick your own place we grabbed some at Walmart yesterday.  And while some of the leaves are changing colors we have yet to see the big show yet - I'm looking forward to that one.  Hmm...what else...?

Adventures in Stenciling (31 Days: Day 20)

Crafting is always a bit of an experiment, isn't it?  Seeing something that sparks a creative idea, then figuring out the best way to bring that idea to life - it's kind of hit and miss.  Sometimes things come out as I had planned, and some days my ability or my patience falls short (or I'm having a "perfectionist" moment and nothing seems good enough).  But I usually learn something in the process. 

Most of the time when I want to do lettering or patterns I reach for the vinyl or try to find some scrapbook paper that works with my vision.  However, in a few of my more recent projects (ok, honestly these have been in the works since somewhere around JULY haha) paint seemed like the best option, and consequently, so was the use of stencils.  I have very limited experience with stencils but what I do know is that the most important part is trying to get clean lines with the edges of the paint.  And the "cheap" part of me didn't want to spend a lot of money on supplies.
For my first experiment I decided to use the Silhouette machine to cut out a stencil from contact paper.  It was large enough that I had to cut it in parts then piece the parts together on the board.

Then I used a foam brush and dabbed the paint over the open spaces - stenciling 101, right?

I found that the contact paper was a pretty good choice as it was repositionable but still gave a pretty good bond with the wood behind it so that very little paint leaked around the edges.  Woohoo, success!

 

On to the next project.  This time I wanted to create a background of chevron stripes and I wanted to be able to use the stencil more than once.  So I took the xacto knife and an empty cereal box and proceeded to cut.  The stencil looked fine, but I had a really hard time keeping the edges down and the paint from seeping out everywhere.  I ended up spending a lot of time touching up that one.
So back to the silhouette machine I went, this time with cardstock.  I did a quick zigzag pattern on 3-4 pieces of paper, then pieced them together so I had a stencil large enough to cover the 12x12 board.  Then I used spray adhesive on the back of the cardstock so that it would stick directly to the wood.  With the adhesive I was using, if you apply it right after spraying it's supposed to be permanent.  If you wait a couple of minutes before sticking it on something, the adhesive is repositionable.  The trick was timing it right so that the glue was tacky enough to stick and not hold permanently, but not too dry that it didn't stay down while I was applying the paint.  I had a few ooops moments with it, but overall it worked out okay.

So I'm curious - what have you found works the best when it comes to stenciling??
And yes, I really am going to leave you hanging and not show photos of the final projects I was stenciling... yet :)