Fall Inspired Craftiness

Makenna started first grade a few weeks ago. Now she is gone ALL day! Kinda happy-she loves school and being around other kids, and it gives me more time to do my college course work and get crafty. Kinda sad-my baby is gone for 7 hours a day, and it's really super quiet around here! Well, except for my sweet husband being home all day with me (but he doesn't talk that much :). He got laid off in April and is still looking for work, but we are praying for something to open up soon and enjoying the time together that we haven't had for a long, long time. Anyhow, with my spare time I finally got to get crafty with my Cricut and the new Close to My Heart Artiste cartridge. I love ALL of my Cricut cartridges, but I have to say that the Close to My Heart cartridges are far and away the best bang for your buck. So extremely versatile! Here are a few examples of what I have been working on. Have a great day, y'all!

Pinterest Project

I discovered Pinterest around 4 months ago, and I am completely hooked! My favorite boards to pin from are the Food, Crafts, Fitness and Home Decor. I probably should spend way more time on the fitness part than the food part. Anyway, I am probably a little late jumping on the burlap wreath bandwagon, but once I got wind of them, I knew it would be the perfect fall decor project. I love how it came out. I sprayed the final product with Copper Glimmer Mist to give it just a little shimmer. I think the burlap roses came out cute, and I used bottle caps with some scrapbook paper centers for those. We have had a really hot summer here in Colorado, and I am SO ready for fall! I am breaking out the fall decor on September 1st, come hell or high water! Thanks for looking!

Halloween Treats

I had to make something ultra cute for my daughter to take in to her Fall party at school, but I wanted it to be something she could be involved in. The trick now is when sending food in to school for public consumption you cannot send in anything homemade. Too many allergies and other issues to consider. This makes it difficult for a child to "help" make treats. So, I found a cute idea while surfing the internet and we gave it a go. I was very pleased with the results! I cut out the treat boxes with my Cricut using the Batman cartridge. Then I designed and printed the "Spooky S'mores" label and directions on my computer. Makenna then used various pre-made die-cuts to decorate the boxes. Then we placed pre-wrapped bags of Halloween marshmallow and small size, individually wrapped Hershey bars into the boxes. The only tricky part of this treat was the graham crackers. They don't come individually wrapped. We wrapped four squares of grahams into plastic wrap, then copied the ingredients label off the box and printed them out on computer labels and used them to seal the crackers. These got carefully placed into the boxes as well. Makenna took great pride in the fact that she had "made" s'mores for her friends. I love it that she will have these fun memories of making projects with her mama.

Pumpkin Carving

My daughters and I are the pumpkin carvers in the family. The men are just too wimpy to handle the slimy, stinky pumpkin guts. Really, when it comes down to it women are just altogether tougher. Don't you agree? I mean, it HAS to be done. Pumpkins MUST be carved. How could anyone fathom the idea of a Halloween without plunging a knife into a large orange gourd? Anyway, my 5 year old got her pumpkin when her class visited the local pumpkin patch. Upon bringing it home, she immediately "decorated" it with a huge purple sharpie. It looked, well, bad. Really bad. And she knew it. So we had to think of some way to salvage the pumpkin, because using a different one was out of the question-that was THE ONE she had selected. We decided to paint over the mess. The only thing that would cover it was three coats of metallic black acrylic paint- and it looked totally cool. Then she decided she wanted a Batman themed pumpkin. My older daughter did an awesome job of tracing and cutting out the Batman logo for the pumpkin. I have never used pumpkin stencils before, but after seeing the end result of my haunted house stencil I am completely hooked. And my girls and I had a wonderful time together. A stinky, slimy, totally gross and fabulous time together. :)

Big Fat Bacon Sliders

My sweet husband was gone for a week on a business trip and had to eat out for every meal. I wanted to try something new and fun for his first dinner home. I am currently on a huge Pioneer Woman kick, and when I saw these on her blog I knew they were definitely something a man would be happy to come home to. My 19 year old daughter and I made them along with her fried onion straws. They were SO fabulous! Delicious-full of flavor, juicy, filling. COMFORT food. I am having SO much fun getting out of my cooking rut. I swear, for about 5 years I just got in the habit of cooking only a few meals over and over and over again. I was bored and so was my family. I visited the Pioneer Woman's website after seeing an article about her in a magazine. I am completely hooked on her. Not just for the cooking and recipes, but she is so very, very real. She talks about her family, her expanding waistline, her insecurities, her faith. The good, the bad and the ugly. She is not trying to be something she's not. And I think I can learn a lot from someone like that.

Spooky Wall Hanging