Farewell Fall Fun

It's been a fabulous fall here in the deep south.  Normally it's wet and mildly cold.  But the last few months it's been wonderfully dry and mostly in the 60's and low 70's.  The kids have lived outside.  Spoiled spending hours after school on the trampoline and swings.  Coming in only when dinner is called.  Facinated with playing on the trampoline in the dark.  Spending weekends going back and forth between watching football games and playing in the leaves and tossing around the football.

It just now has turned rainy and cold.  And now if I can just get the rain/flooding to end so I can do the Christmas decorations outside in time for my girl's night holiday party.  :)

Thanksgiving dinner for the birds

At Maressa's preschool Thanksgiving party we made bagel bird feeders.

Super simple projects for little hands.  Just need some stale bagels, peanut butter, string and birdseed.

We actually used sun butter (made with sunflower kernels) as there is a peanut allergy in the class.  We took the bagel halves and tied a piece of yarn through the hole and around.  Then we let the kids have at it with spreading the sun butter on the bagel.  After the bagels were thoroughly covered they dipped the butter side in bird seed.  And voila!  Feast for the birds!  :)

We came home and hung it from the tree outside our kitchen window.

Cranberry Jello Jigglers

Last week, Maressa's preschool class had their little Thanksgiving party.  I made mini pumpkin muffins with this pumpkin bread recipe and these cranberry jello jigglers.

To make your own flavored jello jigglers you just need the flavor juice you want and unflavored gelatin.  I used cranberry cherry juice to make these.  Pour 1 C cold juice in a bowl and add 4 envelopes of gelatin and leave for a minute.  Bring 3 C of juice to boil in a pan and pour over the other juice and gelatin in the bowl.  Use a whisk to stir briskly but carefully until all the gelatin is dissolved.  Spray a 9X13 pan with Pam or the like and pour gelatin mixture in pan.  Refrigerate for a few hours until completely set.  You can now use cookie cutters to make shapes of your gelatin.  I made these mini leaf jigglers and the kids just loved them!

Thinking I might have to make a new batch for Thanksgiving!

Lil Cowgirl Horsey Party

I helped a friend of mine design a cowgirl horse party for her little girl who was turning 3.  

We went to Hobby Lobby and with a little cowgirl scrapbook kit and some pink bandanas we came up with this precious little party.

I had a package of white paper placemats that we used stickers from the scrapbook kit to decorate them.

Tied the bandanas with some twine and covered the water bottles with strips of paper.

I made these chocolate on chocolate cupcakes and made little white chocolate with pink glitter sprinkles cowgirl hats to go on top.  I simply put some wax paper on top of one of the hat images in the papers we had and traced it with some melted white bark in a plastic tube.  Then I filled them in and sprinkled with pink sugar while before they hardened.  Used milk chocolate to do the detail.  Once hardened in the fridge I place on the top of the frosting.

Used the papers to make lots of pennants.  Strung them together on my sewing machine.

We found a fun foam craft at Hobby Lobby.  We found a boot shape and some adorable cowgirl foam stickers.  Problem was there was only one boot to be found.  So we bought the one boot and some pink foam sheets and used the boot as a template to trace and cut multiple boots.

Favors were miniature plastic horses.  A tube of them was found at Hobby Lobby.  I then took some pink tissue and ran it through a paper shredder.  We stuffed some small cellophane bags with the tissue shreds and a horse.  Paper cut and folded over the top.

Girls having a good time decorating their boots.

We had this party on my deck as it was a gorgeous day of 72F on this particular November day.  

We put my train table full of ponies and Ponyville toys for the girls to enjoy.

The birthday girl and her big sis.

These two friends definitely have love of chocolate in common!!

All the little cowgirls had a great time!

Girls weekend

This past weekend I went to SC to visit my sisters and mom.  We were supposed to meet up in Ikea Atlanta.  But my sister, Christy (gorgeous chick with redish hair) was not feeling up to the trip.

So my other sister, Stephanie (gorgeous chick in green sweater that lives in Charlotte, NC) and I met up at Christy's house.  My mom lives near by already.  

I came armed with Christmas movies and crafts.  Stephanie came with recipes for yummies and made us a homemade apple pie...yum-O!  So we ate, laughed, teased, crafted and cried.  And oh yeah, shopped.  :)

I am the oldest of 3 girls.  Spittin' image of my mom.  Though I'm not taller than her, so not sure what's up with this picture.  She normally stands 2" taller than me at 5'9".

We all inherited mom's blue eyes.  She cannot deny us...though there's been times she's tried I'm sure....like pretty much the first 13 years of my life (I was, um, a handful).

We had fun shopping in downtown Greenville and riding up and down on the trolley.

I live the farthest away (takes me about 6.5 hours to get there) and I miss them so much.

Will share some of my homemade ornaments soon....I just bought a fun white Christmas tree to put them on!  :)

Monkey Muffins

My new fav way to make monkey bread. 

So easy to eat, take on the go and more crispy bits made this way!

So grease up two muffin pans and make this for your next breakfast or after school snack.

Take 4 cans of refridgerated biscuits.  Cut each bisuit to 4 pieces with kitchen shears. 

Dip each piece into cinnamon-sugar mixture (1/2 C sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon).

Divide all pieces into 24 muffin cups. 

Do NOT use muffin/cupcake paper liners.  They will stick REAL bad.  Like glue even.

Melt 1 stick of butter and mix in 1/2 C sugar.  Pour this mixture evenly over each muffin cup.

Bake in 350F oven for 12-15 minutes.

Carefully pull each muffin out of the cups with a fork while still warm.

Try not to burn yourself when you feel the need to eat 2 right away!  ;)

I'm going to make some for my sisters and family this weekend (mostly for selfish reasons! ;)

So, will be gone for the next few days. 

Going to go cheer up my precious sister who is having/has had a rough go with health these last few years...yep, I said years.

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Unrelated.

Has anyone else used photoscape??  I just downloaded this free photo editing software.  Loving it so far.  So when you see all the weird/funky photo borders it's just playing around.

Also.

Anyone recommend someone who does custom blog design for not too much $$?  I would really like to 'decorate' around here, but I'm picky and want to keep it simple.  But I've seen some super cute, not overly done blogs.  Now I want one.  :)

Talk to ya'll later! 

 Gonna go pack some fun crafts to do with my sisters and mom. 

 TOTALLY inspired by this ezine:  Inspired Ideas

Kids Crafts: Sparkly leaf magnets

Last week I had to come up with a simple craft for Maressa's preschool scarecrow party.  One simple enough for 3 year olds that hadn't been done yet in class.  I wanted to do this sweet sunflower craft, but apparently they had paper plate sunflowers already done and hanging in the classroom.

I found these thin wooden cutouts at Hobby Lobby.  We put self adhesive magnets on the back.  Then I brought markers for wood and sequins and a bunch of acrylic stones for them to glue to them.  I had plenty of leftovers so we did this craft at home as well.

For the little ones I just smeared glue allover the top of the leaf and let them place sequins and stones as they wanted.

We used buttons too.

Easy simple decorations they made for fall.  :)

Oh and someone asked if I had a picture of my dining room chandelier.  I have yet to do full pictures of my dining room yet (though I will soon!).  This is the chandelier I have.  I love it love it LOVE IT!  I saved and waited for a significant sale for a year or more to be able to buy this thing.  I never wavered that this was exactly what I wanted.  :)

The Dynamic Duo and others

This is the most dressed up my kids have ever been all together.  

They all knew what they wanted to be for months and never wavered.

I only had to make one costume.  I made little Miss Robin's costume.  I took a plain red tee from Hobby Lobby and ironed on the details which I made in a publisher program.  The belt and mask is felt.  Cape is some kind of no ravel polyester.  The green skirt I made by cutting up a size large adult blank tee from Hobby Lobby and used the scraps to make her arm cuffs.

This bat girl.  She's my 'but mom I don't dress up' girl.  One extreme to the other don't ya think?  She picked this costume from a catalog and insisted she would wear it.  I wasn't real convinced, but when I saw it at Target I decided to give it a try with thoughts that it would likely be returned.

Nope.  Wore it a ton.  Every piece of it.

Ready to kick some villain booty!

This one, not so original.  But all I had to buy was a Cubs jersey (which he will wear til he outgrows it).  The pants, belt and socks he wore that morning in a baseball tournament.  

He actually let me put eye-black on for the costumes sake--he's never worn it before.

Other costume fun we've had this year:

Scarecrow Maressa for her preschool fall party.  I had colored her on a scarecrow nose, but she didn't like it and rubbed it right off.  So she kinda looks more like a farmer, but that is ok.  :)

For Kalla's school she was allowed to dress up.  First grade had a theme of wearing what you want to be when you grow up.  She picked teacher.  So we put her hair in a bun, punched out the lenses from some sunglasses and tied them on a string (she mostly wore them around her neck that day).  I made a cute little A+ Teacher apple pin for her to wear on her cardigan.  She was too cute!