Our Day Off, aka PJ Party

This past Friday the kids were out of school for Veteran's Day.

I knew immediately what we'd do with our day.

I looked forward to it all week.

It was pj day.  All day.

I even wore my matching jammies.

I pushed back the couch in the playroom and let them pile as many blankets, pillows and stuffies in the floor for movie time.

You'd thought I had bought them a pony or something with how happy this made them.

We watched one of my fav movies, Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

I had to forward through Aslan's scene.

At our very informal lunch time we mostly snacked on chex mix and nachos.

(If you knew how anal I am about my kids eating you'd know how very special this was!)

And we made crafts.

We attempted to make these adorable napkin rings, but some of the kids pooped out of gluing buttons.

They did enjoy making some turkeys.

We simply took some coffee filters, folded them in half and colored them.

I then took 2 extra filters and stuffed them in between the colored one and stapled them together.

Then we glued a clothespin for the turkey body and used wood markers to draw their faces.

Look mommy, we're Kuzco!

Squeeckity, squeeck, squeecken.

(This is one of our fav movies.)

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Giveaway ends tomorrow!

Catching up--Halloween scenes

Nothing scary about our Halloween.

Couple of superheros.

I have no idea where he got the idea to be Flash.

I had to order this costume.

But he was quite popular with his cute little lightening headed costume. :)

We trunk-or-treated on Sunday night.

This is my cute (but 'scary') cat by our trunk.

We painted pumpkins.

I cut stars into the rainbow pumpkin to light up.

Our spooky snack.

Our spooky dinner.

Then we went trick or treating in the neighborhood.

Lots and lots of candy.

What were your little monsters for Halloween?

What do you do with all your candy?

Another cool giveaway coming up!

Just a little fallish

I finally got around to putting a few fall decorations up.

I saw a felt leaf garland in this book.

I made this one in fallish colors.

Thinking I will have to make one for Christmas too.

It was SO quick and easy.

And in the dining room a few non traditional pumpkins.

I found these great fake pumpkins at Target.

I decided to spray paint them white.

One got the polka dot treatment and the other some embellishment.

I used glue dots to attach the trims as I didn't want to commit to leaving them forever.

Plus some of it is vintage lace that I may want to use for something else later.  ;)

And lastly, in our playroom.

This one the kids made.

The idea from here.

The kids really loved making these.

Then I punched holes and put them on a string to hang up.

This weekend I hope to paint our pumpkins like this.  :)

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.  :)

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!

Jack-o-lanterns and yummy roasted seeds

This past weekend we carved our pumpkins. 

 The kids are pretty traditionalist when it comes to their jack-o-lanterns.  They drew how they wanted their faces on paper first.  Then I carved them out.  Maressa didn't really draw a face, but just scribbled.  So we talked over how she wanted her face to look.  She wanted a circle mouth.  Z had a semi-complex face (the pumpkin on the far left) and I did the best I could to get it to look like his picture.  :)

Here they are lit up.  Sorry for the blur.  It was dusk and with the flash off, the camera is hard too hard to hold still.  I guess if I really really cared, I could have got out the tripod.  ;)

I really love using the batter powered tea lights for the pumpkins.  You can get a giant box of them at Sam's.

So then we had four pumpkins worth of seeds.  I decided to experiment with roasting them.

After I washed the seeds all off, by myself (kids had abandoned me to play on the trampoline very quickly into our pumpkin project...but who can blame them, it was perfect weather), I divided them into 3 bowls.

Then each bowl got 2 tsp of melted butter.  Then one bowl got some sea salt, another bowl few tsp of brown sugar, cinnamon and pinch of nutmeg, and the third bowl got brown sugar, cinnamon and few dashes of cayenne pepper.  Then I roasted them all in separate baking dishes at 300F for about 45 mins.  

Let cool.  Enjoy!

The sweet and spicy was my favorite.

Some slightly spooky ghosts and a not so haunted house

I don't know if you've noticed over the years that this time of year usually my blog s lacking halloween type decorations and crafts (except these batty favors).  Not that I have anything against it all, I'm generally not into it for decorations and  I don't go out of my way to craft it either.  I haven't in a long time even made cute little halloween type cutsie food.  Raason for that being is that the preschool my kids go to don't have 'Halloween' parties and they ban anything related at the fall parties (this used to mean ghosts and witches, but this years note included bats, spiders and black cats).  I really don't care either way.  ;)

As my kids get older they wanna know why we don't decorate for Halloween like half the houses on our street (it's gotten so that you can drive at night in your car looking at scary decorations as one would go looking at Christmas lights).  My compromise is they could decorate a room in our house how they wanted if they made the decorations (I'm not spending money on it).  So they all asked if they could make our 'front room' (a room reserved for hard playing, ball throwing and wrestling and that my biggest boy, aka hubby, has banned most all furniture from) a haunted house.

So it is so.  And because I'm really not all humbug about it, I helped the kids make some fun ghosts.

I took a $5 twin sheet from Target (I already had) and tore it into 4 pieces.

Gathering it up as it would be once hung, I figured out where they should put the faces and I blocked off the area with tape.

With fabric markers and fabric crayons (you could use really anything since they won't need to be washed), they made their own ghost faces.  They all agreed they wanted them 'scary'!

With Maressa, who is only 3, I drew a face as directed by her and let her color it.  She then added a nose and eyebrows of her own.

Once they were done I blew up 4 white balloons and placed the fabric over them, gathering and tying under the balloon.  At this point I applied some glow in the dark acrylic paint, but it didn't show real well.

I poked holes through the top of the fabric (careful to not poke the balloon) and strung through fishing line.  I then used small flat tacks to attach them to my ceiling.

Here are some of their own decorations they made as well.  I used small rolled pieces of tape to attach to the walls.

I also contributed my old ceramic jack-o-lantern and some fun votives and battery operated candles.  Oh and another big hit was I got a strobe light from the Target dollar spot that they turn on at night.  Warning if you get that same light...it goes through batteries really, really fast.  Funny thing is once it is on they are more fascinated by putting on hand puppet shows than anything spooky related.  lol

And another first, I promised we would actually cut into their pumpkins they got from the farm this last weekend and make jack-o-lanterns.

Maybe we'll even have some friends over for a little Halloween party this year.  Maybe.  :)