Spooky Treat Sampler

 

Here’s a photo of the ‘Spooky Treat Sampler’ I brought to the work potluck, featuring some great Pinterest finds!

-Witch Finger Pretzel rods

-Oreo Ball Monsters

-Ghost Nutter Butters

-Witch hat Cookies

-Candy Corn, pretzel, peanut bark

- Mummy Pretzles

-Candy Corn/Hug Pretzels

 

Happy Halloween!

Birthday Balloon Wreath

I made this balloon wreath at Craft Club to hang on the door for Birthdays--like this:

It was pretty east to make and looks really neat.  There are may tutorials on-line and on pinterest, but here's my advice:

1.) Start with a foam wreath like the one above from Joann's. It's east to put pins in. Don't mess with a straw/wicker wreath.

2.) Use straight pins to pin the balloons to the wreath--just stick the pin right though it. Some people use 'U' shaped pins to pin the balloons down, but they are just too expensive!

3.) If you're going to push in 200+ pins with the same index finger, spend $3 on a thimble. Not the old school one that looks like a barbie drinking cup that's useless, but a gel-lined,  adjustable one that only covers the bottom half of your finger that pushes the pins in.

4.) I used 210 balloons, 30 of each of the 7 colors:

Pink

Orange

Yellow

Green

Teal

Blue

Purple

5.) I got all of the balloons at Target (Two-15ct. packs of each color) except for Teal and Orange. I had to go to the party store for those colors to round out the assortment.

6.) This might be common sense, but I'll say it. Don't put balloons on the back side.  They won't get seen, it won't lay flat, and you'll spend more $ on the project if you do.

Outdoor Fall Floral Arrangements

These are our outdoor pots on the front step for Fall/Thanksgiving, until the Christmas trees come out!

They're not my best craft ever, but I thought I'd post since there wasn't much inspiration on-line when I was looking!

I started with the pots I had the summer plants in (and even left the brown dead grass of one summer plant, bad I know, but it was a good filler!)

I added light-up tree branches that I already had, and bought some fall floral from Michaels. I'm a big fan of buying fake floral so you don't have to buy it each year :-).  I purchased fake wheat for height, grass with gold tips for color and greenery, cattail-type weeds for texture, and dark purple fuzzy ball things for color, texture, and interest. I also placed a medium pumpkin, mini pumpkin, and green/yellow squash in each bucket to help fill them up.

Beer Bar Artwork

Our new artwork for our 'bar area wan't something that we were looking for, but it just happened to come to us, literally, in this holiday Crate and Barrel mailing!

 

Paging through Crate & Barrel catalogs and seeing how they decorate and entertain is my most favorite thing ever.  I try to save them to look through with a glass of wine, but I usually end up looking at them in the garage standing up against the trunk of my car after getting the mail--can't even wait to get in the house! 

Among the pages of great product that I can't help but want, the holiday catalog had a whole page featuring this diagram of 'The Very Many Varieties of Beer', which even lists brands of each type of beer, from microbrews to Keystone light.

 

I though it would make cool artwork for our small bar area in the basement family room.  I ripped it out, trimmed the edges, put it on some gold paper and a black mat, put it in a frame I had in the closet, and here it is! The perfect bar area artwork!

DIY Address Pillow

I couldn't find a third pillow for our sectional so I made this pillow that incorporates our address!

I used a variety of stencils to get the lettering on the fabric.  I just used a pen to outline them since they would get filled in with paint later.

Tape helped me keep the words straight.

After all of the letters were traced, I filled them in with brown fabric paint.

After sewing into a pillow case, here is the finished product!

Scrabble Wall Art

At a gift shop near my house, I saw a similar Scrabble wall art that used all of the names of the local towns and lakes.  It was cool, but it was $200!  

I had an old scrabble game at home that I used for mine. I had to buy another game at goodwill to get more of the letters that I needed, but that only cost $1.99.

The letters are just glued to the board, which is inside a shadowbox I bought at Michaels. 

I used "family game room" words to create mine.

To make things easier, I created a crossword puzzle on-line to determine the word layout.  I typed in the number of squares and the words I wanted to use, and it created the crossword for me. So much easier than trying to figure it out on my own!  I used this site, but I'm sure any puzzle maker site would work.

DIY Photo Booth

For our Valentine's Day Party we created a photo booth in my craft room so guests could take their photos throughout the night!

We took photos using the Photo Booth program on my Mac, which is this Icon:

It's so easy, all you do is click on the camera and it counts down, 3..2...1... and starts taking pictures!

It takes 4 pictures and they end up in one photo like this:

To create the background, I used rolls of pink paper which we just taped to the wall. I added some Valentine's decorations to give it a 'Prom backdrop' feel:

We set out props for people to use in their pictures, including pink boas, 'LOVE' letters to hold, angel/cupid wings, valentines antennas, and a fun hat.

Here we are! It was a lot of fun and basically free to make, we just had to pay to have them made into 4x6 prints at Target!

Cupid's Cocktail Valentine's Day Party

I just LOVE Valentine's Day, and this year was the best Valentine's Day EVER!

The theme of the party was 'Cupid's Cocktail' so everyone wore cocktail party attire. 

Here are some pics from before the party started:

Chris let me go all out which was awesome!  We rented a helium tank and blew-up 150 red and pink balloons.  I had wanted to do this for  party ever since I saw it on Sex and the City the movie!

We created a photo booth in my craft room, another thing I've always wanted to do for a party.  After the party I had the pictures printed and sent to everyone in homemade valentines.

Instead of a table cloth, I put red mylar gift basket stuffing all over the table to glam it up.

The dessert bar, complete with chocolate dipped strawberries,

 four kinds of homemade truffles, and mini cheesecakes.

We served cosmos to fit in with the cocktail party theme, and they're red so it was perfect!

Valentine's Day Decor

Here are some of the decorations I have up for Valentines Day! They'e all very inexpensive or free, most are just paper!  Swapping out my regular frames with seasonal printables saves a lot of money on decorations, and storage space!

 Free printables found here

 Cans of fake roses over the kitchen sink

 I made this by cutting paper hearts, folding down the center, and gluing the hearts into the shadow box along the fold.

 Free printable found here

 Just glitter paper hearts on a scrapbook paper background

 Tissue paper puffs

Entryway

Felt heart garland is from Pier1

 Free printables above and below are from this site

'LOVE' Letters cut out of glitter paper

S'Mores & Schnapps with your Sweetheart Party

A couple of years ago for Valentine's Day we hosted a 'S'Mores & Schnapps with your Sweetheart' Party.  

It was so much fun! We copied the idea off of ice bars. We had gourmet S'mores and hot chocolate 

with peppermint Schnapps.

Here is the S'more Bar!
Graham cracker and cookies for the outside
Regular and Strawberry marshmallows
White, milk, raspberry, and Caramel filled Chocolates!

 
Chris shoveled the backyard to create a snow hole for the fire pit

The fire area, complete with tikki torches and marshmallow sticks

Here is everyone drinking hot chocolate around the fire!  We had a secondary party with snacks, wine, and a fire inside too so no one got too cold.