Tricks and Treats {Happy Halloween!}
November 5, 2012 posted by
{Fall} Console Table Display
October 19, 2012 posted by
Have I mentioned before that I get the crafty-itch every Fall? I don’t know what it is….something about the cooler weather that just makes me want to nest a bit….
So far this year, I’ve been able to ignore the itch, being busy making Halloween costumes and getting ready for my first craft show. And along comes Target’s Dollar Spot. I cruised by it the other day, glancing past the Halloween sprinkles, loofas and felt candy buckets….. and spotted some REAL finds! So I purchased three wire baskets (for my craft room…), a sweet little straw pumpkin, and a small grapevine wreath. Score!
Combining them with my wire candle holders from TJ Maxx, and leaning them up against my antique window frame with photos of our relatives made the perfect little fall display. And then Jayna asked me {for the 324th time} how many days left until Halloween.
I found this gem also at Target…had been eyeing it for months in the kitchen section. But, thanks to my House Manager Meal Planner, we didn’t really need a menu board, so I couldn’t justify the price. Until now. As soon as I saw it on CLEARANCE, I knew exactly what I could use it for!
So, 31 fall colored paint chips, a pack of hard-to-find chalk markers (from Amazon), and $15 at Target later….a beautiful Fall entrance to our home!
And….itch scratched.
What have you done to decorate for Fall? Leave me a comment with your blog address or link to a photo, and I’ll feature some of my favorites next week!
And Fall Begins….
September 24, 2012 posted by
Fall has always been my favorite time of year. It represents the excitement of school starting, the anticipation of the holiday season {which we almost always host}, the entrance of cooler weather {finally!} and the general feeling of starting anew.
Not to mention the pumpkin carving, hay rides, Halloween parties, family gatherings, pumpkin flavored everythings….etc.
And the past few years, Fall has also been my downfall.
For some reason, Fall judges me. She wonders why I haven’t put curtains up on all of my windows yet {hey, at least the kitchen has some now!!}. Fall persuades us year after year to throw a crazy-scary Halloween party. She screams at me to try every recipe in my Southern Living Magazine, and to transform myself into Martha Stewart in order to host the perfect Thanksgiving and Christmas at our house. Fall taunts me with her Pinterest Boards: flaunting beautiful seasonal mantles, whimsical door wreathes and cozy sewing tutorials. Fall pressures me into starting projects that I can’t possibly hope to finish before She ends, and continues to stress me out throughout her entirety.
And for whatever reason, I love Fall for doing this to me. Maybe it’s because I work well under pressure….she pressures me to finish everything before the end of the year. She is always on top of me…pushing me to learn new things, try new recipes, get out of my comfort zone. I love that she brings out my nesting tendencies, and when its ALL finally finished {just in the nick of time!}…she whispers to me that I need deserve that Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte.
And for all of this….Fall is my favorite time of year.
Parents of the Year
November 14, 2011 posted by
See? We could be worse! Sad to say that I think that this is hilarious….especially the kids at the end who ended up getting onto the Jimmy Kimmel Show.
Bet you laughed too…all while thinking how terrible it is to lie to your kids! Considering we get a major meltdown simply by telling Jayna to put her shoes on….I can only imagine how she would have reacted!!!
It’s Fall, Y’all!
November 9, 2011 posted by
Its official! Fall has finally arrived in the Lowcountry! Running errands today was almost a pleasure as I admired the reds and oranges that popped up over the weekend around town. Funny how the air smells fresher and the sky seems blue-er against the bright-colored trees. Maybe it’s just me….I love this time of year!
Were you wondering if I would ever show you any of my Fall creations from my birthday shopping trip?
I’ve been working on a few…
I decided I liked the little flowers on the wreath so much, that I made a couple of clips for the girls….Jayna modeled one while working on a button project with me…
We look quite festive from the street, don’t we?
See the three sheets of paper next to our front door? We have been Boo’ed. Three times to be exact! Neighbors have been ringing our doorbell and running away, leaving buckets of Halloween and Fall goodies for us. The catch? Each time we are Boo’ed, we have to Boo two other neighbors. Too bad all of this happened before Halloween….I’d like to do it again now and get rid of some of this candy!!
Speaking of Halloween…the girls did great!
We went out early, as a family (leaving a bowl of candy on the porch)…even Loo Loo dressed up as a ballerina!
Jayna was a little nervous to go up to the houses at first, but once she figured out that she got candy at each house….she got brave really fast! Most of our neighbors were out on their porches, or driving around in their golf carts handing out candy.
After a couple of streets (and several trips back to the house to get a flashlight, replace ballet slippers with sneakers, put more candy out), Buggy was ready to drop. Literally. First it was her candy bucket. She just plopped it down in the middle of the sidewalk and kept walking to the next house! Then, one street over, she followed the candy bucket down to the ground, and announced that she was “exhausted.” Time to call it quits!
When we got home, Jayna was anxious to dump out her stash. And in keeping with tradition, proceeded to sort all of her candy!
Sugar high!
Whew! October flew by….and believe it or not, our Fall Festivities are only just beginning!
Halloween at Hundred Oaks
October 30, 2011 posted by
Last night was our Fifth Annual Halloween Party. Now, if you don’t know much about me and Dave, know this. We LOVE Halloween. Well, really all things Fall. I mean….my birthday, a cool relief from summer in the south, changing leaves, hayrides and bonfires, pumpkin patches, and HALLOWEEN. What time of year could be better?!?!?
We love Halloween so much, that we have spent a small fortune on our parties….food, costumes and decor. We’ll start with the costumes. We spend so much time on decorating and cooking, that we usually kind of forget about our costumes until the last minute, and have to resort to buying your stereotypical couple costume.
Last year we attempted to get a little creative and piggy-back off of the Tiger and Elin scandal.
This year, we wanted to incorporate Loo into our costume….and we couldn’t afford all the face paint again! =)
And every year, we have a costume contest. All the guests vote for the Funniest, Most Creative and Best Couple Costumes. Winners get Halloween themed wine courtesy of World Market. Here are some of our favorites through the years:
And our winners this year…
We always prepare enough food for a small army…and although people seem to eat the entire time, we always have a ton of food left over! This year I added my zucchini muffins and some mummy and pumpkin cake pops.
Admittedly, we go a little overboard on decorations. In fact, we get so into them, that we have to specifically put on our invites that children aren’t invited because our house is too scary! We start on the friendly decor about a week before the party, and then send Jayna to Sue Sue and Papaw’s on the Saturday of our party and spend the entire day outfitting our home with bloody corpses,
Hollywood Horrors,
Ghosts, Gouls and Goblins.
We have a blast rearranging our dining room into a scientist’s lab, and last year, had a haunted maze in our garage that guests were required to walk through to get into the party.
But Hannibal is definately the scariest prop as far as I’m concerned….he is sooooo life-like.
And somehow he manages to pop up in different corners of the house every Halloween and scares the you-know-what out of me! So Dave decided to capitalize on that this year, and put him in the bathroom! Guests got a double dose of Hannibal as they saw a glimpse of him in the mirror as they walked into the bathroom, and then were forced to stare at him as they did their business! What kind of sick-os live here anyway?!?!
But, I am exhausted as we have been planning our shin-dig for the past few weeks and were up late last night and up early this morning attempting to clean up before Buggy arrived home. So, I’m off to bed for tonight….to dream about tomorrow! Happy Halloween!
Monster Cake Pop Tutorial
October 27, 2011 posted by
Hello, my faithful followers! Sorry it’s been awhile. We have been cRaZy busy these past few weeks, unpacking the last of the boxes and getting ready for the Halloween season! Our annual party is this coming Saturday, so we are working into the wee hours each night getting the house, food and costumes ready. Don’t worry, you’ll get to see pictures!
In my spare time, I’ve learned how to make cake pops. And, if I do say so myself, I’m quite pleased with my first attempt! I decided to make some practice pops before attempting the real deal (Mummies and Jack-o-Lanterns) for the party. So I made some little green monsters for Jayna’s class party. Here’s a quick tutorial how to make them!
These monster pop ideas and how I learned to make them came from this awesome book (that I found at Lowes, of all places!!). The recipe is adapted from the book.
Ingredients:
1 box of cake mix 1 can of frosting 1 bag of candy melts (in whatever color you want your monster to be…I used green) 1 tube of white decorative icing 1 tube of black decorative icing 1 tube of decorative icing in the same color as your monster 1 tube of decorative icing in whatever color you want your eyes to be (I used orange) 1 bag of paper lollipop sticks 1 block of styrofoam 1 microwave safe bowl *I got my materials from Publix (icing) and Michaels (everything else)Recipe
1. Bake the cake according the box’s directions. Let it cool completely before doing any of the next steps.
2. Carefully slice off any brown crust off of the cake and place on a plate to munch on.
3. Place the rest of the cake (the yellow part if you used yellow cake mix) in a bowl and crumble it into fine crumbs.
4. Mix about 1/2 to 3/4 of the jar of icing into the cake crumbs. And using the back of a metal spoon, mush it together until its about the consistency of raw cookie dough.
5. Using a melon baller (to make all of your pops an even size), scoop out little balls and then roll them with your hands to make them completely round. I placed mine on a parchment papered plate that I knew was small enough to fit in my freezer.
6. Let your 2 year-old sous chef lick the spoon (after you taste test it as well!)…remember everything is already cooked, so it is perfectly safe!
7. Place your cake balls in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Or, if you are a normal person and don’t have room in your refrigerator, or a couple of hours to wait for these little things, stick ‘em in the freezer for about 15 minutes. They will not freeze completely. If you don’t have time to finish the recipe, you can also stick them in a ziplock bag and freeze them for later. Or, until your hubby finds them…then there might only be 4 left.
8. When you are ready to decorate, let the balls sit out on the counter for a couple of minutes to warm up a bit. I found out the hard way that the balls expand a little as they warm up, so if you dip them in chocolate too soon, they will crack! No worries for this particular recipe though, as you can just cover the cracks with icing.
9. Dump your chocolate melts into your microwave-safe bowl and microwave them in 30 second intervals until the chocolate is completely melted and drips off ouf your spoon. This usually takes me three 30-second intervals. Don’t over heat it…your chocolate will clump! If you need it thinner, add a little vegetable oil (just a splash) to the chocolate and stir it for a good minute or so.
10. Dip the end of your lollipop sticks into the chocolate and then stick it in the middle of each cake ball. This will help keep the ball on your stick. Put the stick with the ball on the end into your styrofoam and pop it into the fridge for about 5 minutes to let it harden.
11. Dip your cake balls into the chocolate one by one until they are completely covered in chocolate, then stick them back into the styrofoam and back into the fridge. I let them stay in there for a good 20 minutes or so to get the coating nice and hard.
12. Notice the crack on the right cake pop above. No worries. Take your tube of icing that is the same color as your cake pop. Draw squiggles all around the ball and then kind of dab and them to make them look really messy. Make sure you cover up any cracks, or your cake will get stale!
13. Stick them back in the foam and back in the fridge for about 5 minutes to let them harden a little bit. Then, using your tube of white icing, draw a large circle and color it in white. Or, draw two little dots. Back in the fridge for 5 minutes.
14. Draw a slightly smaller circle on top of the white circle with your eye-color tube of icing. Then use the black to make a small dot (the pupil) in the center of the color. Or, if you have two white dots, just use the black icing to put pupils in the middle of the white.
Is it just me, or do these look like Oscar the Grouch a little?!?
Tada! You are done! I put mine back in the fridge overnight to get the icing nice and hard, because the next morning I stuck them in little baggies to take to Jayna’s school to hand out at her party. Mmmmm….heaven in a bite!
