Luminaries

I've always adored how sweet luminaries look lining a walk way. I've also always been afraid of them starting a fire...but that's secondary.
For Katie's wedding, I have been crafting up a storm, and I came up with this flame resistant luminary idea.
I bought a 12 count of canning jars that were smooth on one side.
I printed and cut out my stencil guide, then I traced it on the glass with marker.
Using a small paintbrush, I painted in the letters using their primary wedding color - navy.


I added ribbon, added sand, added a battery operated candle, and called it a day!
Easy and super cute shabby chic!

Fair Day 2011

Gabby, Aunt Sue, and I took Wyatt to the State Fair last week. It was an overcast day, which made the temps so nice. Wyatt looked around at everything from the safe perch of his stroller. He tried a few completely new things: ice cream, frito pie, corny dogs, lemonade, and cotton candy (A+ parenting right here, folks).

Eating ice cream while wearing my new necklace. Dang! This stuff if COLD!

Cotton Candy: This went over like gangbusters...

His favorite thing was the petting zoo. He ran from cage to cage yelling and pointing. They handed out little cups of food for the animals, but the mean goats just took & ate everything - including the cups. That's probably why their cheese tastes so bad.


His second favorite thing was the fountains. He leaned over as far as he could to splash his hand in the water.

What? I'm not supposed to do this?

Group effort to wrangle and get shoes on the Bug!

Y'all take me over there. I'm getting tired.

This is the second annual Fair trip for W, so I dug up a few photos from last year. Last year was such a different experience from this year - I'm always amazed at how much he is growing and changing. He's not a baby anymore (tear!).

Being friendly - saying HOWDY!

Same fountains...different baby!

Watching a cooking demo with Gabby!

Too tired to continue!

Pumpkin Decorating with Buttons

Pinterest has sucked away large amounts of my time lately, but I did see a cute craft that I had to try out involving pumpkins and buttons.

Bestie Keisha and I are throwing a pumpkin party right before Halloween, so we wanted to do a couple of pumpkins as testers. This was my example!

First things first, I bought my smallish pumpkin at Tom Thumb for $1. Sold! Then I pilfered through my button jar at home and fished out all of the black ones. I didn't have enough, but luckily JoAnn Fabric sells 130 black buttons of varying sizes for $2.39.


I printed and traced my stencil.


I used craft glue to affix the buttons. Since the pumpkin is round, you can only do one letter at a time and then let it dry so that the buttons don't slide around.


I tied a ribbon up top and set it in the cabinet. Done! I love Halloween!!!!

Spook-tacular!!!

A few things were accomplished today...first and foremost, my sister and I ran our first 5k together. Katie has run a half, so this was no biggie...except that we were able to run it together. I'm not going to lie...the path was crazy hilly and I pretty much almost cried/kicked over the mile marker sign when we came upon the 2mi designation (WHAT? ONLY 2 MILES!!!! SERIOUSLY?). But we kept on and we finished with a 32 minute stop time. Pretty proud.

We celebrated by enjoying some gelato in the cool night air and then buying some chardonnay at Whole Foods. Cheers, sister!

But today was also a day of tying up lose ends and finishing some fall projects.

My friend sent this idea for a Fall Bucket List, so I adapted it a little, drew a sketchy tree, and wrote down my bucket list. Each leaf includes something I would like to accomplish:
Trip to the Farmer's Market
Run a 5k (check)
Run a 10k (I'm ready for you, Porter)
Sew a fall pillow
Visit the Ft. Worth Zoo with Aunt Sue
Bake pumpkin/gingersnap cakeballs (recipe on Pinterest)
Go to an Oktoberfest (check)
Organize my recipe book (sigh!)
Take Dub to a football game

There are 25 total items to complete, but you know this girl loves a challenge. Once I've completed a task, the leaf goes on the tree. Kind of backwards, I know...but that is what I came up with.

In other news, the house is finally ready for Halloween. I've had so much fun getting our place in order. A trip to Canton with my bestie helped get the front lawn in order.
Wyatt doesn't like the glitter spiders very much, but he loves handling the mini pumpkins! I ordered his Halloween costume, so get ready for some cuteness.
Until then...here's a look at the place all done up! Happy Halloween, ghouls!

Painted glass jar with candle inside (Pinterest, again). W loves watching the pumpkin face!

Mantle Banner from Etsy's Inspirational Banners Shop - love her stuff!

My favorite bench! I did most of these pillows myself, but did have to buy a few to supplement.

And, finally, a view from the front yard:

Trick or Treat Bucket

I've been on the hunt for the perfect candy bowl for handing out candy to Trick-or-Treaters. Our sweet neighbors told us that the neighborhood gets a ton of goblins and I love candy so much that I want to be prepared. Unfortunately with little man, I can't have anything around that is breakable (read cute). Everything functional for my household was plasticy and yucky. With Mod Podge in hand, I decided to make my own treat bucket.

I bought the black bucket at Target for $6. It came in black or orange and it came in this oval shape or in a true circle.

hello, doggy helper in the corner

I found a font that I liked and printed/cut out the letters. I used Mod Podge to affix the letters to the bucket. Easy. After two coats of Mod Podge, I moved on to painting.




Using a circle sponge brush, I added my polka dots. I did two coats of paint. I then added the candy corn stickers (purchased at Michael's). I applied three additional coats of MP and let those dry. I finished up by tying pumpkin ribbon around the handles and added my candy.

Inside of the bucket - lined with candy corn stickers



Now...who knows if that candy will last until 10/31...but at least it has a cute container to call home!

Skulls

I've been trying a few recipes this afternoon and it hasn't been going very well. Sad face.
My brittle was a horrible fail, despite having a new candy thermometer. It was less brittle and more taffy.

But...this little ditty worked out.
The mold is from Fancy Flours, which has some cool stuff!
I poured in white chocolate, added an Oreo, topped it with more white chocolate, and let it set in the fridge for 10 minutes. Then I piped in red gel icing and called it a day. Hard to screw that up.

Happy Halloween!

Oktoberfest 2011

This morning we celebrated October 1st by attending an Oktoberfest celebration being held up the road from our place. They had lederhosen and beer, a rocking band...but more than all of that, they had fountains and a petting zoo. Both are big hits with Wyatt right now.

We observed the fountains, which did some neat little tricks. Dub did some dancing to the polka music. Awesome to watch. That was fun for awhile. Plus, the weather is so amazing that you can't help but feel like fall is in the air!

Dada!! Look at that!

How can I get in there without getting caught?

Mama and Dada (W has taken to mixing up our names to get a [fake] rise out of us, so I guess it would be Dada and Mama in his world).

The petting zoo, however, was the big deal of the day. This group had pigs, miniature horses, ducks, chickens, rabbits, goats, sheep, and turtles all running around in the same pen creating some kind of a super flu, I'm sure.
Wyatt went from side to side, calling out "Quack" or "Baa". He did pretty good impressions so a few of them let him come in for a little petting. The turtle freaked W out a little - with all of the cute little furry things, the turtle looked prehistoric and was kind of large.

Petting a goat. This hair feels weird. Based on his face, I don't think he'll like goat cheese either. Get away!!

Hi, horsey. I'll pet you for a minute, but then I'm going to play in your water bowl. Cool?

What are these things?

I want to touch it, mom. Don't make me leave!! Wait...

Yelling "QUACK" at the top of his lungs, I can't imagine why these guys didn't stick around...

So that was a good start to our day!
Happy October 1st!!