Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, friends!  Do you have any Halloween traditions? One of our favorites is visiting a local resident who carves amazing pumpkins.  She lives in a rather secluded neighborhood, and never used to get any trick-or-treaters.  One year, she carved one pumpkin, and got one trick-or-treater.  The next year, she carved three pumpkins, and got three trick-or-treaters.  Well, this tradition has continued to grow.  She now has HUNDREDS of jack o' lanterns on her front yard.  To accomplish this task, she takes the week before Halloween off of work, and her family and friends come from all around to help her carve. She is always so gracious -- she has candy for the kids and lots of fun Halloween decorations to look at.

These photos could never do her justice...they were taken with my iPhone. It's an amazing sight to see hundreds of carved pumpkins flickering on her lawn.

Aren't they amazing?  I'm in awe every year. These photos are from last year. This year she had a terrific Beatles pumpkin that I wish I got a photo of.  Maybe next year.

Speaking of decorating for Halloween, would you like to see my $1.10 table decoration?

Yesterday, on a trip to the dollar store, I found the white sparkly skull.  I thought he was cute, so he came home with me.  A few weeks ago, I bought a bunch of books at the thrift store for $0.10 a piece for another project.  I ripped out a few pages and ran them through my shredder.  (The book is Emma by Jane Austen, by the way.  Yes, I feel a little guilty about shredding great literature, but since it was only 10 cents, I figured I'd be forgiven.)  The spider ring was something Gavin brought home from daycare.  I snipped the ring part off and hot glued it to the skull.  Halloween decorating, on the cheap!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Halloween Mantle and New Baby

What a cah-raaazy week it's been.

The BEST news is that my sister, Audrey, gave birth to a beautiful, healthy, super-cute baby boy named Kevin.

Oh my goodness, you have no idea how smitten I am with this little boy.  Perhaps it is because I have the honor of being his Godmother (so excited), but I seriously could just eat him up.  Audrey and her husband Andrew are two of the kindest, most generous, most thoughtful people I know, and this little guy is just so lucky. Could you not stare at that photo for hours, just admiring his perfect little mouth?  LOVE.

Also, I am in the middle of completing my thesis for a Masters in Reading, and a huge part of it was due this past week.  I haven't gone to bed before midnight in days.  Thus, the blog was a little neglected this week.  I'm hoping that since a large chuck of the thesis is now out of the way, I'll have more time to write.  It won't be finished for-real until December.    Can. Not. Wait.

So, the real reason for this post is to show you my Halloween mantle.  It's nothing too fancy, because as you are now aware -- I've had limited time lately!  It includes some ideas I've seen floating around the web.  ("Floating" around the web.  Ha ha!  It's funny because I'm talking about ghosts! Get it?)

Okay, so the stuff on the topiaries is cheesecloth.  It was supposed to look creepy and spider-webby, but I think it just looks like cheesecloth draped over topiaries.  Maybe because it's wrinkled? Maybe it's because you can see seams in it? Oh well, next year maybe I'll try those fake cottonball cobwebs.

I painted the ghosts on the mirror with white Tempura paint.  It just washes off.  Easy!  (Ignore the spots on my mirror, please!

This pumpkin planter is my favorite.  It was an antique flea market find.

I used one of my Halloween Cupcake Toppers on the inside of the apothecary jar, and filled it with candy corn.  I love using candy corn, because I think it looks so cute, and there is absolutely NO temptation to eat them.  Yuck.  You can download the cupcake toppers here.

And there you have it!  My *kind-of-lame-because-I'm-so-busy* Halloween mantle!

Free Printable Halloween Circle Tags or Cupcake Toppers

Do you love Halloween as much as I do?  Do you love cupcakes as much as I do?  I thought so.  Well then, today is your lucky day! I made some Halloween circle tags that you can download and print!

If you've never used circle tags before, here are some ideas.

Cupcake Toppers
I often use these tags as cupcake toppers. Here are the toppers I used for Mother's Day.  These were created by Kim at The Tomkat Studio and were free to download and print!

Favor or Gift Tags
I've also used them as favor tags.  Since my sister's baby shower had a ladybug theme, my mom baked delicious ladybug cookies.  She put the cookies in individual cellophane bags and affixed the tags to the back using double-sided tape.  (Unfortunately, I can only find a photo of the front of the cookies, so you can't see the tags. But you can see one of them in the centerpiece photo below.)  You could print the tags out on label paper that has a sticky back, and just stick these to whatever you want.  But, the double-sided tape gave the tags a bit of a 3-D appearance, which looked great.

I created some simple ones to use as favor tags for my cousin's baby shower.  Jars of honey were used as the favor, so my mom punched small holes in the tags and tied them around the jars.

Centerpieces

At the ladybug baby shower, we hot glued some of the circle tags to skewers and placed them in the centerpieces. The tags were created by Sunday Girls Designs.  They have a shop on Etsy, and were excellent to work with!

And just because I think she looks so cute, here's a photo of Charlotte at that baby shower.  What a little lady!  Note the ladybug dress and matching headband.  My super-talented mom made those!

Here are the Halloween circle tags I created, just for you!  You will need sturdy white card stock, and a 2-inch circle or scalloped punch.  (Full disclosure:  when I first started to use tags, I didn't have the circle punch.  I used a compass to trace circles around them and cut them out by hand.  Invest in a circle punch!  It is SOOO much easier!)

1.  Follow the link (below) to print them out.

2.  Cut them into strips.

3.  Center your punch to cut them out.

And there you have it!

Feel free to download and print, and use them however you wish! I uploaded them to a site called Scribd.  You *may* need to create a login in order to download them...I'm not sure!  If you do use them, PLEASE send me a photo that I can share on my blog! (Leave a comment, and I'll send you my email if you don't have it!)

Halloween Tags

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I linked up to Entertain Exchange's Handmade Halloween Contest!  Check out that site for more homemade Halloween goodies.

The Lord's Pumpkin Roll Recipe

You know what October means in our house?  Besides children screaming hysterically on hayrides (Nathan), children drinking my pumpkin spice coffee when I'm not looking (Charlotte), and children insisting they want to be princesses for Halloween (Gavin)? It means pumpkin roll, people!

In our house, we call this recipe The Lord's Pumpkin Roll.  In order to understand why we call it by this name, you need to hear a little story.  A few autumns ago, we were at a friend's house for a potluck dinner.  I made the pumpkin roll for dessert.  Our friend Ray snuck off to the kitchen after dinner to help himself to a slice of the pumpkin roll.  After the first bite, he began singing a song to the pumpkin roll.  A song about how delicious the pumpkin roll was, and how much he loved it, and how it "came from the Lord."  All of this was sung in a hilarious falsetto.  Sacrilegious?  Perhaps.  Delicious?  Absolutely!

Edited to add:  This recipe was originally shared with me several years ago by a fabulous woman named Mollie. It was love at first bite, and I haven't stopped making it since!  :)

Here's the recipe:

The Lord's Pumpkin Roll

Ingredients:
3 eggs
2/3 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
3/4 cup flour

Mix the ingredients in an electric mixer.  Put parchment paper in a 9 1/2 by 13 3/4 cookie sheet.  Grease the bottom and sides of the parchment paper with shortening.  Pour the batter into the pan.

Bake at 375 for 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, lay out a dishtowel and sprinkle it with granulated sugar.  Grasping the ends of the parchment paper, remove the roll from the pan and place it unpapered side down on the dishtowel.  Peel off the parchment paper, and immediately roll the pumpkin roll in the towel (while still hot).  Let the pumpkin roll cool in the towel for 2 hours.  As it cools, it will keep the "rolled" shape.

As the roll cools, mix the cream cheese filling.

Cream Cheese Filling recipe:

2 Tbsp. soft margarine or butter, softened
1 8-oz. package cream cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
3/4 tsp. vanilla

Mix ingredients in mixer until creamy and smooth.  Unroll pumpkin roll from towel.  Spread cream cheese filling over roll, and reroll.  Keep refrigerated.  Sprinkle powdered sugar on top when ready to serve.

*This recipe can be frozen.

Here's another look at the finished product:

And here's what you'll get for your efforts!

Pumpkin Ornaments Craft

I saw these adorable paper pumpkin ornaments on Hostess with the Mostess a little while ago, and then my friend Tracey pointed them out to me as well.  They're super-easy to make, and are a great craft for kids!  All you need is orange, green, and brown construction paper, and a stapler.

These are the ones my third graders made to hang from our classroom ceiling.  So festive!

You can find directions here.  Enjoy!

Custom Art for Charlotte

"Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

The first line of Charlotte's Web by E.B. White.  Only the first line, and I was hooked.  I read ravenously.  I read and read and read until I was finished, barely coming up for air.  And I sobbed at the end like I lost  one of my own family members.

Charlotte's Web was a Christmas gift from my parents in 1981.  I was 7.  I still have that same copy...the one that sent me on this journey.  I look at it often, with my dad's handwriting on the inside cover:

That book and its characters sent me on a trajectory that, at the risk of sounding overly-dramatic, turned me into the person I am today.  It is the reason I love reading.  It is the reason I became a teacher.  It is the reason I named my daughter Charlotte.

The writing is magical, yes.  But I also love Garth Williams's illustrations.  They are truly iconic.

I wanted to pay homage to Charlotte's Web in my own Charlotte's room somehow.  I'm creating a little reading area for her, so I thought some art work in that area would be perfect.  Here's what I came up with.

This is one of my favorite illustrations from Charlotte's Web.  It's the first message Charlotte weaves in her web to save her friend Wilbur, and the one I decided to recreate for my Charlotte:

And here's my illustration:

I used the original illustration for inspiration, and used a thin black marker on plain white paper.  I bought a plain white frame from Target with a mat already in it, and trimmed my paper down to fit:

Then I thought it needed just a little color, so I trimmed some scrapbook paper and added it to the mat:

And here's what the finished product looks like.  

My hope is that this book will eventually send Charlotte on her own journey, as it did for me.  She loves to "read" already, so I think we're off to a strong start.  My dad is gently nudging her along, as he wisely did for me many years ago.  Here's her own copy of Charlotte's Web, the one that was waiting for her under the Christmas tree on her first Christmas.  It's a little newer than mine, and a little cleaner, but it includes the same handwriting on the inside cover as mine:

I hope all of you have the joy of knowing a book that changed your life, as this one did mine.  :)

-Crafts- Mouse Invasion!

One of my favorite daily blog reads is Thrifty Decor Chick.  If you are at all into decorating, you should do yourself a favor and check this one out.  Sarah is amazingly creative, and she describes her projects in such a simple, straightforward manner -- it makes you think anyone can do it.

A few days ago, she posted about decorating her stairs with silhouettes of mice for Halloween.  Sounds creepy, but looks adorable!

image found here

How cute is that?!?  I can barely stand it.  I immediately wanted to do it in my house, but then I remembered two things:  (1) my stairs are carpeted, and (2) I have three children under the age of 4.  There is NO WAY they would leave these things alone.  I would find ripped and crumpled mouse bodies all over my house.

But I still loved the idea, so I enlisted the help of my third graders.  Every Friday, they earn 20 minutes of "Friday Free Time."  During that time they can draw, play games, talk....whatever!  Last Friday I asked if anyone was interested in helping me decorate the room for Halloween, and nearly all 20 of them volunteered.  I let them stick the mice where ever they wanted.  It's actually pretty hilarious...I keep finding mice in the most unexpected places: on my tissue box, on my printer, behind my bookshelves.  The room looks great!

If you are interested in trying this project yourself, you can download the template here.  I just printed them out on printer paper, and then we cut them out.  If I were doing this for my home, I would probably make a template and then trace the mice on black contact paper.  Then you can cut them out and stick them wherever you like.  Enjoy!

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