Happy Halloween!

Still coming down from the sugar high, but here is a look at Halloween 2011.

First, Hank found the perfect pumpkin at the local pumpkin patch (100 degrees that day, hence the shorts). Then, every time the phrase "Jack O' Lantern" was uttered this month, he would pull a stool in the kitchen up to the counter where the pumpkin carving tools were temporarily being stored. We put him off until the Sunday before Halloween, but then that pumpkin had to have a face.

We had to think of a way to involve Hank in the process, but not be subject to his frustration when the tools wouldn't work the way he wanted to (not to mention any injuries). So, we came up with the idea of having him draw a pumpkin face that could be used as inspiration for the carved version. I drew the main circle, and then he filled in face and ears. BT re-created the face on the pumpkin -- the little one was ecstatic to see his drawing come to life!

We also had a visit from the Great Pumpkin.

Although the Peanuts story has the GP coming on Halloween night, I have made an executive decision that he will come the night before Halloween so mine, I mean the Great Pumpkin's, treats can be the first ones of the day.

Next on the agenda was a fun filled parade at school. I "made" Hank's costume using an adult sized sweatshirt. I used this as my inspiration, but a note to fellow crafters interested in making this costume -- the potential for this looking like a Klan costume is high, so beware. I ditched the tutorial's hat for an embellished stocking hat, put felt letters across the chest, and used black for all the under pieces. The ghost mittens were from the dollar store.

Now, I do not even consider this to be a homemade costume -- just a creative use for existing clothing (similar to last year's costume). But, can you believe that this was the only homemade costume in the whole school? Multiple moms came up to give me props for making his outfit. Ok, if you say so, but this is nothing compared to the homemade goodness that comes out on Halloween.

Later we went trick or treating with friends. So fun to see Hank grow up and gain an understanding of things that make childhood fun. Granted, he is still young enough that his whole bag of candy could disappear today, and he would never ask about it. Poor naive little child...

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Favorite of the day: Too busy to look!

Working on: Baby shower prep

Pumpkin Pie Filling adventure

In buying a few pumpkins to use as decor for this party, I justified the expense by saying to myself that I would later turn the pumpkins into pumpkin pie filling. This past Friday was probably the worst day to try this endeavor, as we were scrambling to put together some last minute costumes and I had promised Hank a ride on the big orange balloon, but still gave it a go.

The pumpkins

After baking

Pureed

and I even made some pepitas

A backed up sink, broken cabinet door, and a sprinkle explosion (the kid was decorating cookies during this time) did not deter me from my goal. Puree is frozen for now in anticipation of the day I feel like taking on a completely made from scratch pumpkin pie.

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Favorite of the day: Remember my black and white Halloween party? Wishing I had seen something like this back then.

Working on: Baby shower decor

Frankenhands

$1.50 mittens from JoAnn

become

Frankenhands

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Favorite of the day: Cute picnic wedding

Working on: Shower prep

It's the Great Pumpkin baby shower

In planning the work shower for my co-worker, Lena, another co-worker indicated that Lena liked the Peanuts gang, and that we should have a Peanuts themed shower. I consider Lena one of my good friends, and we had never once talked about the Peanuts (and this is with her knowing about our regular trips to Knott's, so there was ample opportunity for her to throw in an I love Snoopy if that was the case).

So, I discreetly asked Lena if she liked Snoopy and the gang, and received a resounding yes! She adores all the holiday movies in particular, and her love for Charlie Brown is the reason Charlie is a name in the running for the new baby (a girl, btw).

Peanuts it was. But, I didn't want the shower to be too focused on Charles Shultz's lovable characters, as this seemed too obvious and little kiddish. The month we chose for the shower was October despite the baby not being due until January. Since Lena had mentioned that she liked the Peanuts holiday movies, so It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown came to mind. I started an idea board of fall themed food and thought of some decor ideas that would evoke the feel of the movie. Namely this involved painting a backdrop of a dark Halloween-y sky, making clouds out of paper bags, and a cardboard moon with Snoopy's silhouette. Unfortunately these didn't hang too well, but we found a place for them.

Another party planner and I had a selection of Peanuts characters to use as decor.

Other items used were more traditionally harvest themed (scarecrows, hay bales, etc.)

I helped make this cute diaper cake

and we just *had* to have a clothesline hung with cute clothes

We had a lot of fun putting the food together. We had a brunch theme, and served a co-worker's amazing homemade spanakopita and a chicken pot pie from Costco for our main dishes. I made pumpkin shaped sugar cookies,

chocolate chip pumpkin bread, and doughnut hole acorns for sweet treats.

We kept the games simple and just did a nursery rhyme game and a pumpkin trivia game. I wrapped the prizes for the game in fabric Furoshiki style. For favors I made Martha's pumpkin favor pouches. I used the stick of Tootsie Roll Pops as a base for the stem.

Lena liked her gifts, and seemed particularly smitten with the blanket I made for her :)

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Favorite of the day: Oldie but a goodie

Working on: Hank's Halloween costume

Baby Shower Sneak Peek!

????? :)

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Favorite of the day: It's a jolly Mary Poppins party

Working on: Shower treats

A few recent gifts

Black Apple dolls for a birthday girl and a dance recital star

A "birthday in a box" surprise gift for a co-worker in our headquarters office

A wee wonderfuls snail for a new wee little one

and a little package for her big sister

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Favorite of the day: Glass globe pumpkins

Working on: Party countdown

Channeling my inner Benita

Surely you already have Benita's wonderful blog on your list of favorites, but if not, click on over and add her to your blog reader asap.

Since I've been reading her blog, Benita (who lives in Sweden) has kept herself busy working on renovating and styling two houses. A typical post of hers starts with a "before" pic that, to a non-perfectionist like myself, looks quite good enough. Benita then does her magic and then - wow - you suddenly want to run for some sort of scraping device and a paintbrush. I love everything she does -- from refinishing a ledge at the top of her stairs to designing a beautiful custom coffee table.

I'm sure Benita has a similar kit to the one I have assembled in response to our recent room refreshing projects. It is such a pain to haul a whole can of paint in to the house every time you want to do a touch up. Plus, the likelihood of mess (if you are a klutzoid like me) is high. So, I used small Glad snap top containers to hold small amounts of paint. Fortunately we only have 4 paint colors in the whole house (three of those are white), so they fit in a plastic shoe bin along with two mini touch up kits and a couple paintbrushes. The Glad containers fit nicely in my hand when I am using them, and so far have opened without dripping.

My mother-in-law also used a similar technique for keeping a house full of kids looking fresh and clean. I'd much rather re-paint than scrub a wall :)

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Favorite of the day: Chado

Working on: Baby shower prep

Room for a big boy

As mentioned, we are in the process of revamping all the rooms in our house. Some rooms (bathroom and kitchen) have always been put aside to wait until we do a total over-haul. The other rooms have been addressed to some degree -- some more than others. Even those that were "finished" three years ago are starting to look a little shabby -- it is so much work to keep up with a house!

Hank's room was the second most finished room after the guest room, so we are starting with the easy projects. His room needed some updating regardless to accommodate his new big boy bed. Other projects included adding baseboards, which were not present in either bedroom, and some touch up paint.

The focus point of the room is the large art print from Ikea (via Ebay -- I swear I saw this online just a month before we went to buy it and then it was nowhere to be found. Thank goodness for re-sellers!) I thought we would have fun looking at some new element of the drawing every night. So far we have talked about "toe jam pizza" and the farting elephant.

The bed is a platform bed with much needed storage, and I found -- after much searching -- a sorta reasonably priced organic mattress. So difficult to find a) natural products for twin-sized and up beds at a reasonable price (if we're sharing sources, I bought these non-vinyl waterproof mattress pads for $38 -- unfortunately looks like they are out of stock now on Amazon) and b) toddler products that are not character focused. I wanted to use items in the room that seemed like they would hold his interest for as many years as possible. Most of the Target non-licensed boy bedding seemed too juvenile, and I wouldn't attempt to buy licensed character comforter even if I wanted to for the one whose interests change on a weekly basis. In the end I went with a plain orange bedspread and a fun set of sheets (plus this set).

To your right: This was a very cool and unexpected solution. Up until this point, the wall with the painted squares held two plastic toy storage bins that were open on top. I didn't mind them too much, but BT said they had to go. I knew I wanted some kind of desk for Hank's room re-do. I found this "bench" at Ikea, which can house a freestanding drawer on casters. The drawer, which surprisingly holds more toys than the two plastic bins, can be rolled out of the way and a chair put in its place

It's the perfect solution for the space!! Speaking of the wall with the painted squares, not sure if I showed you the new decals we used to replace the jungle animals? Well, if not, you can see a few of them in the pics above. They were purchased from this etsy seller.

I have wanted to use this storage solution just about forever. Still debating about leaving the art supplies out all the time. The initial interest in scribbling over every surface of the house has faded (maybe only one clean up per week versus ten per day), but still gets cumbersome. The scissors are definitely off limits if he is not being supervised, as we have lost several articles of clothing to Hank Scissorhands (no hair yet, but I'm sure the dots would be connected on that one soon enough if the scissors were more readily accessible).

Moving to the other side of the room: Due to the location of the bookshelves, we could not push the bed all the way up to the window or we would not be able to open one of the drawers. This left a gap of 5 inches or so at the foot of the bed. Enter another Ikea based solution. These collapsible storage bins are shown on the package with the opening on top. There are also numbers printed on the side, so it would make sense to use them this way. The stylists at our local store, however, made a wall in one of their displays comprised of these bins with the opening facing out. I thought it was so clever! Putting the bins this way fills this weird gap and allows for Hank to store some of his little friends.


In buying this house, we vowed we were going to stay away from Ikea. We look at other alternatives, but more than cost it is design that sends us back to the giant blue box time and time again. Those Swedes really do think of everything! Now we might as well just go with it and go full Ikea catalog mode, lol.


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Favorite of the day: Considering the generous yardage, this is a great value and so so cute. Just need to determine which print I would use for a few projects.


Working on: Making sure my ducks are all in a row