Trick or Treat!

Here's what greeted the Trick or Treaters tonight!

My homemade ghost with felt eyes and a bouncy ball head. And my free spooky Halloween tree. I made Christian go with me and find a spooky dead branch at a little area of trees not far from our house. We found the perfect one and I stabilized it with a bucket of landscaping rocks we had in the garage. Next came little plastic skeletons I had and some orange pipe cleaners made into quick squiggles. I think it turned out alright. Next year I might have to try some orange lights. I also had little luminaries lighting the path. Some of the older boys found those amusing.

In general it was a good night. We passed out a lot of candy. It seemed that it started later than usual, probably because Daylight Savings time got changed from before Halloween to after Halloween and it's really no fun Trick or Treating in full sunlight! At first I was worried that somehow the first 4-5 people that came to the door forgot the magic words....I opened the door and all I got was "Happy Halloween" and then their bag would open for me to drop candy in. I guess someone reminded them because after those first few it was "Trick or Treat" as normal.

Among the interesting things I heard tonight:

-Dude check these out! These are sweet! (Referring to my little plastic skeletons hanging from the tree)

-You look nice tonight. (I'm not sure how I feel about this one, coming from a boy about the age or 11 or 12. I was just wearing my Halloween shirt from Target...Hmm..)

-That's all? The guy down the street gave us like 5 pieces! (I don't think I need to explain this one.)

All in all a good night and the consensus is that we'll do it again next year!

Halloween Wall Art

Here it is:




And here's how it's done. It's pretty easy. I used two different FREE downloaded digital scrapbooking kits:



Coralee Evans, aka MzCora Halloween Mega Kit found at http://mzpimptress.vox.com. This kit is awesome! So many different papers and embellishments! (She just emailed me and let me know that her site where the Halloween Kit is found is down at the moment. If you leave a comment with your email I can email you the pages that I used to make the kit.)



Ronna Penner of Scrapadelic.com ExpressYourself alphabet found at http://www.scrapadelic.com/ (Well, it was found there, but I think it was a limited time only kit for free. The only thing I used from Ronna was the alphabet, which you could switch out the letters for any other font you feel like, but I still have to give credit to her.)



Anyway, just print out the pages onto white cardstock, trim to sizes below, glue/tape to foam core, tie together and your done.



The quantities and sizes of the pieces are as follows:

4- 2 1/4" x 10" paper pieces

2 - 3" x 3" paper pieces

3- 3" x 4 1/4" paper pieces (This is for the BOO pieces. You can print them out with the green background or if you have green cardstock, just print out the black letters onto the green cardstock to save a little of your ink cartridge)



Glue/tape them to foam core board and trim to the correct sizes. I hung all of them from a empty paper towel tube wrapped in black chenille yarn. Just put a stripe of glue down the tube and start wrapping! I connected all the pieces together by taping more of the black chenille yarn to the backs.

Finished Size: 12" x 24"



Designer Tips:

I made mine to hang against a wall, but if would also make a great mobile. Just cover the backs of the pieces with solid or more printed pattern cardstock. (This designer tip is from Christian! Thanks!)

I originally designed this to be a Christmas wall hanging-use christmas colored paper and instead of the BOO you could have JOY, or put pictures of your family inside.

If you're into quilting, this would also be great made from fabric! or wood, or...well you get the idea!

Also, since you're only using small pieces, you can crop the papers down to size before you print them out, then you use even less cardstock and ink.

Any questions? Just ask!

-Erin

Colorado Springs

So I made it back from Colorado Springs....barely. I got a small flu bug the night before I was supposed to leave and was up all night with the usual flu symptoms minus actually getting sick. I figured if I hadn't actually gotten sick then I'd be ok to fly on the plane. Well, it was not fun! The minute I got to the airport I had to run for the trash can. The guy at the check-in counter didn't want to give me my boarding pass but I assured him it would be fine. He threatened me with the "If you get sick on the plane they'll have to land and it probably won't be in Dallas" speech. I assured him again that I'd be fine, all the while telling myself that I'd better be fine, because I sure didn't want to be stuck here. I promised him that if I still felt sick in 2 hours when they boarded the plane I wouldn't get on and try to take another flight later in the day. But when you're sick, all you want to do is be at home...not at some hotel room with no one there to help get you soda and tuck you in! Then there was frantic calling to Christian, Mom and Dad. Everyone prayed for me and literally no more than 10 minutes before they started to board, I felt much, much better. Definitely another testament to the power of prayer.

But, here are a few pictures that my friend and I took after work one day in Colorado Springs. There's a fun little place called Garden of the Gods which is a bunch of sandstone formations. We got there a little before the sun was setting and had a chance to walk around a little. It was beautiful...

This rock has a heart that was eroded out of it. I thought it was neat...

-Erin

And I would walk 500 miles...

Well, I don't know if I'd be physically capable of walking 500 miles seeing how I haven't really worked out in a year....but our cute little Toyota Camry just hit 200,000 miles! Wow! That's a lot of miles that we've put on our car...and there's actually no problems that we're aware of yet. Well, except for the massive oil leak...but we decided that it would be cheaper to just keep dumping oil into it than actually getting it fixed. The quote to fix it was $1000 and you can buy a LOT of oil for that much money! We'll see how many more miles we can get on it. I also have more updates and pictures from my little trip to Colorado Springs last week but I'll post those when I'm not here at work eating my lunch :)

Updates...

Last week went by so fast I didn't get a chance to update the blog. Hopefully this will do...

-Christian finished his Harvard application this weekend and will be sending it off tonight...we won't know until January if he's been accepted or not. Good luck Christian!

-We went to the Harvard Business School information session here in Dallas last week. It was at the Dallas Petroleum Club which is on the 40th floor of the JP Morgan Chase Building downtown. It was beautiful! Anyway, after watching their short presentation and listening to the lady from admissions speak we really felt like the school's teaching method, which is the Case Study Method, will work best for Christian as it's all about analyzing and strategies...two of Christian's favorite things to do!

-We finished watching the entire season of Smallville:Season 6. Well, Lex is pretty much pure evil now...

-Our toilet downstairs literally exploded from the inside! My friend and I were just leaving to go to the Women's Broadcast at church when we heard a large crashing sound. It sounded like ceramic or pottery hitting the floor. I figured it was the cats knocking something off of the kitchen counter. I walked over to the kitchen and saw nothing, then I looked towards the bathroom and heard the sounds of gushing water and saw water already creeping out of the bathroom into the kitchen. I ran inside and quickly turned off the water supply so it wouldn't flood anymore. Apparently the white tube that regulates the water flow popped off and up, knocking off the top of the toilet and everything that was on top of the toilet onto the floor. It took the bathroom rug and 3 more large towels to clean up all the water. Tonight I've got to go to Lowe's to get the right part and we'll try to fix it. I've never replaced that part in a toilet before. (As I'm typing this I'm getting more worried about the other toilets. If this one broke, what about the other two upstairs? Are they going to explode soon? Hopefully when I'm around and not at work! Maybe I should replace them all!) If I hadn't heard it before leaving the house I'm positive that water would have been gushing out the front and back door by the time we returned. Hmm...better be safe than sorry on this one.

-I was hoping to finish and post a picture of the headboard I made for our bed, but due to other factors (see below) did not have time this weekend.

-I got pulled over on Wednesday night coming home from the grocery store. I knew the minute that I saw the lights that he pulled me over because one of my headlights was out. (I knew this because I know I wasn't speeding or swerving or any number of dangerous driving things.) I knew it was out, but haven't had the time to replace it. He took my drivers license and proof of insurance and went and looked at the front of the car. When he came back he asked me where my license plate was. (Darn it! I knew I'd get pulled over eventually for it! In Texas it's a felony for not having your license plate on the back and front of your car. We didn't buy our car here so it didn't have the bracket to install it, and I felt weird drilling a hold in my bumper to hold it. I kind of felt like I was reducing the structural integrity of my bumper and figured I'd rather have a working bumper than a second license plate...) I told him I had it and had never installed it. Luckily I got only two warnings. So instead of finishing the headboard on Saturday, I had to take the car in to get a new headlight and have them install the front license plate. So I guess our car's legal again!

I think that's it for now. I've got some more projects I'm working on and will post those shortly! Hopefully! -Erin