Just Add Stickers

  Now that all the decorations are up and the costumes have been decided (butterfly for Little Miss and a Creepy Dude for Little Man) it's time for the spooky food! I have shared spooky food ideas many times before on my blog and this year I have upped my presentation game by buying a spooky serving board, so logically I made a char-BOO-terie board with some of our favorite foods and some new creations.  Spooky Food: Mummy dogs (crescent roll dough wrapped around hot dogs with olives for eyes.) Witches fingers (crescent roll dough rolled out and shaped to look like fingers with peppers for finger nails.) Ghost and pumpkin tortilla pizzas (cut tortillas using ghost and pumpkin cooking cutters, use olives and peppers for eyes and pumpkin faces.) Eyes and bugs (bocconcini cheese and olives for eyes, bocconcini cheese, olives and pretzel sticks for the bugs.) Caramel Apple Board Sauces and toppings for my caramel apple board. Apples cut into slices Caramel sauce (I used ice cre

I was searching for a spooky napkin holder to decorate my kitchen hutch for the spooky season. I couldn't find one that I liked but I came across this bamboo napkin holder at the dollar store. I immediately thought that it looked like a friendly little ghost.  What you need: ●Napkin holder ●White acrylic paint ●Black acrylic paint ●Clear acrylic paint (Top coat)  What to do: 1. Paint the napkin holder white.  2. Add a face to the ghost. 3. I made a cute ghost face on one side and a more serious ghost face on the other side. 4. Let the paint dry and apply the top coat.  I hope you enjoy this Boo-tiful napkin holder.  Happy Halloween and Happy Crafting. 

We made these cute ghost pictures from egg cartons to add to our Halloween mantle decorations. I am very happy with how they turned out.  What you need: ● 1 egg carton  ● White paint ● Frame ● Background (Cardstock or construction paper) What to do: 1. Cut out your eggcarton ghosts. You can use the egg cup portions or the portions that separate the eggs, depending on what shape you want your ghosts to be. 2. Paint your egg cartons ghosts all white. I also painted the inside of the egg carton because I was going to be displaying it high up and I didn't want to see the gray of the egg carton.  3. Paint a face on your ghosts. I used black paint and the back of my paint brush but a marker would work as well.  4. Prepare the frame, cut the cardstock to the size of the frame. Put the cardstock in the frame, placing the glass behind the cardstock.  5. Use the hot gun to glue the ghost to the cardstock.  Happy Halloween and Happy Crafting!

I am a big fan of salt dough and all the fun things  you can make with it. In the past we have make christmas ornaments as presents from the kids to their grandparents and,maybe my favorite, we made dinosaur fossils during a Dino themed day.  This year we found a salt dough craft book at the library and we decided to see what inspiration we could get from it. Little Miss decided to go along with ideas from the book. The book was garden friends creatures. Little Miss made a porcupine, a lady bug and a snake.  The porcupine uses dry spaghetti for the quills and the lady bug uses dry macaroni for the legs.  The one thing about these cute creature is that it took quite a while for them to dry out. Once they were completely dried out it was time to paint.  I decided to make beads from my portion of the dough. I had a string of decorative wood beads that broke and I wanted to add some decor for the Halloween season.  To make the beads I cut peices of dough that were about the same size as t

This craft was inspired by a witch's broom decoration that I saw in a home decor store. The broom in the store was nice and substantial but it was made with branches and twigs, very easy to reproduce. This is the perfect fall craft, you can gather sticks and branches while going for a walk.  What you need: ● 1 large branch per broom ● Bundle of small branches ● Glue gun and lots of glue sticks  ● Twine ● Ribbon to decorate (I used a simple black ribbon but lace or burlap would be nice] What to do: 1. Glue the small branches to the larger branch (use lots of glue and watch your fingers.) 2. Glue the twine around the smaller branches to secure them into place and the hide the glue.  3. Once the smaller branches are secure (and not falling out every time you pick it up) it's time to add the embellishments. Add the ribbon to the broom, either around the smaller branches or around the handle.  Taking more inspiration from our craft store Halloween decor shopping, we made signs to ha

We were very lucky that we didn't have to paint when we moved into our new house. The walls had been painted not too long ago in neutral tones, the colors are nice and they were just waiting for our personal touches. I don't love painting walls but I wanted some color.  I like the look of wallpaper but I have vivid memories of helping my Mom remove wallpaper. It was not an easy task.  I heard good things about peel and stick wallpaper, the prospect of just peeling it off was very appealing to me. There were 3 places in the house that I wanted an accent wall with the peel and stick wallpaper paper  the master bedroom, Little Misse's room and the laundry closet in the powder room.  Before starting I watched videos of people pitting up peel and stick wallpaper to get tops and tricks. It looked easy enough.I suggest wa5ching some videos, especially if you learn by watching others. I ordered two of the rolls of wallpaper from Amazon. For Little Misse's room we chose a light

The kids are starting new schools this year and I wanted to make the return to school special.  The day before school started Little Miss said "remember last year when we had a spa day the day before school?"  I got the hint and set up a spa afternoon to pamper Little Miss and her doll. I decided to do manicures and pedicures for our spa treatments complete with a footbath and then of course relaxing spa music and some spa snacks. We always have special snacks on our spa days and 'spa juice' which is usually fruit juice with some berries in it and our snacks are usually cut up fruit but call it a spa snack and that makes it fancy! We spent the afternoon enjoying our spa and getting manicures and pedicures. It was a nice way to end summer vacation and prepare for the new school year.  I always like to decorate for back to school, usually a chalk board sign, something simple but this year I went all out.  I like to decorate the middle shelf of our dinning room hutch. I

This was not a special occasion Tea Party it was just a Tuesday afternoon tea party. I thought I would add it to the Blog and we could catch up over a cup of Strawberry Mandarin tea with milk and sugar (it's delicious!)  We are all moved and settling into our new house. July was very busy with the move and setting up and now for August we are trying to make the most of summer. Little Miss requested a Tea Party so I thought it would be fun to do an outdoor Tea Party. We have a little area of our backyard that is off to the side that has a little stone path leading to it and it is the perfect spot for a tea party. My long term plan for this section of the yard is to add an archway with vines and flowers, make it a little magical. So many plans and projects coming up!   We have these great cedar hedges around our backyard, they smell great and I thought it would be a good place to add these butterfly solar lights, they definitely add to the magical, whimsical feeling of this corner. I

I love giving presents and I especially love making presents. I put a lot of thought into my going away presents and this time around I am going with a book theme, because that is very me and most of my friends too! For Little Misses friend and some family friends I found this book  "See You Later Croc-A-Gator"  by Imogen Shelton about a Crocodile and an Alligator who are best friends who grow up together and one day the Alligator family has to move away from the swamp. It is a very cute story with some tips on how to help the kids with being away from their friends. Inside we wrote notes to the kids. To go with the books we made some book marks. We chose some fun paper and used the self-laminating plastic sheets from the Dollar Store. I'm very happy with how they turned out. I love making book marks and I know that like me, my friends can never have enough bookmarks.  Happy Summer everyone and if you are moving, I hope everything goes smoothly!

Yup, it's that time for us again! We are packing up our gnome houses...and our real house and moving again, hopefully for the last time.  I am very excited for this new chapter and like all of our adventures I hope to keep on crafting with the kids and on my own, I will share ideas as we get settled and unpack all my craft supplies. Packing up my craft supplies has been a process...organizing and purging things we don't use any more.  One big thing I am looking forward to is sharing my  new Gnome garden set-up. I'm not sure where it's going to go yet but I can't wait to get it all set up! I have some ideas for going away presents that I am hoping to share. I have been thinking about these ideas for a few months but life is busy right now, so I hope to be sharing it very soon!

We all had the day off of work and school for the eclipse this year. It was the perfect time for a theme day, like we used to do when the kids were little.  We did an eclipse painting on black paper using white, yellow and gold paint. Little miss painted a face on her moon. Little Man made a moon in front of his sun. A theme day would not be complete without a themed snack. i made eclipse Oreo cookies (and blueberries!)  Happy eclipse day!

This craft is an Easter version of the Valentine surprise I made for the kids this year. We made this craft as a surprise for my Mom, when she came to our house for Easter this year and we wanted to decorate her door. What you need: ●Paper white and papperned paper (you could also use white paper and decorate it like Easter eggs) ●Colored markers ●Scissors, glue and tape What to do: 1. On a piece of the white paper, draw the shape of a basket. Cut out the basket shape.  2. Draw different sizes of eggs on the patterned paper and cut out the eggs.  3. On each egg, write a positive adjective or an Easter pun. 4. Decorate the basket. Choose a few eggs to glue in the basket.  5. Take the rest of the eggs to the door. This is a good surprise for Easter morning! Happy crafting and Happy Easter! 

I found d this cute Letters to Santa DIY mailbox for 80% off at Michael's after last Christmas. I wasn't a big fan of the picture on it and I thought I could make it an all occasion mailbox. My plan was to paint it with Chalkboard paint and decorate it for any occasion, Valentine's Day or Birthdays or Letters to Santa.  What you need:  • Wood mailbox (from a craft store or Dollarstore) • Chalkboard paint, red paint and songe paint brush What to do: 1. Paint the mailbox with 2 or 3 coats of Chalkboard paint.  2. Paint the flagwith red paint, 1 or 2 coats. 3. After 24 hours, rub the mailbox with a peice of chalk to season the Chalkboard paint 4. Decorate! Use for Valentine's cards, birthday cards and letters to Santa! Happy Crafting!