more Halloween fun

This past weekend Maura attended the Teen Halloween Party at our town library.  We made these Cauldron Cupcakes from Meg at MegaCrafty.  These taste as good as they look!!  Mine aren't as neat as hers, but everyone sure did like them.

We also made a Halloween "Tree".  I got the idea from martha stewart Living a few years ago.  First I spray painted some branches black, put them in a vase, then added some 'ornaments'.  This looks great on our kitchen counter!

 The bats, cat, and 3-D pumpkins were all cut on my Silhouette machine.  The Raven and Owl images I got from the Graphics Fairy, I made two copies of each, then glued them back to back with some cardstock and hanging ribbon in between.

The skeletons are from the dollar store.  I went there looking for mini skeletons and there they were!  Amazing.



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And now I'm off to try to get some sewing done before this guy gets up:

We've been BOOED...

A few nights ago we opened our front door and found this mysterious package.  It was full of halloween candy, so the kids were thrilled!  We read the note and found out it was our job to keep the "BOO" going by secretly distributing treat bags to two more families.  How cool is that?

Here's what we came up with:

We made these homemade goodies to throw in with the store-bought candy.  It's Candy Corn Cookie Bark.  I got the recipe here.  It looks pretty impressive with all those colors, and after a, ahem, taste test I thought it was actually very good!

 
The papercutting was all done on my Silhouette machine.  We also made these little coffins to put candy corn in:

The kids had a rush trying to drop off these treat buckets without being noticed!  When they came back to the car their hearts were pounding!  Maura got busted, because for some reason her friend was sitting in the car eating applesauce and saw the whole thing!!  Liam had a successful mission, his friend was playing on the trampolene and didn't see a thing.  That was our excitement for the day!

animal pajamas

Again with the pajamas, I know!  But that's what he needed.  I also had this animal fabric laying around since 2005 and needed to do something with it or get rid of it. 

The shirt is freezer paper stenciled on a 90 minute shirt both ideas I found from Dana at MADE.  I know now I will never ever get tired of making the 90 minute shirt.  I can get one done in about 60 minutes now, and the color combos are endless!

I've had a little less time this week, Travis is now in a toddler bed.  Some of the time he lays right down and goes to sleep, other times he runs out of bed, and I put him back, and this pattern goes on until he passes out from exhaustion!  He's one determined little bugger.

Here he is helping take the crib apart with his toy drill.

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linking up to this today:

 

Right now I've got a few sewing projects going on.  When Travis goes in for his nap I'm not sure what to work on!  I'm thinking of making some gifts for the kids to put away for Christmas.  I'll have to work on those secretly.  For Maura I've been meaning to make Clucky the Chook, so that's in the works.  I'm thinking Travis would like some quilted letters, so I started on those too.  I'll post the pictures as I complete them.  It may be a little while because I just ordered even more new patterns and I'm having idea overload at the moment.  See you soon!

Some new hats

With the cooler weather now here, I whipped up a few hats today!

Maura requested a (what else?) Totoro hat...shocking I know!  When looking for ideas, I found this great example that inspired me on Craftster.  She thinks it's the best hat she's ever had!

Liam's skate hat I made from a thrifted sweatshirt.  I used the graphic on the shirt as a patch on the front and back.  I found good directions on making this recycled hat on the Creative Maven blog, instructions here.

 Linking here:

fishy pajamas and a peasant boy!

Here are the latest projects:

Travis' pajamas made from scraps of his rollie pollie.  This pattern is New Look 6932.  I added this fishy with some orange t-shirt scaps I had.

We went to the faire this past weekend, so I whipped up this muffin hat for Liam.  He wanted to be a peasant:

I found a good video tutorial here, how to make a lined muffin hat.  I have to say this one was way better quality than the ones they were selling there.  So make a muffin hat, don't buy one!

More photos of the faire:

Maura's outfit, the cloak came in handy, it was cold!!

the Big Cat Show

ye olde sandbox?

of course the Tiny Terror would have NOTHING TO DO with the knight's tabbard I made for him.  Little stinker, I should have known! 

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I'm thinking of making Tiny T. a fall/winter coat.  I will have to install a padlock on the zipper somehow since he is adamant not to wear any kind of coat or sweatshirt.  I got this adorable DMK Warm Hoodie pattern, and also this one, DMK Trendy Pea Coat.  I can't wait to try out one of those.

 

Can't believe I'm a FINALIST!!

I sat down with my coffee this morning to read the blogs I subscribe to with google reader, and I almost fell out of my seat when I saw that I am now a finalist on  Honeybear Lane's APPLIQUE AWAY contest 
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my entry is this applique Coffee or Tea? Apron:

If you have a chance, take a look at the finalists and and cast your VOTE HERE!   

&

a HUGE thank you to Honeybear Lane and Skye Reeve Fabrics for hosting this contest/giveaway!

linking up to this blog party:

getting ready for the Faire!

**scroll down for the Knignt's Tabbard how-to**

As I mentioned before, we go to King Richard's Faire every fall to celebrate our daughter, Maura's birthday.  Her birthday is actually right before Christmas, but she chooses to celebrate it at the Faire since she loves it so much.  I can't blame her, I love it too!!  It's one of the things I associate most with fall.  Love the smells of the insense and food cooking, the loud games, the glassblowing and blacksmith demonstrations, and most of all the COSTUMES.  Maura's costume was finished last week.

This year I'm going all out for family costumes.  This is the shirt (pattern simplicity 3519) I made for my husband:

Here is a detail of the sleeve, the buttonhole caused me some trouble since my automatic buttonhole wouldn't work for some reason!  So I did it manually, and it turned out OK in the end.

Once that was finished, I started to think about little Travis, how cute he would be dressed up too!  So I decided to make this knight's "Tabard" to fit him out of an old maternity skirt.

To make this I laid the fabric out folded in half, cut a half circle to fit over his head, just as shown in the photo.  Next I pinned double-fold bias tape over all the raw edges.  Just sandwiched the edge between the fold that was already there, and stitched with a zig zag all around.

For the dragon applique, I used a tracer I had on hand from Maura's past obsession with dragons, and traced my dragon onto the wrong side of Heat N Bond Lite.  Then I fused it (very quickly or the fleece will melt) onto the golden-colored fleece.  Then I flipped to the paper side and cut out the dragon.  Next I peeled off the paper, and ironed the applique to the tabard.  I did it on the reversed side of the tabard so I was heating the adhesive from the underside, again fleece can melt a bit.  I only wanted it to bond enough so I could easily sew it down.  So I did that next...

all done!

I hope he likes it.  You never know with 2 year olds!

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Now I'm taking advantage of my free time today and going back to my sewing room to make a muffin hat for Liam.  I found this helpful video, it's subtitled in english.  This lady is so cute.