Happy Halloween

So it was my freshman year of college and there was a huge fraternity Halloween party on Friday night which happened to actually be the day after Halloween. My best bud, Ruth Ann came home from Auburn early on Friday afternoon so we could hunt for some half-off costumes since it was the day after. We went to a few stores and didn't have any luck. We finally decided to go to Wal-Mart even though we knew that it would probably already be scavenged through pretty well. To our luck, we found a Twinkie costume. Now, how cute would've been if we had two Twinkie costumes and been twins aka "twinkies"?! Well, we didn't find another Twinkie but we did find this get up:

Yes, that's a cookie with the words, "Got Milk" screenprinted on. It also had a "bite" out of the side and came with a white lipstick thing to draw a mustache on your face. It was in the kids section and it was cheap. Ruth Ann and I were so pumped to be getting these great costumes for such a low price and that we were going to be sweet treats.

It was a rather chilly night so I put my cookie costum over a black turtle neck and some black stretch pants. Ruth Ann came to pick me up and drive to our friend's house to meet up with our girlfriends before the party. We thought we were so cool driving over there. Then we got there and our friends looked HOTT. They always look great, but they knew where they were going and looked really good in their witch and angel costumes. Oh well, we were going to a huge party and we were going to have fun. . . We felt pretty lame when we turned up at the party to find every girl there looking like the girl on the front of the costume package (a knock-out). It was like from the movie Mean Girls, where Lindsay Lohan dresses like a zombie bride and everyone else is a Playboy bunny. Anyway, we just laughed it off and decided to dance. The night ended and I knew nobody would remember the Cookie/Twinkie costume and that we probably really didn't stand out as much as we thought we did. WRONG! A few years later I met a guy from the fraternity that the party was at. We got to talking about when I had been to that house and I mentioned that Halloween party and guess what, he remembered the costume! He said, "Oh, you were the cookie....and wasn't there a Twinkie?"...yeah....and his pal chimed in too. They were nice enough to say that they thought we were probably humerous girls for wearing that. Yeah, that is in the book of funny things that Ruth Ann & Karen have done.

It may not have amused you as much as it has for me tonight, but I hope you grinned a little.

Here were our costumes the next year. We never learned!

Just kidding! We were just being silly one day. Anyway, have a happy Halloween!

**The cookie picture was taken after I met the guy who saw us and another person in the class wanted to see the costume...I wish I had a picture of Ruth Ann. She made a lovely Twinkie)

Homemade Halloween

Cory & I just got back from our Sunday school Halloween party. We had a really good time and saw some pretty cool costumes. I wish I had taken pictures of everybody. There was a cowboy & Indian, Cleopatra and Anthony, old grandparents with walkers (very cute), a couple of "blind" refs, Velma & Shaggy, a Slim Jim, Alice & the Madhatter, some great 80's costumes, some Flintstone characters and a very cute little baby puppy costume. My favorite costumes though were Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus. They were great!

Cory and I tried to take a picture of our costumes with our self timer so they're not too focused. Can you guess our costumes?

Yep! American Gothic. We actually won "Creative Costume"! Booyah!
Although I really wanted to be Jon & Kate (b/c I found a funny Kate G wig) we decided to be the American Gothic painting, complete with frame. Since we love crafting and saving money we chose to make some of our get up.

I had a picture of all the supplies before but can't seem to find it now.

Our costume break down:

-I got a long sleeve black shirt from Target for $8 and made a white collar to sew on it with some scrap fabric that I had (which I'll count as free because I've had it for so long) :)

-I got the brown fabric and ric-rack (trim on apron) for about $5.

-The cameo broach was found on EBay for $2 with shipping a total of $5 and some change. I was excited to have an excuse to get a cameo pin since I have a love of cameo jewelry, remember?

-I already had a black skirt to wear

-Cory borrowed some overalls (thanks, Shaw) free

-Cory's parents loaned us some round framed glasses (thanks to y'all too) free

-Cory's black suit jacket was in the Shoals so he had to get one at a thrift store here. It actually was a great deal. He found this Ralph Lauren black suit with the tags still on, unhemmed pants for $20. It was his size and everything!

-The frame is made from some crown molding from Home Depot. It was about $10. The gold spray paint was about $2. Cory did a great job cutting the molding and constructing the frame. We had to make our own frame because we couldn't find one big enough for us that was a reasonable price. Plus Cory has some ideas for the frame materials.

- The pitchfork was made from a dowel from Hobby Lobby that was $1 and we used and old wire hanger and aluminum foil for the spikes. It kinda turned out looking like a trident, but it worked.

-We had great plans to make a backdrop for our frame, but we've been pretty busy around here. You just have to imagine the lemons not in the picture.

So the total $ spent on our costumes ended up being about $51. That may seem like alot, but if you go to a costume store you can barely find one costume that is less than that price. Plus we had fun constructing everything. AND Cory got a sweet suit out of it!

I hope everyone has a great and safe Halloween. :)

BOO-yah!

(I love saying boo-yah, by the way)

Ok, so here are the spooky treats as promised.

All you need are 3 things: Nutter Butter cookies, mini chocolate chips, and white almond bark.

Melt the white bark (as directed on package), then dip the Nutter Butters in it and place on wax paper. While the white bark is still soft on the cookie, place mini chocolate chips for eyes and a mouth. Very simple and really cute!

Boo!

*If you're in a hurry for them to cool, you can always put them on a cookie sheet and stick it in the fridge.

Look what I found!

First of all, let me say how much I appreciate the Internet. If you know me well, you know that I remember things from FOREVER ago and usually it's pretty random stuff. Cory, on the other hand, doesn't remember much at all and has a hard time believing I really remember the things that I do. The Internet has helped many times prove I'm not making up crazy toys, tv shows,and movies from the past. Usually all I do is type the word or thing I'm looking for on a google search and pages will pop up of discussion boards of people as strange as me discussing the item. Well, a few years ago a story that was read to me in elementary school popped up in my head and I wanted to find it. I talked about it with some people who I grew up with and they somewhat remembered the story but didn't remember the title of the book it was found in. I then tried to find it by "googling" but didn't have any luck. Fast forward to Oct. 2009 and I'm again discussing this story with a friend that I didn't grow up with and she knew exactly what I was talking about. I decided I would try to search for it online again and this time I had great results. I not only found out the title of the book, but found the book for $1 on EBay! I was super excited and ordered it right away.

Does anyone else remember the short story of the "The Green Ribbon?"

It was a "ghost story" (not really scary) that our librarian would read to us in 1st grade. It was about a girl who wore a green ribbon around her neck all the time. People would ask about the ribbon and she just said "don't ask" and then finally at the end of the story she was really sick and finally told her husband to take the ribbon off her neck and then her head fell off! Like I said, it's not scary and it's kinda gross, but it cracked.me.up. There's even a picture of her head on the floor. Man, I'm laughing as I'm typing this...what a silly tale!

Here's the book it is found in.

It has some other "scary" stories in it that I'm sure creeped me out as a child. Why "The Green Ribbon" didn't scare me to death, I don't know, but it did give me a good laugh.

Things that did scare me as a child:

- The Care Bear movie with the kids at a camp and this little evil boy who could turn into a fox. Now that kid totally freaked me out. He had red eyes and a frightening voice. My best friend and I tried to watch it last year and it still gave me some chills.

-Large Marge from PeeWee's big adventure.

-this little hand puppet I had with fangs. I would play with it for a while and then get scared and throw it in my closet and run away.

-This book on record of Gremlins. Angie and I would listen to it and mid-way get scared. I remember throwing that book in the closet too!

-lots of more things...I was pretty a pretty timid kid.

Here' s the creepy kid from the Care Bear movie.

Sorry for the lack of crafting post.I've been too busy for crafts :( I plan to have some Halloween treats soon, though. Have a dandy day. :)

Cute Pictures

This is not "crafty" but very cute. Today as I was looking at a Halloween email that Martha Stewart sent me (yes, she emails me...because I'm on an emailing list) I saw these too-cute-not-to-share photos. There about 20 fun pictures of Halloween costumes, but these two pictures stole my heart. Look at how cute Mrs. Buttersworth is! And the little waffle's smile is darling.

And check out this little shrimp! I always said that if I were to get a tattoo that it would be a cute little shrimp with a smile...because if you've read this blog before, you know how I love food (especially with faces)

I hope you enjoy these pictures and that you have a great day!

Halloween Decor

I know that it's been here for a few weeks now, but I'm so happy that fall is here! I love fall for many reasons: 1. the cooler weather, 2. mine, my husband, parents, sister, sister-in-law, aunts, and a few cousins' birthdays are then (which means yummy grandmother-cooked meals), 3. DECORATIONS! There is Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas decorating to be done in the fall (winter doesn't begin until mid Dec. and my Christmas decorations are up way before then).

This year I was especially excited to get my fall decorations down because last year I bought a few things on clearance. I never decorated for Halloween in "spooky" decor because I don't really like scary looking things. I really only like that holiday for the cute costumes and the candy. I always just decorated with pumpkins, leaves, and other fall things. Anyway, last year I was shopping and found this silly little skull and bones in a plastic dome. I thought it was classy in some way and it was half off, so I bought it. That triggered me to maybe try some semi-spooky decorating for the next year. I thought I would try and do a black and white theme so I kept my eyes peeled for things that would fit in that category. To my luck, I found a cute little skeleton, a black Halloween candy dish (with a bird on top, which is my favorite!), and some white fake pumpkins...ALL on sale. I put everything in a box and put it in the closet and patiently waited for October to get here. It was like Christmas opening all the new items. I had forgotten about some of the things I had bought. By the way, I got a lot of flack for buying a skull in a dome. Cory thinks it is stupid...and I guess it really is :)

Here are the white pumpkins I got last year. I had them out for a bit and decided to paint them.

Here they are now. They're not so beautiful, I know, but at least they're not so plain anymore. My paisley print one didn't turn as well as I had hoped.

Here's the little skeleton friend just hanging around.

And you can see the lovely skull in the dome on the right. It's ok to laugh!

I actually made this decoration last year. You can't really tell what it is from the picture but it's just some branches from the back yard with bats hanging on them. The bats are actually cookie cutters spray painted black and hung with orange ribbon. It's a boring story but I inherited quite a few bat and ghost cookie cutters a few years ago...I have plenty more. Oh and with the cookie cutters I also got some giant sparkly spiders. There's one "crawling" on the planter.

On our staircase sits the pumpkins and the little tree I rigged up.

And here is the little bird candy dish. It says "Happy Halloween" but you can't really tell from the picture. I got the black candles this year for 70 cents.

I have a few little dollar store leaves sitting around with candy. Yes, you see that correctly. Mini PEZ candy. I was stoked when I found it at Target!

This cute little ghost was my favorite Halloween decoration at our house growing up. Last year mom was cleaning out some things she found it and so kindly gave it to me.

And here is my cheapo fabric from Hobby Lobby table cloth. I haven't hemmed the edges yet, but you get the effect. The little pumpkins in the dish are fakes, as are the leaves underneath. These have been around since I was in middle school. I remember saving up some money to buy them. How lame. I used them to decorate at my parents' house. I guess I have always loved decorating.

And that's all folks! Sorry for the long post. If you read to this point, I hope you have a fantastic week. :)

I think I'm in love...

With this little cutie!

Her name is Sophia and she's a boston terrier/chihuahua mix. Now, I'm not a big fan of either of those two breeds. I'm more into little scruffy looking dogs with medium length hair and smaller eyes, but for some reason this weird looking creature stole my heart. She's so funny looking it's cute. :)
Our friends, Shaw & Amy, entered their dog in a calendar contest with the T-Town Paws animal shelter. The contest was to vote for your favorite picture of an animal and the top 13 would be featured on a calendar. (their dog won, by the way) To vote you had to pay and the money went to help some rescued animals and open a new facility. Well, I paid for some votes and the shelter put me on an email list. They sent me a notice when the contest was over and an invitation to view their new facility. Along with the email was a link to their adoptable pets. Me, being a sucker for cute animal pictures, clicked on the link and that's where I came across Sophia. I knew I shouldn't have clicked on it but it was in pretty blue letters and was just calling my name.
Now, Cory & I aren't getting the little cutie pie even though she's listed as a "laid back dog" and a "cuddler" (have I mentioned that I love to cuddle?). We don't really know where we're going to be in the next few years and dogs can get pricey with their vet visits and food. I guess I'm posting this in case anybody wants a sweet little puppy. And if you do I can dog sit anytime. ;)

All Fired Up

Last week I went with the girls from my Sunday school class to this little place in Northport called "All Fired Up". It's a store where you can buy ceramic pieces, paint them, and get them fired (glazed). There are so many ceramic items to choose from. They have picture frames, toothbrush holders, plates/cups/bowls/, holiday decorations, piggy banks, etc. After you get your piece glazed it is microwave/dishwasher safe, which helped me decide to get a plate to paint. I sat for a long time trying to think of what to paint on it. I finally decided to paint a Christmas colored plate with some polka dots. For the base, I chose a paint that had some texture beads in it which explains the little green speckles.



I was kinda having a "creativity block" that night. I'm pleased with my plate but I'm ready to go back and make something better....anyone care to go with? :)