welcome to the new normal

Check out this cool video about my town and the Mitsubishi electric "i" cars:

hello there, fall

I love how pretty the tree in our front yard gets this time of year.

The sad part is, once it starts turning colors all the leave will be gone in 1 or 2 weeks tops. The good side is, that's only 1 or 2 times of raking!

I want to paint or carve an R in our pumpkin (hopefully I'll get to that before the seasons over!)

Kevin's cousin Ashlyn (and Stephanie) stopped by for lunch and Callie made friends fast :)

Mostly because Callie was pretty interested in playing with the baby doll :)

I love the look of fall... and the smell, having all the windows open is the best!

eyeballs!!!

I saw this idea for an eyeball wreath online a month or so ago and knew I had to try it!

It's so fun and perfect for this time of year!

Here's my end result!

I bought 3/4 yard of "fur" fabric and used a wreath I already had as a pattern to cut around.

Un fortunately I could only find white or black "fur" fabric,

I really wanted purple or maybe blue - so if I ever find one of those colors I'll have to make another wreath!

Once the fabric was cut I sewed the outer edge with the right sides of the fabric together. 

Then I cut small slits in the wreath, pushed ping pong balls part way through and hot glued them in place on the inside of the wreath. I used 11 balls (I had a whole bucket left over from our New Years Mintue-to-Win-It party!)

Then I zigzag stiched the inner circle, leaving an opening for stuffing. I stuffed the wreath with plastic grocery bags - I love how this turned out!!! Not that you'll be handling the wreath a lot, but it feels cool and it's weather safe! I just hand stiched the "stuffing hole" closed with black thread.

Finally, I used sharpie markers to draw eyeballs on the ping pong balls.

That's it! Hang and enjoy!

The "fur" did shed a good amount while I was working with it, but it seemed to be only from when I actually cut the material. Once my wreath was all sewed up, I didn't have any more shedding problems.

I used blue and green eyes in an attempt to make the wreath more "fun" and less "scary".

I drew several practice eyes before actually drawing on my wreath's eyes and just using the black marker with red veins was more scary looking... if that's what you want to go for :)

For some reason this wreath really make me think of a little diddy my Dad sang once:

great big globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts,

mutilated monkey meat

little dirty birdie feet

all wrapped up with french fried eyeballs

floating in a pool of blood

eat it without a spoon

YUCK!!! I know, but it'll be in your head now. All. Day. Long.

camping & climbing in the wild

This past weekend we went camping & climbing with our good friends, Sam & Rich.

Here are a few of my favorite pics of the weekend:

Sam was wonderful and made all the food for us the whole weekend!

Mia loves being outside and especially wanted to play with all the horses she saw

This was Kevin's first time climing outside - I think he wants to go again!

Mia & Callie didn't want to be left behind so they tried to climb too!!!

I didn't do any climbing. I just sat and knitted (more on that later), napped, read, and played with the doggies. It was so relaxing!!!

Hobbes (Sam & Rich's second child doggie) didn't like not being able to climb either

The weather was absolutely perfect - I'm so glad we got in one more camping weekend before we're shut indoors for the winter.

great balls of... candy corn

I've really been in the mood to decorate with candy corn this fall. First I made this candy corn wreath and then I made this cool twig tree with hanging pumpkins and a candy corn filler and now I've added some great balls of fire candy corn to my decorations!

All I did was spray paint 2 styrofoam balls {black} and then used a hot glue gun to add candy corns to my heart's content!

I added black ribbon to cylinder vases to display my candy corn balls and it think they are neat-o!

Warning: with all these yummy decorations it is advised that you set out a bowl of candy corn to snack on so you and your guests do not start munching the decorations!!! haha!!!

chocolate caramel cake

I found this recipe a few weeks ago and knew this was my kind of dessert! Layers of cake caramel, more cake, and then frosting make this recipe soooo rich!

Honestly though, because it is so rich you just need a small piece. I have a plan in my head to turn it into bite sized pieces using mini cupcake pans so stayed tuned for that update!

Chocolate Caramel Cake

1 box German Chocolate Cake mix and the ingredients on the box

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 lg bad of kraft caramels

2 sticks butter

Mix cake mix according to directions and then divide the batter into 2 seperate bowls. In the first bowl of batter, add 1 stick melted butter and 1/2 the can of condensed milk. Mix and pour into a greased 9x13 pan. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes. In double boiler melt 2 stick of butter, all of the unwrapped caramels and the remaining 1/2 can of conddensed milk. Pour over first layer of baked cake and let set for 2-3 minutes. Pour remaining cake batter over caramel layer and bake another 20 minutes. Now, onto the frosting:

1 stick butter

4 tablespoons cocoa

5 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

powdered sugar to taste (about 4 cups)

Cook butter cocoa and milk on stove until boiling. Cook 1 minute more. Remove from stove and add vanilla nd powdered sugar. Frost cake.

CAUTION: this is delicious, but please do not get carried away or you will go into a chocolate-caramel-sugar comma. Please devour responsible in the company of friends :)

{the house} gettin spiffied up for fall

Friday was the first day of the fall season and I was able to spend some time decorating the house for the new season!

First thing I did was make this cool twig tree.

Here's the supplies I used

1. Mini hanging pumpkins (the origional inspiration for this project, I got them at a garage sale earlier this year for $0.50)

2. A glass vase I already owned (also a past garage sale purchase)

3. Cool twig trees I picked up at Hobby Lobby for half price

4. Candy corn to use for vase filler (I love candy corn!)

I started by arranging the twigs in my vase

Then I added the candy corn to fill up the vase because I needed something to balance out the weight. With out a base filler, the twigs were too top heavy for the vase I was using.

Finally, I hung my cute pumpkins on the twig tree

I just love how it turned out!

I picked up some mini gourds from the farmers market for $0.25/each to add to my decorations

And hung a wreath in our picture window

And filled the candy jar with festive yogurt pretzels

Callie even got in the spirit and wore her fall sweater - so cute!

Our tree out front is already a mixture of red, yellow, brown, and green and the leaves are falling fast. I love living in a part of the world that has changing seasons!

Happy Fall!!!