Tricked out Treats!

 Every Halloween we have a family Halloween party and my favorite part is the food. It is so fun to make the spooky creepy menu. What a great excuse to play with your food. This year we had ordered pizza for the main dish (it easy) but the fun came in the side dishes. The labels are a must - even if it is a everyday item that you are serving it is fun to get creative and turn it Spooky!

BONES - Breadsticks

 

BLOOD - Marinara Sauce to go with the Bones

BEATLES - Olives 

LEPROSY 1/2 LEFTOVER PARTS - Salad

BLOODY GUTS - Tomatos

FINGERS - Carrots

 BATS BREW and SPIDER CIDER - Sprite and Root Beer

 For an Neighborhood party I made some WITCHES HATS. I found this recipe online at Myrecipe.com There are millions of fun ideas out there, I had a blast just searching through some very fun Halloween ideas.

Last year we focused more on the Halloween deserts. Here is some BUG COOKIES. I made the chocolate bugs with melted chocolate and M&M's. And bunt CAKE with spiders on it.

EYE BALLS - white doughnuts with green M&M's and red gel frosting and EYE BALL COOKIES with peach jelly rings, brown M&M's and red gel frosting.

What fun... I'm already making plans for next years menu!!!

Lisa

Circles

 I have recently (a.k.a a few months ago) remodeled my Master Bedroom. Hopefully I will post the final room soon but until then I thought I would show you the art work I made to go above my bed. I was tired of the usual family pictures and really wanted something bold.

So this is my CopyCAT Design. I found this picture online, I was originally looking at the chevron rug, but quickly fell in love with the Wall art. This room is so bold, but since yellow is not a color in my Master Bedroom I figured I would change it a bit and hoped to make it for way cheaper then this expensive look.   

 

The delemia I had was that my space needed something horizontal and not as vertical as this one. After debating over this for a week or so I finally decided to go for it. I chose to actually use 12" squares but use 6 instead of 4. I bought a package of 3 canvases at JoANN's for $12 (after the 40% off coupon) for a total of $24! The package actually came with two 1" thick and one 2" thick canvases. At first, I thought I would only use four of them but I thought that adding the other 2 would give it the horizontal look that I was really wanting.

Drawing the Circles was actually pretty easy I just marked the center on each side. Then using a string tied to my pencil drew a curve from one side to the next and repeated on all corners. 

 My master bedroom has a color scheme of gray and Turquoise. Since my bed is up against the one turquoise wall I wanted to bring the gray to that side of the room. I had some metallic silver craft paint that I used to paint the curves.
 

Here is the finished piece on the wall. I love it! I do have to admit I was a bit worried as I was hanging it but you can't judge it until you hang it all. Now I love it. It actually made the room seem taller. The bed has always been the focal point of the room but now it really completes the look and brings it all together.  I hung the two thicker canvases in the middle and the other 4 around. I think it came together perfectly.

Lisa

Halloween Fever

Have you been hit by the Halloween bug yet? This is my very favorite time of year I love Halloween. I haven't been able to jump in to the Halloween Ghoulish Spirit as much as I want to yet but I will.
So to kick off the holiday, I spent this last weekend with my friend Brie getting all creative. She found these very cute block signs at The Wood Connection. First, we painted the SPOOKY sign, and had so much fun that we got together again that evening to do the BOO sign. This was something I really needed. It felt like it had been FOREVER since I did a craft. Thanks Brie for sharing with me.

On the SPOOKY sign we painted the letters, then mod podged paper on top. Finally, we added Sparkle on the Bats and Eyes to give it a little bling.


On the BOO sign, I wanted it to be a darker look to it (not so bright and fun). We did the same by painting the letters and then mod podgeing (is that a word - well it is now!) paper on top. After I added a black glaze on each letter to darken it up and to make the wainscoting on the second "O" to stand out more.

Lisa

Boys Only Room

Since we were expecting a new baby this summer we decide to pretty much rearrange the whole house and change every ones rooms around. The baby has come and has kept me really busy so It has taken time to get these posts online.

This is the new room for my 2 boys ages 9 and 7. Up until this point we had 2 bedrooms, the Master and then we had our 3 kids in one room. It was pretty tight in there but we made it work, but it wouldn't work for 4 kids. So we built a new room which now became the master (a post on that soon). Then we told the boys they will get our old room and be able to decorate it and make it all cool. Of course I had big plans for their room and my son "L" was very excited to get it started.

The before - very boring White walls.
We wanted color in the room and I wanted to do a green and blue. "L" came with me to pick out the colors and they were all so excited to start painting.
These were my 3 little helpers. They did awesome no spilled paint and we got it done really fast.

Pretty bright colors, but we were very excited to move the furniture in. The boys have always had bunk beds so I really wanted to give them the chance to have their own separate areas and to really decorate it the way they want. And boy did they ever! It is really cool to see their individual personalities really come out.
We went to IKEA and Home Depot to purchased some shelves, rugs, and hooks to hang skate boards, and snowboards. We moved their desks into there room (you can check out that projects here Boys Desks). I also purchased the large paper mache letters and spray painted them in Nickel. They love their room, they love that they created it and that is their own space. We had a great time decorating and organizing it all together. It is so cool that their little sister really wants to sleep in there too.
We have also decorated the Girls room and the master all within less then a month. It was really busy around here, but we had a new baby coming and so we had a short time. I will post about those rooms soon.

Lisa

Desk

For a long time I have been on the hunt for the perfect desk for me. I was really excited when I found this beauty in its rough form. I picked this desk up at the thrift store for $30, it looks like someone else wanted to refinish it but then gave up on it and I snatched it up. So I didn't need to do any sanding since some one already did that. I just had to put primer on it.

I don't know what what I did with more of the during pictures they just disappeared I guess. So I painted it is Aqua Blue and glazed it. Then I added silver pull handles.




I love how it turned out. It looks great with my Grandmothers Chair, to see how I refinished the chair check it out. I'm excited to work on many more projects on this desk.



Lisa

Summer Wreath

Now that is is summer I wanted to bring on the festivities with a fun fourth of July wreath. My friend Brieanna found a wreath she loved online. It was just a plain white but looked really elegant (sorry I don't have the link). But we wanted to try and use the same idea but make it festive for the summer holidays.
This is what you need. A total of 2 to 2 1/2 yards of felt. (depending on how tight you put your circles.) a floral wreath, and a lot of push pins.



We cut tons 3" circles from each color, about 55 per color so a total of 150 circles!
To fold them it is really simple. First fold the circle in half, then in half again so you have a quarter circle. You'll put the pin in the bottom corner, and then pin it in the wreath.


Just keep adding and building them as you go around. I redid this part about 20 time I swear. I didn't like it in rows. It is best to try to be random in placing them around.
This is the finished product!

I think it turned out awesome. So fun and just perfect for the summer months. Check out how I made the AMERICA sign here.


Lisa

Twins Nursery - Dr Suess Style

My cute sister had twins last fall and they are the cutest twins ever. I really have no idea how she handles them both, I helped babysit with my mom and Husband there and it was still a handful. For a while now, we have been planning how to decorate the Nursery. Since she has a boy and a girl we decided that a Dr. Seuss Nursery would be perfect. Don't you just love Dr. Seuss? The magical words to his books, the fun colors and characters, it makes for a very inspiring baby nursery.

It took us a while to get it all started, she changed rooms around and finally got them moved downstairs next to her room. This is the room before... Very plain white walls. We did put a fresh coat of white paint on the walls and ceiling since it had been years since it had been done.

If your going to do Dr. Seuss you have to go big. So we decided to do big stripes on the walls. I really think this idea freaked her husband out but luckily he let us see our vision and go with it. Nothing in Seussland is ever perfect or exact. So we made the stripes different sizes and planned for 3 colors. Luckily, we used a laser level so our lines were straight. This part can be very tricky and drive you crazy if you don't plan it out a head of time. After I struggled on paper for a good 2 hours, in a matter of minutes my sweet hubby, just took the perimeter of the room and divided it by how big we wanted the grouping of stripes. Then we knew how many sets of stripes will equally fit in the room. (sounds complicated huh!)
It took a few hours to get it all taped out and set just right. Now on to painting the stripes. She had the paint colors matched from the Cat in the Hat book at the hardware store. We used Red and Blue.
Then it was time to start decorating and placing everything in the room. She bought some Fabric for the draperies and some poster cut outs of the characters from all the different Dr. Seuss books. The dresser was previously painted a dark green, she repainted it the same blue as the walls and glazed over it with a little darker blue. I think it turned out awesome.
Since her walls are very textured, we made Vinyl sayings to go on the wall, but put them on a white board first. This is a small reading nook on one side of the room. She has a toy box/bench that will go in this corner but we are still working on getting it painted.
She is also making these cute blankets for each of them.
Being inspired by the trees in the Lorax. My sister came up with these cute decorations. She used Styrofoam balls and wrapped a feather boas around them. I think they are the cutest idea, it is my favorite part of the room.
It was so fun to work on this little room, it was easy to be creative and just think outside the norm as the true Dr. S. would do. What a fun room for these little ones to explore as they grow.

Lisa