Happy Halloween!

This is one of my all time favorite pictures! I only tried to dress up my cats one time...Jazz saw what I had subjected Chloe to and hid away in the bedroom. Chloe hasn't been the same since this humiliation.

Halloween Tag

The girlies and I were invited to a Halloween party tomorrow night and I will be bringing a bottle of wine for the hostess so I made this cute little tag to hang on the bottle rather than find a wine bottle gift bag.

This took me 20 minutes to make and I am happy with the results. I used an old tag template I have and then traced it onto kraft cardstock and then traced it again onto the pattern paper. I could have cut the tag using my Slice but didn't really want to mess around with it today. Then printed the Trick or Treat onto a piece of white cardstock before I stamped and embossed the spider web. I used a Fiskars border punch and black ribbon from Maya Road. I inked all the edges and adhered the patterned paper to the kraft cardstock. I attached the spider web with foam squares. Finally I punched a hole into the tag so I could add the orange ribbon to hang onto the bottle. Even though the patterned paper is double sided I wanted to be able to write a quick message to the hostess on back which is why I adhered it to a plain cardstock and it really gives the entire piece more stability.

I will probably make a couple of these to have on hand as last minute gifts for different occasions. A bottle of wine is always a nice gift and adding a handmade tag tells the recipient that you took the time to put the gift together.

Pumpkins Are Done!

I am glad I finally carved our pumpkins this afternoon. I tried to get pictures of the girls with the pumpkins and that did not happen. I am beginning to think I will not get a picture of the two of them together to send out in our Christmas cards as they never want to look at the camera at the same time. I get plenty of crazy photos. Does anyone have any tips?

I totally have pumpkin on the brain right now so I am thinking of making a pumpkin latte tomorrow or maybe even some more pumpkin cookies. We don't have any plans until Saturday so maybe we will make lots of pumpkin recipes over the next couple of days.

The girlies and I were invited to a Halloween party on Saturday with folks from James' unit so it saves me from figuring out what I was going to do with them. I don't really want to take them trick or treating because they are too little but I want to dress them up even though they won't stay in their costumes for long. We will be pulling out their sweet little tutus to wear. I am sure Lolo will keep her tutu on because we get it on her she wears it all day long. Aubrey would rather take it off with a grand show and then toss it on the floor.

We found out last year that Halloween is an American holiday and while the German's are starting to pick up on some of the American traditions the girls and I can not go trick or treating in the neighborhood because they would think we are crazy. Last year we had a couple of German kids come trick or treating but I am not sure if they dressed up or not. We had our carved pumpkins at the end of our driveway and since our town is small they know that Americans live here.

As much as I like the fall holidays I really have Christmas on the running through me right now. I have no idea why but I have been tempted to pop in my Christmas music and put up my tree! My sweet friend Stephanie and I were discussing our holiday cards the other day and flipping through the Paper Crafts Holiday Cards and More issue. I feel so inspired to sit down and make some projects after seeing all the beauitful cards, packaging and decorations in the magazine. I hope to complete a few up next week so I will post pictures as soon as I finish.

One a super positive note we are half way through this deployment!!!! That is super exciting for me. These past few months have really been stinky without James here.

I realized I have been going pretty long between posts and I like blogging so I will attempt to blog more.

Cuteness

I picked up these cute cards at the Px a few weeks back and I have been waiting to let the girls decorate them so we can mail them off to all the grandparents. Aub and Lolo just needed to add stickers to make the faces for the pumpkins and ghosts. A very quick and easy project that lasted long enough to keep their attention. I only placed one of the eyes on for each card and the girls did the rest. I think they did a great job!

Second Template Project

A couple of weeks ago I finished this adorable little project using another Timeless Template from PaperTrey Ink. Now while it may be finished it is still waiting to be mailed out. Baby steps, people. Baby steps! This template has so many uses and this time around it is being made into a recipe card holder. I downloaded the recipe cards from Jessica Sprague and they are cute! I ♥ them. It was a real easy project to put together minus the fact that my sewing machine literaly fell apart as I was adding the stitching! I had several minutes of panicking and managed to reassemble my sewing machine. This is seriously one of my favorite completed projects. Too bad I am giving it away.

The papers are from Jenni Bowlin and I am going to say they are probably my most favorite papers of all time. So beautiful and very versatile.

A Day In Review

Yesterday I decided to carry my camera with me so I could take pictures of our day. I woke up at 7:20 (which you can't see on the first picture but I used it because I like how I managed to catch Chloe getting ready to jump up onto the night stand). I then got the girls ready to go and we were off to Grafenwohr to check out a bazaar and have lunch with Stephanie. It snowed a little bit here on Thursday night but it was snowing heavily at Graf. On our way back home we stopped by Katterbach to pick up our mail and I had a box of scrappy goods from Emma's Paperie. The girls both napped on the way home and decided they wanted to stay up all night and that is exactly what Aubrey did. She was still awake when I snapped the last picture at 11:53 p.m.

Back to Some Crafty Posts

I have been working on finishing up projects that I have put off for a while. Last year I downloaded a couple of Timeless Templates from the Papertrey Ink website. I knew these were templates I could use over and over but never sat down to complete one of the projects. So last week I pulled out my external hard drive and found the 2 templates I purchased and printed them out onto solid kraft cardstock. From there the options are endless and I love the versatility that comes with these templates which was a big reason I purchased them. I pulled out some October Afternoon patterned paper and set out to decorate my cute little boxes. I even used my Dymo Label Maker which makes me extremely happy. I love that thing!

I decided to make a small mail sorter. Sometimes I just don't have the time to sort through the mail when I get home so now I can put it in one place and go through it all when I have time. When I am cleaning out my purse I can also drop the receipts that need to be shred right into a box and take care of it when I have the time. This project did not take long at all and I love the results. It is a cute way to keep me organized and I need alot of help in that department.

I Love This Time of Year

It is raining this morning and I don't mind. It is a good excuse to drink some hot chocolate, grab a warm blanket and read a magazine or book with the girls. I think maybe the girls dislike the rain because they were both extra grumpy this morning. It made me want to put them back into bed and start the day over but since that was not an option I just let them cry for a bit and now they are in a much better mood. Neither one of them is very good at sharing their toys yet so we had a major struggle over a talking piggy bank and them I think Aubrey was upset because Lolo drank some of her milk. It is the little things that really bring on the tears.

This past Thursday I drove to Nürnberg to see Stephanie and partake in some Starbucks. I had a dream about Starbucks on Tuesday night and knew that it has been a very long time since I had visited my most favorite coffee company in the entire world. As a matter of fact the last time I had Starbucks was while we were in Munich the first week of June. To compensate for the fact that is has been 4 months since my last frappuccino I drank 2 of them...one when I got there and another on our way out of the altstadt. What can I say? I am a Starbucks junkie. I admit it. A great friend, my beautiful daughters and excellant coffee in a beautiful city are the perfect ingredients for a perfect afternoon.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies and they turned out to be some of the best cookies I have ever made. Seriously. They are so moist and super easy to make. They actually kind of remind me of the pumpkin muffins that Starbucks offers in the fall so maybe that is why I love these little cookies so much. Here is the recipe in case you feel so inclined to try these yourself.

1/2 cup butter brought to room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 large egg
1 cup of canned pumpkin
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Add the egg, pumpkin and vanilla and mix well. In a small bowl mix the baking powder, baking soda, salt, pumpkin pie spice and flour together. Gradually add the flour to the pumpkin mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips. Using a teaspoon drop the mixture onto a cookie sheet and bake for 17 minutes. Makes 36 cookies.

The dough is extra thick for these cookies and they do not really spread out as they are cooked which keeps the cookies pretty thick. One more thing...I lined my cookie sheet with parchment paper so the cookies were super easy to remove from the pan.

Aubrey loves these cookies so I have had to keep them up high enough so she can't reach them. This girl thinks cookies and cupcakes are self serve and I end up with half eaten cookies left around the living room.