Happy Halloween

Good Very Late Evening Internet Friends!

I hope that everyone had a Happy Halloween.  

This year my son decided for Halloween that he wanted to be a Duct Tape Mummy.  His own idea.  I came up with the elaborate idea of reverse taping him in Duct Tape while wearing his largest clothes (so a coat could fit under if necessary) and then taping over to form the Mummy form.  After the body was completed Rubber Duckies were added.  It turned out quite well and was quite the marvel of the trick or treat posse tonight:

My son was going Trick or Treating with 5 friends of his from the private school he used to attend (I refer to them as the "Gang") and made treat bags for each of the boys so that their bags were not empty from the start.  I used last year's September 2014 Paper Pumpkin kit and made:

Finally, one could not go Trick or Treating with yet one more thing your mom had to make (he's only going to be little for so long....).  Earlier in the year I got a Happy Haunting fabric panel at Prairie Points Quilt Shop.  The instructions for this panel were terrible and the video of it did not help either as I thought the bag still looked poorly sewn.  "Sew"  I did my own thing and this is what I came up with:

It's not my finest work, but this was not an easy pattern to try and do something with.  My son loved it though, and had a blast filling it with his goodies.

Happy Halloween, 

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Trick or Treat????

Good Late Evening Internet Friends!

Okay, here is my rant for the day/week/month... not sure how big this is going to get (plus I am a wee bit tired).

Tomorrow is my son's Halloween Party at school.  Firstly, this is the first time since he entered Junior Kindergarten at age three that the Halloween Party has been held during school hours (I am used to those hours being used for learning.......hmmmmm).

Secondly,  I get a memo from the teacher today letting me know that only one parent has been nice enough to offer to supply a "healthy" snack for the party.  

My son loves to bake and cook in the kitchen with mommy and as such we have supplied his classmates over the years with muffins, and bars, and cookies and all kinds of treats.  I did have to learn about the gelatin issue, but other than that his offerings were always appreciated by his classmates and teachers and gave him a sense of pride in his culinary skills.

Fast forward to this year where the teacher informed us that no food can be brought into the class that contains (are you ready for this????)

*nuts

*tree nuts

*wheat

*eggs

*gluten

*milk

*gelatin

*soy

Now, I am supposed to send a healthy snack with my child on the bus in the morning five hours before the party and what am I to send????  An apple and a celery stick for each child????

Seriously, Halloween, while not being a holiday but more of an occasion/event just got a whole lot harder to plan for.  

My intent was to supply nothing since I have no ideas what to send, but my son was quite upset that his classmates would not get something from his awesome kitchen.  So this is what I came up with:

It's popcorn, candy corn, Halloween sprinkles, and Bernard Callebaut chocolate (yes, it is milk chocolate).  The best  I can come up with for now.  Hopefully no one has to use their EpiPen cause of this ☺

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Trick or Treat Bags!

Late last night (of course) I decided to pack my son's treat bags for his class today.  Originally I had planned on using a kit for the treats that I found in the craft room however, the bags were TOO small.

When we were in Kalispell,  I found Kathy Kaye Popcorn Balls!  After reading the ingredients I decided that these would be the perfect treat for my son's class as this popcorn ball does not have any gelatin by products in it as many in his class do not eat it.  A couple of other treats in the bag and a tag made using the Merry Everything stamp set and here they are:

Seems like they were a HIT!!!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Pumpkin Cookies

Tomorrow is my son's Halloween Party/Dance at school.

He is supposed to bring sandwiches (I have to make these).  My dilemma with the sandwiches is that I would have make the sandwiches this evening since I am working tomorrow and then these sandwiches would not be served until about 1630 hours tomorrow!!!!  The sandwiches would not look like anything I would want to serve, plus I am not sure that a 10 year old can be entrusted to maintain the cold chain on these and prevent against food borne illness.

So, here is my answer to this dilemma:

Pumpkin candy, White Chocolate Chip Cookies!!!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Cupcakes a la Kid!

Good Evening Internet Friends!

Between doses of anti-inflammatory medications and a handful of "hard core" analgesics for my second kidney stone, I baked a batch of 12 orange cupcakes for my son to decorate:

Looks like he had fun!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Happy Halloween!!!

Happy Halloween!!!

Last evening I put my son to be at 8:30 p.m. and in his back pack were two packages of chocolate Halloween balls from the Lindt outlet here in Edmonton.

Should be good for tomorrow, right??

At about 9:00 p.m. my son emerged from his room and asked why I had not make fun treat bags for the class like usual?  (Bad mom).

I explained to him that because he is now 9 I thought he did not need to have cute treat bags any more, and was informed that apparently I was wrong, one can never have enough cute treat bags.

So, at about 9:30 here is what I set about making:

The bags I had purchased previously from Close To My Heart, as was the stamp set I believe it was a Stamp of the Month collection from last fall.  The paper is from Stampin' Up a couple of Halloween's back as is the ribbon (laugh loudly as I am using up old stuff again!!!!!).  

To make the ribbon look the way it does, I cut of the edge on one side and then pull the ribbon fibers to the cut edge and then twisted with the other color and got this hairy scarey look!

Apparently the children thought that these were great, so all is good.  Saved another memory!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Friday Feature Card

This evening after dinner I actually had some time to go and sit in my craft room, and play!  It was awesome!  Between being ill and working overtime this last week, I am exhausted, so it felt good to just sit and relax!

Since I was not overly creative, I decided that for my Friday Feature card for Karina's Krafting Crew weekly post I would simply use the template from Mojo Monday again.  This is design # 314:

Yes I used retired stamps!!!  But I think they're fun!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Sprinkle Cookies

After dinner this evening my son and I made Sprinkle Cookies.

We found several recipes all over for these, but in the end, I just used a drop sugar cookie, and mixed in the sprinkles.  

I found these sprinkles in the cupboard so we used them as there appeared to be enough and the season was semi appropriate:

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Newsflash!

Here is a little newsflash for all of you:  I HATE ATTIC WINDOW QUILT BLOCKS, (and they hate me)!!!

Every time I try to make one of these quilts it just turns into a big disaster.

I ended up staying up later than I should have last night in order to get the blocks put together for tonight's class at Sew Divine.

Hopefully the applique will cover all the sins!

I have learned that these blocks are out to get me, and I am going to keep a safe distance from them in the future : )

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Attic Windows Halloween Quilt

Last night I attended a class at Sew Divine to learn how to make these attic window quilt blocks for a Halloween Quilt.

Here is what I have so far:

Ironically, so far I have 13 blocks done!  I need to make 24 in total.

Still not a fan of these blocks, maybe the next 11 will convert me!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Paper Pumpkin # 3

Seriously..... I think this might be the stupidest stamp set ever...., if it were in the catalogue I would not have exchanged currency for it as "love your guts"  WTF.  

The only place that it belongs I think is in the context of Halloween, so hence, here's my card using this portion of April 2013 Paper Pumpkin.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween!

I made these little treat packs for my sons class.  The number I needed to make kept going up and so by the time I was done two of his closest friends had to get their loot in plastic Halloween bags (sad face).

To make these I used orange 12 x 12 card stock, the stamped images from the Workshops On The Go Spellbound Cricut Kit, and the dimensions and ideas from this kit along with the Cricut Artiste Collection Cartridge to make the boxes and faces.  The paper is all from my stash; paper not cookie.  

Inside we filled food safe plastic bags with candy from you guessed it:  Bulk Barn!

Now off to trick or treat across the city in the snow and see friends.

Now, don't worry it's not that awful outside it's only -7 degrees Celsius and with the windchill -13 (which correlates to about 19 degrees Fahrenheit and with windchill about 9 degrees), and my dear friend made us hot chocolate before we headed out to the next stop.

 Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Halloween Placemats

While playing in my stash the other day (fabric - not cookie) I found this fabric.  Almost every fall I participate in an event called the Northern Alberta Quilt Shop Hop.  One of the stores on this journey is the Chicken Coop in the metropolis of Mundare, Alberta.  Wikipedia quotes this town(?) as having a population of 712, but I think that was on a school day and the teachers from other towns were counted too...  The Chicken Coop is an awesome quilt shop.  As part of the Shop Hop the owner Val packages up fat quarters into neat little plastic bags for a very reasonable price, and she also does up packages with 2 one meter cuts of coordinating fabric.  When I found the package with the 8 Halloween fat quarters in it and the 2 one meter sections of Halloween fabric I decided now was the time to make place mats.  I have a pattern that calls for 8 fat quarters squared up and stacked on top of each other.  A template is then placed on the top and all eight layers are cut at once.  The first cut from the pile stays as is, the second cut the first fabric goes to the bottom of the pile, the third cut, two fabrics go to the bottom of the pile, and so on until every place mat will have 8 different fabrics making up the top.  After these were assembled I used the ghost fabric to back the place mats, quilted them, and used the spider web fabric to bind them.  A fairly quick and easy project and looks awesome on the table!  Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Halloween Treat

On Saturday evening we went as a family to see Hotel Transylvania.  We all enjoyed it, even though we had to wait 45 minutes in line after we got our tickets to get into the theater!  I think everyone wanted to see it...

When we got home, I decided to make this popcorn treat I had seen on Pinterest, but apparently did not save the link to it.  So, I made it from memory.....

2 batches of popcorn from the popcorn popper

1 block of Bernard Callebaut white chocolate - melted over double boiler

2 handfuls of candy corn (Bulk Barn)

1 handful of purple/green/black sprinkles (Bulk Barn)

- mix together and spread out over a large piece of parchment paper

Enjoy!  This stuff is really tasty...

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Halloween Photo Tray Board

For the past month or so, Stampin Up has been running a recruiting promotion for getting a photo tray Halloween Display Board.  Now, since I will never recruit anyone, I decided to make my own board.

I bought these boards at Hobby Lobby in Billings, MT during the summer, because they looked like something I could use.  

The frame is black, however, I did use some Crackle Distress paint that I had left over from other projects to "age" and "witch" it up.

Stamp set used in this are:  Border Banter, Toxic Treats, Jack of All Trades, and Sweets for the Sweet.

I had so much fun making this!!!

Here is a close up of each frame:

Googly eye are required for everything!

I sewed around this block to get the "crow" foot prints.

 The broom is made from grosgrain ribbon (cut off the edge and it will fray).

 More googly eyes for the mystery monster!!!

 A collection of all the Halloween sayings.

Candy........

Crows on the fence post.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Cupcake Take Home Boxes

I decided that everyone at the Cupcake Party needed to take home cupcakes (otherwise I would eat them).  So I made these boxes for everyone to take home their cupcakes in.

I was going to use my Cricut to make the boxes, however, was running short on time, so went to Creative Packaging here in Edmonton, and picked up the gable boxes, and cupcake inserts.  While there I found the green and fuchsia raffia and loved it.  I thought the green was close to Gumball Green one of Stampin' Up's new colors, but none of their other colors matched the fuchsia, however I will call it a Guest Color was perfect (shhhh - it's Ranger's summer series distress ink called Picked Raspberry).

I used my Create a Cupcake stamp set for the banner, and backed it with Gumball Green card stock of which I used the scallop trim border to make it pretty.

Lots of raffia on top makes everything look pretty!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

 

Kathy

Banana Cupcakes with Rolled Carmel Frosting

I LOVE banana cupcakes.  Not sure why exactly, but they are always moist and tasty, so of course I made some for the cupcake party on Wednesday.  Yummy as usual.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Another Birthday Party

Today my son was invited to a classmates Birthday Party.

Inside the bag are the first two books in a series about girls and horses, along with a canvas with a horse outline for her to paint (she LOVES horses).

I did not have a horse stamp and of course was making this bag at midnight last, so I used the cupcake stamp set from Close to my Heart to decorate the brown bag, and used the Cupcake Card I made the other day for the Birthday Greeting Card.  I hope she likes it!  Lastly, a big bow to make it look impressive.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Halloween Cupcakes

My son's class has been allowed to have a Halloween party during school hours this year due to good behavior in the classroom.  Of course my son wanted me to make cupcakes for the party.  I looked all over Edmonton but was unable to find string black licorice as he wanted spiders on his cupcakes.  I made the chocolate cupcakes, the icing, painted a black stripe in the icing bag so that the icing would have a black/grey edge to it as I piped it out, and then put Halloween sprinkles on top thinking that would be great!  However, he took one look at them and the big blue eyes looked at me and said "Where are the spiders"?  Hmmmm, how can I disappoint that face.  So, out came the icing bag and this time black icing was made and I drew spiders on top.  Now, my drawing is terrible so these are the worst spiders ever, but it is Halloween, so I think that they just might do.  Kid response to these:  COOL.  Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Grade Two Treats

These are the Halloween treats that my son gave his Grade 2 class for Halloween.  I made these cards to fit over a treat size package of popcorn twists.  I did not realize until right now that only the french language portion shows!!!  The cards are standard size cards.  The base is Old Olive card stock, followed by a layer of basic black and then Designer Series Frightful Sight paper (except for the star paper which was in my paper stash - not cookie), and then layered with 1/4" black gros grain ribbon.  I used my Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge to cut out the ovals (white in 1 1/2" and old olive in 1 3/4").  Now everyone knows I love my Cricut, so when I saw that Close to my Heart was partnering with Cricut I got very excited.  I placed an order for this cartridge and the deal of the month at the time allowed me to get the "Wicked" stamp set for $5.50.   I thought that was a great deal.  The black cat on the oval is stamped from this set.  I am however a little disappointed in these stamp sets.  First I do not like the sticky feel to the stamp image, secondly I did not like the slipping that occurs with these images when they are stamped.  As most of you will know I use any product that is of good quality and am not "loyal" to any one brand unless I think it is clearly superior and in this case I do now believe that Stampin Up does have a better stamp. Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy