It's Christmas Time!: Holiday Home Decor

What do you do the day after Thanksgiving?? Well first you wake up at the crack of dawn (and in my case WAY before dawn) and go Black Friday shopping!! I wasn't allowed to go alone, so I got to go with my beautiful sister-in-law. We had loads of fun. I also managed to score a $200 Tom Tom for $89...so worth getting in line at Target at midnight. Anyways, what do you do after you've returned home and rested? DECORATE!!!! Here are a few pics of Matt and my first Christmas decorating experience :)

 Matt is so graceful when decorating our tree

 I get a little carried away at this time of year

 More of the dining room

 Itty bitty present confetti on the dining room table

 We hung balls and mistletoe from the hallway and kitchen doors

 Kitchen (obviously)

 Kitchen table

 Kitchen/Cupcake tree

 Living room

 Our finished tree

 Stockings hung on the entertainment center with care (because we don't have a mantle)

 Back in the dining room

 Attempting to get a family picture with the tree with self-timer...we'll get it right another day

Wreath I made for the carport door.

Speaking of crafts, I'll soon be posting some of my Christmas crafts that I've made over the years. Stay tuned

Cheesecake Strawberries, Cinnamon Roll Cake, Apple Pies, & Cupcakes

It's Thanksgiving!!! So...what does that mean?? DELICIOUS GOODIES TO BE HAD BY ALL!! Here are a few goodies that I made:

First, I made cheesecake-filled strawberries. They were so easy to make and so delicious! I got the recipe here:

http://www.thesweetslife.com/2011/08/cheesecake-stuffed-strawberries.html

Next, I made Cinnamon Roll Cake...yes, cinnamon roll CAKE. Does it sound as delicious to you as it does to me? It was also so easy to make. Here's where I got the recipe:

http://cookinupnorth.blogspot.com/2011/07/cinnamon-roll-cake.html

Third, I made mini apple pies IN the apples. Sounds like a great idea, right? Yeah...way easier said than done. Everything was lookin good until they got to cookin. They didn't turn out as cute as they were supposed to. Here's the link to the recipe:

http://testadoprovadoeaprovado.blogspot.com/2011/09/apple-pie-in-apple.html

The lady who made this recipe lives somewhere where they speak Portguese so some things are a little different.  I found out that 100 grams is equal to 6-6.5 tbsp...you'll need to know that when measuring butter. Having that said, here are a few pictures of my process:

 This is a messy job

 Don't forget to feed your pup apple scraps...well your parent's pup who is visiting while they're out of town!

They look great here...but that's right before things kinda started going downhill......oh yeah, and my kitchen filled with smoke when I set them on parchment paper and put them in the oven...no big deal. I decided the best decision after that was to remove the paper and cook them directly on the cookie sheet.

 The skin like melted off onto the pan...weird

Ta Da!! They look better in this cute dish because you can't really see what they look like.

Here are 2 other goodies I made for my cake business!

Chester here was my inspiration (he replaced our beloved Edith on our dining room table after she went home to be with the Lord)!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!! I encourage everyone to thank God for the many blessings you've had this year and even throughout your life. Thanksgiving isn't about the delicious goodies, although unfortunately we've made it the main focus. Thanksgiving is about thanking God for what He has given to us (wondeful husband and family, friends, a home, delicious goodies, crafts, precious pups, clothing, opportunity to get a college degree, opportunity to freely worship God in a wonderful country, etc)..those are just a few things that I'm thankful for and I don't deserve ANY of them. They are all gifts from my wonderful, precious God and HE is who I am most thankful for this Thanksgiving and every day of the year.

Having that said, we can now officially transition to THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR!!! Bring on the cranberries, garland, trees, ornaments, lights, tinsel, ribbon, bells, holly, wreaths, Christmas crafts, and most importanty, the celebration of the greatest gift of all! JESUS!

Halloween: DIY Legos Costumes

So....we had a wonderful time on the Jr. High Fall Retreat with Grace Evan. We went to Lake Forest Ranch in Macon, Mississippi. Matt led worship along with his brother and best friend and I just kinda went along for the fun of it...and fun it was! On Saturday night we had a costume party where I revealed what my dad and I had been working on: our lego costumes!!

These were very very messy to make so I don't recommend making them indoors. My dad, having the ingenious mind that he has, did a lot of things differently than the original instructions because he has a lot of really sweet tools and machines in his man garage (aka Testosterone Temple). Anyways, we had a lot of fun making them together. Here's the link to the blogs that inspired us:

http://www.instructables.com/id/LEGO-Man-Costume/

http://warfieldninjas.com/2010/11/lego-costume-construction/

We referred to both of the blogs for a lot of the help, but dad always has his own way of doing things. Here are some pictures of our process:

Some of our supplies before we started.

Automatic sander! This made our life much easier.

See? A lot of really sweet tools and machines!

 I told you there'd be a mess!

This picture always makes me laugh!

 All ready for the ride home from the hospital!

 Instead of just covering part of the head with tape, I covered the whole thing to give it a uniform texture.

 I spraypainted them yellow outside then went over that 2 times with yellow acrylic paint. It was way more even and had a cleaner look.

Voila! Add some jeans, a solid colored longsleeved t-shirt, and some yellow kitchen gloves (I found these at The Dollar Tree) and you're done! If you really want to go all out you can make the body too, but I didn't feel like transporting that and such so I left it out.

Hope yall enjoyed!

Halloween Cupcakes

It's Halloween...of course I had to make something!! Why not cupcakes?? I got inspired by a lot of different things on Pinterest and kinda went where I wanted to with them...Here's what I came up with:

Note: I didn't use any of the recipes that were in theses directions...i used my own

First, I made the candy corn cupcakes!! Here's where I got the inspiration:

http://www.thecurvycarrot.com/2010/09/20/candy-corn-cupcakes/

These were so easy to make! Just pipe yellow, orange, and white onto the cupcake and you're finished...however, I wanted to make them a little more interesting...so I combined this idea with the idea I found here:

http://sugarturntable.com/?p=1401

The insides have candy corn in them too...well, candy corn made out of more icing. This was surprisingly easy to do. Here are a few pictures from this:

Ta da!! I'm going to take a better picture soon...this one was taken on my phone.

Next, I made ghosts, which were also pretty easy to make! I got the idea here:

https://sites.google.com/site/savvyscrapbookqueen/dollar-decor/decking-the-halls/fall-festivities/spooky-snacks

Here are some pictures of that process:

I made another kind of ghost also. I used the idea of cutting out cones from my candy corn cupcakes and used the cones in a different way. I had 3 leftover cupcakes. I cut a cone out of one of those and placed it on my cupcake on top of a pile of icing. Here's what it looked like:

After that, I just started piling on the icing to make it look like a ghost. For the eyes I used little nonpariels. Here's the finished product:

Next I made some pumpkins. I got the inspiration from my "Hello, Cupcake" book, but you can also find it here:

http://www.duncanhines.com/recipes/cupcakes/dh/pumpkin-patch-cupcakes

I used fondant instead of twizzlers and licorice because I tried to make these before and I couldn't find either of those things in the right color anywhere!!! Anyhoo, here is my pumpkin!

Lastly, I decided to make monsters! These, I think, were my favorites. I kinda came up with this on my own, but here's where I got the inspiration:

http://annies-eats.net/2010/10/28/monster-cupcakes/

I did the same thing here that I did with my made up ghosts! The monsters have little cones of cake inside. I just kinda went crazy with the icing until they looked monster-like (which is pretty much whatever you think a monster should look like...so there's no wrong answer). I made the eyes out of fondant and put them in place with a toothpick. The mouth is a little sprinkle that I had amongst my cake supplies. Having that said, here are my little monster friends!

I think we have come to an end! One last look at some of them all together!

I almost forgot!!! Can't forget the ginormous mess! And warning: this picture was taken after I already cleaned some of it up...my dining room looks like this every single time I make something out of cake.

Lastly, I thought I should include a nice picture of our happy family from Halloween. I was a hotdog, my pup was Mustard, and Matt was Ketchup (kind of...I was lucky to get him in the red shirt hahaha).

I hope everyone had a happy Halloween!!

Stay tuned for our REAL Halloween costumes. I spent an entire Saturday working on them with my dad. Matt and I are going on a Fall Retreat with the Jr High at our church and they're having a costume party...we're saving our awesome costumes for then. I'll post all about them after the weekend.

Bye for now!