Thanksgiving Mantel

Okay, I know this is super late notice- Thanksgiving is today and the event itself if over...but I guess I really like how my mantel turned out so I still wanted to post it. I swear it has been up for the last three weeks!=)

Alphabet and Scripture Project Part 2

Sooo- I have been wanting to post about my alphabet & scripture project, but with all the things in the way and also not wanting to post every week, I have just been writing down what I did with her. Well, lucky for me Macy likes to spill liquids on everything important... yeah. My list is gone. I'm going to try to remember, but sadly my mind is 1/4 of what it use- to be.

Week 5: E

• Monday we talked about Eve (I'm trying to focus on the awesome women) and we looked at several different pictures of her- I was surprised how much art has been done of her. I just told Macy that the "Adam was a prophet" Adam and Eve are the mommy and daddy of all the people on the earth. Sorry if that is weird for anyone?
• Tuesday we made our little scrambled Egg letter "E"- Macy thought this was cool- I think because of the felt food I've made her.
• Wednesday we made a construction paper "Earth" and I got stickers at the dollar store of plants and animals that had neat facts about them on the back. We talked about how Jesus made the earth
• Thursday we actually did do an Easter Egg Hunt! I recommend doing this! Why do we wait until Easter? I didn't even put anything in them- she just thought it was fun finding them in the family room!
• Friday I got out a "new-to-us" train and track or an Engine if you're being creative haha.

Week 6: F

• Monday when I started with "F" I had a hard time finding anyone scriptural that had a name that started with F- come to find out after looking it up online- names with F don't exist in all of the scriptures! So I decided to go with Faith, since in Nursery they had made little bean plant cups. (that's what the cup above F is)
• Tuesday we made the Feather letter F
• Wednesday we made butterflies- because they Fly- with an amazing little binder of "projects" my mother-in-law made for Macy (and to help me keep her busy!). You use plastic baggies- the ones you just fold over, not ziplock- and strips of different colored tissue paper and a clothespin. You fill the baggie with the tissue paper, either scrunched or just spread around, and then cinch it in the middle and make it stay with the clothespin. Then we drew a little face on the clothespin. Super easy and cute (especially when all the stuff is prepared for you! I think a binder of "stuff to do" with all the things prepared would be an awesome gift for birthdays- I gotta figure out how to do it!)
• Thursday we went to Ross and got a bucket of those little plastic beads that you melt with an iron to melt them together. I loved these when I was younger and I wasn't sure if Macy would be old enough yet, but I could always save them for later. Yeah- she wasn't old enough as you can see by the picture...she dumped the whole thing out. Oh well. So she "helped" me make a "Fortress" (really a castle since we got the princess set) and we melted it together.
• Friday we made Halloween Finger puppets just out of paper.

Week 7: G

• Monday we talked about the angel Gabriel and how he came and told Mary that she was going to have a baby and he was going to be baby Jesus.
• Tuesday we made our G out of Grass
• Wednesday we read Halloween books about friendly Ghosts.
• Thursday we made cupcakes and took them to Give to people in our ward. Someone started a "Boo-ed" little chain letter thing where you leave anonymous treats at people's doors and the people who got the treats have then been "boo-ed" and they have to put up a ghost so they don't get hit again. It was a fun idea!
• Friday Macy got to eat Gold coins I had saved- and frozen!!- from St. Patrick's Day (sorry if that's gross- really they were fine). We talked about colors and treasure.

Week 8: H

• How awesome for me that the "H" week was Halloween week! I broke my "rules" (what rules?) and we just did Halloween things all week long.
• Monday we did talk about Hannah and how she really wanted to have a baby, but she couldn't, so she went to the temple and prayed for a long time and then Heavenly Father helped her have a baby! And that baby grew up to named Samuel who was a prophet!
• Tuesday we made our H out of Halloween stamps ( kinda hard to tell in the picture, I know)
• Wednesday we worked on Halloween costumes (this was a continuing thing) and trick or treat bags (or purse in Macy's case)
• Thursday we got Halloween candy to pass out.
• Saturday I am on Activities Committee and so we went to the church and decorated for the Halloween party that night- it took a while! (I'm counting that for Friday)

Macy and I are now on the letter K but I haven't taken a picture of the wall yet because my camera memory card is full...and I am retarded enough not to know how to put the pictures on the computer. Plus, that would make this post REALLY long- I wonder if it's already too much? Anyways, thanks for reading. Having this to do has really been nice because my days have a goal I can reasonably accomplish and checking things off a never ending to-do list is always good. =)

Murder at the Malt Shop

Emily and Austin's Annual Halloween Party this year was another Murder Mystery Dinner. I love the idea of solving a crime and eating and most especially being with awesome friends while doing so. I was lucky enough to find one of the boxed games of "How to Host a Murder Mystery" at the thrift store for $1! I have been saving it for a year!

The theme of this particular one was the 50's and took place in a malt shop. The 50's to me says pink and teal, which is certainly not typical Halloween colors, and as we all can obviously tell, I'm a little into the holiday so I didn't want to have to give up my spooky vibe- so I mixed the two. The food is the main way I did this, by using a Rachel Ray birthday party idea, I made all the food "Twilight Zone" hugely out of proportion. The little menu has all the catch phrases. Of course the fact that we were trying to solve a murder was spooky too! This was so very fun and I am thankful to all you guys for coming and really getting into it! It always makes it more fun! =)

The whole gang hanging at "Monster Maltie's Falcon Malt Shop"

after our High School Reunion- "Roley High" Class of '54 where our friend the famous "Rock" N. Roley performed and is now gone missing...dun,dun, DUN!!!!!!

Cate and Doug Hopkins

as

Cheerleader "E.C. Leigh" and Football Star "Del Toydes"

Val and Dave LeMieux

as

Jitterbug Champ "Bea A'upper" and Quarterback "Jock S. Trappe"

Me and Austin

as

Femme Fatal "Dee C. Deucer" and Genius "Cal Q. Later" (I just have to say is that not hilarious about Austin? When picking our parts I was cracking up)

Josh and Dustie Sube

as

Mogul "Joe K. Awledge" and Hometown Girl "Penny Lofer"

Candice and Tom Macari (and Baby Evangeline)

as

Studious "Priscilla E. Teene" and Rebel "Rick C. Alcitrent"

My Jukebox- I'm certainly not an artist, but I was excited it turned out okay.

The "Chandelier"

]
Here's the menu and the main way that I tried to try Halloween to the Malt

"Monster Maltie's Falcon Malt Shop-"

"We'll SCARE you with our STRANGELY Substantial portion sizes"

"Bizarrely Big Broccoli" and "Uncanny Carrots" with "Dramatically Devilish Dip"

"Monumentally Macho Nachos"

"Horrifically Huge Hamburgers"

"Mysteriously Massive Milkshake"

(plus cute nerd) =)

"Creepily Colossal Cupcake"

Decorations of 50's candy to also go with the Halloween season

More little touches

Checkerboard Floor (not quite finished, but the idea comes across...)

The End!

(thanks for reading this whole post if you got this far!!)

My Halloween Mantel

This Subway Art was inspired by several other blogs, but I did not use any of their words or layouts and I cut all the letters myself. This is much harder than in looks! ( I was excited it worked- I made it out of a back cover of a otherwise ruined scrapbook and packing labels)

Someone asked me if I always store my knives in this jar- of course I do...mwha haha (evil laugh)

If you look closely you can see that the portraits are of Hitchcock, a girl with horns, and a woman in a noose. They were inspired by the Stretching Paintings at Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. (My favorite place ever btw)

Spiders for dessert anyone?

In case you can't read this, because the shimmer was hard to photograph, the spiderwebs have "Trick or Treat" written in them.

Pook-a-Looz

In the Disney Store in our mall, there are these little stuffed animals/dolls that are puffy and kind-of anime looking (you know, like sailor moon or pokemon?). They have a Snow White one that I wanted to make for Macy. I still want to make one...I hope for Christmas. Anyway, I found out they are called Pook-a-Looz and they have a million different Disney characters! This is what the Snow White one looks like:

And this is MY interpretation of Sleeping Beauty. Macy's friend Claire loves Sleeping Beauty and as many of the characters as they have, the Disney store doesn't have her. So, I decided to try making her for her birthday. It was really fun to see her open it and give it a huge hug! I was a little worried, I have to admit, that Claire wouldn't know it was Aurora, but she totally did!

I made the back blue to go with the cute movie thing where the fairies keep changing her dress...

And she lived happily ever after!

It is really exhausting to even try to be perfect all the time or appear to be perfect even for a few days. It is even more frustrating that apparently no one "expects" me to be perfect. It's just not true. Everyone has expectations. Everyone judges. You expect and judge based upon where you are in life. The pressure is excruciating.

Halloween Decorations Part 1

So here is the Halloween wreath I made for our front porch- I made it completely from things I had at home- our old wreath is sad and Macy was sleeping so I couldn't leave. I'm not sure if I love it...what do you think?

Complete with random cat from our neighborhood- makes a good pic I guess...

And here are pictures of my kitchen table before and after Austin bought me wonderful flowers for no reason at all just because. *heart melting*

Notice the ominous Ravens?

White roses...yay =)