Our Pumpkins!

Here are the two lonely pumpkins done at our house!  Mine is the ghost peeking out the door on the left, and Logan's is the flame on the right.  I think he did a pretty good job, don't you?  Mine looks much better at night when the light is on behind it.

We all went to Day Farms in Syracuse last Saturday and took a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch to pick our own pumpkins.  The entire family went, except for our dear Ryan, Shae and family in Iowa.  We sure miss them when we have our family get-togethers!  Everyone had a wonderful time choosing their own pumpkin!  Of course, Jackie had to find the "perfect" pumpkin and then "hailed", aka:  "yelled" at her dad from the north forty to go help them get her pumpkin!  It was such great fun and the weather was gorgeous!  We all returned to our home and only two commenced to carve their pumpkins!  Everyone else wanted to take them home and do them a bit later so they wouldn't mold and shrivel.  We had a family potluck which was delicious and just had a wonderful time!  I do love it when my family is all gathered round!

Today is my first anniversary of my blog and, although I started this blog to keep track of the things I made, etc., I am just curious whether anyone actually READS my blog posts or not.  So, for a little fun I am giving a little gift to the first person who leaves a comment on this post and tells me what I am celebrating today!  Be sure to leave your email address so I can get your address to mail you your surprise!  Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderfully nightmarish Halloween season!

Zebra Butterflies?!

It is my granddaughter's birthday on Halloween Day!  She will be 5 years old!  Wow, all my grandbabies are growing so quickly!  She loves anything animal.  I was told that she loves zebras and butterflies so I decided to mix them and make a wall canvas for her!  I tried applying vinyl zebra strips to the canvas but they would not stick.  I even followed suggestions I found on line about painting the canvas a couple of times first.  I did that and it still didn't stick.  Then about applying Mod Podge.  I did that.  It still didn't stick.  So I went the really easy route and bought fabric!  Doesn't that look nice!?  She has a lot of hot pink in her room so I decided to use hot pink vinyl to make the butterflies.  When I went to buy the hot pink, I found the "Pink Fizz" color at JoAnn's.  It sparkles!  That was enough for me!  I layered a few of the butterflies with the Pink Fizz and made the canvas sparkle a bit!  I got the butterfly file from someone on the MTC forum.  I can't tell you who as I got this shortly after I bought MTC and didn't label my files as to who made them!  I know, dumb me!  Anyway, I do thank whomever made the file so that I could make this beautiful canvas for my granddaughter.  I used MTC to duplicate the butterfly and make various sizes.  Then I cut them out with my Black Cat Lynx.  Such a nice combination to work with!  When I put the single-layer butterflies on the canvas, the zebra stripes showed through just a bit so it makes it look like the butterflies are pink zebra striped!  I didn't plan that, but it is a nice touch!  I hope she likes it!

It was hard to get a good photo without having the glitter vinyl shine.  I tried with a flash (top) and without a flash (bottom).  On some of the butterflies the vinyl looks orange!  I PROMISE it is hot pink!  Thank you for stopping by my blog today and I hope you have a wonderful week!  Just as a side note - today is my 23rd anniversary!  Happy Anniversary to me!  (and my husband!)

Halloween!

 I can't believe it as already mid-October and I am just now getting my Halloween decorations post done!  Wow!  Time is going SOOOO quickly!

 This is my ever-changing hutch in my kitchen.  I have gotten rid of SO MANY decorations already, but just have to keep a few of them to make my hutch look nice!

 It is always fun to decorate my long shelf in my kitchen also.  This has changed considerably over the years and now is not too detailed at all.  I am leaning more to a simpler approach to things!  The two wreaths under the shelf are permanent keepsakes for me.  On the left is the one made by my husband's mother.  She was a very talented woman in many different areas of arts and crafts.  She passed away 16 years ago so we will have this remembrance of her love for Halloween always.  On the right is the one made by my four oldest children when they were just little and their Grandma helped them make this one evening when they were staying with her.  Both precious keepsakes!

 For years and years, when the children were little, I always found cute wooden decorations that we could paint as a family.  We would spend the first Monday of October each year painting our masterpieces.  I have many, many that have been made, but only room for a few.  To this day, even though all the kids are grown, they love to come and see some of their earlier artwork on my cupboards!

 As I have mentioned before, I also change my curtains in my kitchen for all the different holidays and seasons.  I really like my Halloween curtains.  You can't see it well in the photo, but there are shiny lightning bolts that zigzag throughout the fabric.  I love them!

Here is the fireplace in my living room.  Nothing fancy, but it keeps Halloween present throughout the main rooms.  We love the ghost!  We use that to hold the treats for our trick-or-treaters!  They all like it also!

So, as I have mentioned, I have downsized my decorations considerably, but still keep the spirit in our home with what I have left!  I hope you all have a wonderful week and a terrific Halloween season!  Happy Haunting!

And More Projects!

 This entry is going to be very picture heavy but I wanted to show some more of my projects.  I did this on a black charger with the web in silver glitter vinyl.  I put those cute little googly eyes on the spider and it turned out to be the cutest Halloween plate!  I just love it!

 On this charger I just cut out the saying and then cut a grundle of little 1/2-inch circles from purple, white and green vinyl.  I think it is super cute also!

 This was just a three-frame piece that I cut the Boo out of vinyl and the little characters out of paper.

 I had this cool piece of scrapbook paper and found this saying on another piece of scrapbook paper that I had so decided they would go well together!  The saying is done in layered vinyl and the characters in paper.

 My husband cut the wood blocks out and beveled the edges.  I painted them, put the scrapbook paper on them and cut "Wicked!" out of vinyl.  We both love how they turned out!

 This is our favorite Halloween decoration we made!  I drew the witch shoe, my husband cut it out of wood, along with the top and bottom plaques.  I painted everything with glittery paint and it sparkles so nicely!  We glued the top and bottom plaques on the shoe and then placed a black plate on top!  It looks so cute with party treats or cupcakes on it!  I love it!

The next photo is a "Fall" frame that I made.  I put small little yellow glass tiles behind the mat, cut out the letters in brown vinyl, then a rusty orange scrapbook paper, then rust-colored Stickles on top.  It turned out very nicely!

And these last three photos are of my very first craft fair that I did today!  I can safely say that it is my very LAST craft fair also!  Man, I had two weeks to get all of this stuff done and we did pretty well.  I sold most of my Halloween things and about half of my Christmas things.  Not too bad!  I only had space for one table so I did half in Halloween...

 half in Christmas...

 and brought an extra display to put up all the glitter ornaments that I made!  It turned out just fine, but I don't want to do another one!

I forgot to add this tile before the craft fair display.  This is another Kim Bright file and I just love how it turned out!  I used red glitter vinyl and it is stunning when it is turned in the light!

This was quite a long entry today, but I just wanted to show you how much fun I have been having lately, creating, making and selling!  Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful week!

More Projects...

Here are some more of my projects for the holidays.  I am not sure where I got the first file, but after that one I used a lot of Kim Bright's files (you can find her files here:  http://blingology.blogspot.com)  that I purchased a while ago and just have never used.  I am sure glad that I finally did!  They are gorgeous files!  It takes a long time to cut them, and an even longer time to weed them, but it is SOOOO worth it!

In these first five projects I used vinyl using my wonderful Black Cat Lynx.  On this last one with the tile, I should have used a darker green, but I really liked the light and wanted to see how it would work.  Oh well, lesson learned!  On the glass block, I am not certain whether I like the ribbon or not.  I will have to see if I can come up with something else.  Then I think I will like it better!

This is just a paper project.  No vinyl here.  On the snowflake in "snow" I covered it in Stickles to make it sparkly.  It is really very pretty when you actually see it.

And finally, I made these sets of coasters by using 4x4 tiles and scrapbook paper.  However, I forgot to take pictures of them when they were all lying loose on the table.  The top left and middle ones are identical patterns on all four.  The right one has two with the top pattern, and two with a larger swirl pattern.  The bottom left has the words "Family", "Home", "Love" and "Life".  The middle ones are identical and the right ones all have a different picture of a butterfly with a different saying on it.  It has been a lot of fun to get a lot of crafts made.  I haven't crafted like this in a very long time!

I hope you enjoy my projects!  There will be still more coming very soon so keep checking!  Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing my projects!  Have a wonderful day!