(** I didn’t edit the majority of these photos or they were taken with a camera phone. There were just to many.)

Our Halloween weekend started out with a party at a friend’s house that had tons of amazing costumes, big and small.

This is Jeremy. He came dressed as one of the warriors from the Tron LEGACY grid. That helment weighed 8 pounds. Sheesh!

There is not much to say about this photo.

The next night we headed to church for Trunk-n-Treat.

We managed to get a fairly cute family photo out of the evening. Even though Grayson was dressed as a shark. Hey, I’m just happy he isn’t sporting a bib in this photo.

And then we got this family photo. That boy and his pointing.

Then this photo was taken. It has nothing to do with anything, but it is to funny not to share.

Can you guess who our friend Brooks was? AWESOMENESS!

Baby Kason made an appearance as a cute little monster.

We tried getting a photo of the two boys together, but they weren’t having it.

Then the Trick-or-Treating commenced…

Don’t worry that’s just baby food on his face. I guess it was to dark that I didn’t even notice it before I sent him out begging for candy.

He was beyond amazed that people put things in his pale and let him keep them.

We even let him take a stab at his 1st sucker. Yes, we removed the wrapper.

The sucker didn’t last to long though. Within 2-3 minutes he dropped it on the pavement and the sucker was gone.

Then came the real deal…Halloween Night. We headed over to my folk’s neighborhood to do some traditional house-to-house trick-or-treating. Grayson’s cousins, Jerry & John, joined us for the candy collecting. To say Gray was excited was an understatement.

How cute is that kid in his little shark costume?

See that dot under his right nostril? He tripped and must have fallen on a small stick or something, because he now has a scratch under his nostril that I keep thinking is a nosebleed. His nose, lips, and chin weren’t hurt at all so that’s the only thing we can come up with that happened.

He kept trying to walk into people’s homes. They would open the door, he would accept the candy, and then stroll on in. It was hilarious!

At one point in the evening he made it all the way in…..VICTORY!!!!!

For a 1 year old he didn’t do to bad for his 1st stab at trick-or-treating. This is what he got from my parent’s neighbors…

The only thing we allowed him to eat though was the banana. He loves bananas, so to him it was the best day ever. Oh, and do you see that money? Someone gave all the kids a dollar. She even put it in a little baggie and rolled it up so it didn’t get the candy dirty. Well, that’s what I think. I never got money on halloween. Looks like I was hitting up the wrong neighborhoods.

Gray had so much fun trick-or-treating. We had so much fun watching his little face light up every time a piece of candy was dropped in his little orange pale. I can’t wait for next year.

 This is the zombie-fied family photo on our mantle that I showed you last week. I added a few words to make it extra personal. You know, so people know that we are “friendly” zombies.

I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAAAAAINS!!!!

Oops. I mean…Happy Halloween!

P.S. – Want to zombie-fy your family? All you need is a Picnik account. Did you know they are owned by Google? Of course you did. Isn’t everything these days?

** This post was not sponsored by Picnik. I just wanted to share our beautiful family photo with ya. But if Picnik feels like thowin’ a few bucks this way…I would gladly accept.

I did it. I finally got my act together enough to decorate our mantle for Halloween at least 15 day before Halloween. Hey, it’s better than just days before or not at all. For Halloween I decided to only decorate our mantle mainly because it’s one of the few places Grayson can’t reach…yet.

I decided to place my halloween wreath I made on a white vase I already had on the mantle to give the left side some height. I framed a free halloween printable and a spooky family photo…in black frames of course. I relocated an apothecary jar filled with moss and acorns from the built-ins to the mantel to add a bit of height to the right side.

The two green glass bottles were some random beer that Derek decided to pick up one night at Fresh Market. He seriously purchased them because the bottles were cool looking. Isn’t that how everyone buys beer?  One of the cool looking beer bottles sits on a stack of spooky titled books. The pumpkin in the middle is the pumpkin Gray picked out at the grocery store last week. Yes, it is his, but he’s more into throwing it across the room. So, on the mantle it went. I picked up the two ghost candles at our local PB outlet, and the small white pumpkin is from Hobby Lobby (40% off) and painted white.

In one of the frames I put a halloween printable from Tatertots and Jello, but changed the colors a bit. And the other a family photo that I zombie-fied using Picnik.

For the spooky titled books I used books I already owned and covered them (middle school style) with some black packing paper.

Once the books were wrapped I used rubber stamps and some paint to print spooky titles on the bindings. (Tip: I found that applying the paint, with a small paintbrush, onto the stamp worked better than dipping the stamp into a puddle of paint. It eliminates the unsightly stamp-corner-paint appearing on your project.)

I know it’s not as elaborate as most, but I didn’t want to overdo it. I mean the kid doesn’t even notice yet. I hope over the years it will grow and change into something a bit spoooooookier.

Gotta go…I’ve got some fall projects to get working on.

That’s right, I just typed that. I typically am not a Halloween decorator, but I figured with a kid around I might want to hop on that bandwagon. At least a little bit. So, I started my spooky holiday decor with a DIY wreath. Most people make these bad boys with round edged wreathes, but Hobby Lobby was having their 40% off holiday sale the week I went and pickins were slim. This flat edged styrofoam wreath was all that was left. I can work with that.

To make this wreath you’ll need:

• 12 inch foam/straw/floral wreath
• yarn
• plastic wrap (if using a styrofoam wreath)
• scissors
• glue
• ribbon
• your choice of spooky decor

please don’t mind the computer in the photo. i was making the wreath while watching a live blog of the Apple iPhone event on Tuesday afternoon.

Start by tying the yarn to the wreath.

Then start wrapping your wreath all nice and neat. If you want the chunky look that’s cool too. Go wild! I just wasn’t certain if I would have enough yarn to try that style. One thing you must remember with either wrapping style is to make sure your yarn is tightly wrapped around your wreath. The last thing you want is your yarn shifting and everyone seeing your wreath’s innards. Oh my!

Being that my wreath was made of styrofoam it was a pain in the butt moving the yarn though the wreath every 5 seconds. I have read that others keep the plastic wrapping on when they use straw wreaths and after my dining room table began looking more like it had a bad case of dandruff than a beautiful wood table I brought in reinforcements. Enter Cling Wrap.

With thin pieces of Cling Wrap I wrapped the remaining portion of the wreath. It will look lumpy at first and you might question whether or not the finished product will be lumpy too, but I’m here to tell you that if you wrap your yarn tightly you will never know anything but styrofoam is under your yarn. I must say that all that plastic really helped in the mess/productivity department.

Once you’ve completely covered the wreath in your yarn tie the loose end of the yarn to the wreath to secure your work. I would hate to see all your hard work unravel. *snicker* Make sure the knot ends up on what you would like to be the back of your wreath. Then, trim your yarn about .5 inch from the knot so your wreath doesn’t end up with a tail.

See! I told you it would come out nice and smooth.

I decided to go with a couple of paper bats and a golden moon for my spooky decor. I hand drew the bats mocking after random images, I found in a google image search, on to some black scrapbook paper I already owned. I glued them to the wreath, and added a white ribbon I already owned to the top for hanging.

I used hot glue to secure my paper bats and moon in hopes that if I want I can just pop them off and add new decor one day down the line. We shall see if that works. I’m crossing my fingers and my toes on that one.

Make sure you have a few hours to spare for this little bute. All that wrapping can get tedious and time consuming. But don’t freak out too much. I was able to finish this project in one day. While the kid was sleeping of course.

Has anyone else tried making one of these? How did it turn out? Did your hand cramp as bad as mine?

Week 49

This picture is of my dog Wrigley as my husband desperately attempts to put her Yoda ears on.  For Halloween I decided to buy a doggy Yoda costume and have a little photo shoot with our dogs.  Although this is more of a candid shot it is one of my favorites.

Wrigley just found her ball under the couch, and was clinging to the thing like it was her security blanket.  So freakin’ cute!

To check out more amazing entries visit I ? Faces.

Terribly sorry I haven’t posted in a while.  These past few weeks have been busy, busy, busy and I haven’t been feeling very well so I have been spending my free time just relaxing and staying off of this evil device I call the computer.  In the past few weeks, we have celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary, gone to see Robert Randolf do his thing (check out this guy’s music…it’s amazing), and Halloween has come and gone.  We celebrated my mom’s birthday, and then two days later celebrated Derek’s mom’s birthday.

Derek is still in school with tons of homework, and we have been dealing with our heater that doesn’t want to work now that it’s getting cold.  So we called the repair man and it turns out that it needs a new motor-thingy.  That new part cost a pretty penny…try $400.00 pretty.  Oh yeah…we went to work too.

Derek and I did manage to have us a little excursion last Sunday.  We drove around the city and snapped shots of the beautiful leaves falling.  I absolutely adore the trees that turn a bright yellow just before they drop their leaves.  LOVE IT!

While we were out we grabbed a little lunch and also went and played at Super Target.  SUPER DUPER!

Isn’t he just the cutest thing?

I picked up some cute gift bags and polka-dot tissue paper in preparation for the holiday gift wrapping season while we were at Target.   I love wrapping gifts.  You can be as creative and over the top as you want for just a few bucks.  This is what happens when Derek sends me off by myself, in Target, to get a shower curtain liner.

While we were out roaming the streets for some pretty foliage we found two homes with some awesome Halloween decorations.  Best idea ever…giant spiders climbing the exteriour of your house!!!!  Ahhhhhhhh!

These are some seriously creepy pirates.

I know that I submitted my poor little pups to the craziness of having to wear a Star Wars inspired costume this Halloween, but I think I just found their outfits for next Halloween.  What do ya’ll think?