My Pink Stamper "Spooky" Challenge

It is hard to believe that Halloween is just around the corner.  Where did this year go? 

As you may have read in my previous post, My Pink Stamper Website ~ I Love It!, that I am fairly new to using my Cricut and have gotten a lot of inspiration from Robyn to do more with it.  This week she has posed a "Spooky" Challenge.  If you would like to be in the drawing to win her "Spooky Puns Stamp Set," all you need to do is submit a Halloween or Fall themed project.  To see the full details, you can go directly to My Pink Stamper (by the way, if you are not already a follower, I would highly recommend it!).  Anyways, here is my project I am adding to the list of already incredible entries.  My three "helpers" helped pick out the paper dolls for the card - there's one for each of them!  Just so you know, the drawings are random, which is great for someone like me.  I know my cards are still pretty basic, but having random drawings gives me an opportunity (or the confidence!) to participate.  Plus, it is a nice opportunity for me to see what this Cricut can actually do and take inspiration from other people's creations!

By the way, when you read the details of the challenge, you can scroll down to see the entries.  As I was looking through, there is one that I just thought was amazing - entry #31 or you can check it out at Court's Crafts. 

In case you missed them, here are some previous posts about some Cricut Halloween crafts I've made (yes, they are all similar - I need to branch out a little and try to be more creative!):
Halloween Card for my 6 month old nephew's 1st Halloween
Halloween Card for my 3 year old nephew
Halloween Gift Bag

Organizing My Recipes

My Recipe Collection

Over the last year, I have been working on one major project.  Now when I say a year, I don't mean I've worked on it everyday, but something I have worked on at night when the kids go to bed or when I have a moment here and there to do something.  As you may have read in my previous post, A New Recipe ~ Blueberry Almond Buckle, I am a self taught cook.  I am always trying new recipes and actually taught myself some cooking skills by watching the Food Network and using Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meal cookbooks.  But what I found was that I would try a new recipe, love it and then could never figure out which cookbook it was in.  Since I make a menu every Sunday night, along with a grocery list, this made it very time consuming to look through all my cookbooks and attempt to find the recipes we liked.  I needed a way to save myself some time.

As a result, I decided I would start typing in every recipe we tried and print them out.  Of course, it had been years of trying recipes, and no joke, over a hundred cookbooks, but I started searching for the recipes I knew we had tried and loved.  I used small post-its to mark each of the recipes I wanted to type in.  Once I had gone through every single cookbook, I started typing.  A year later, I think I have every single recipe I have tried typed up and organized into binders - I had so many I needed two binders!  I sorted them by type of recipe and then alphabetized them.  The best part is I used the plastic sleeves for each recipe, so I do not have to worry about ruining them when I cook.  They are easy to wipe off.  Some of the recipes, especially ones I found in magazines, I could just print from the website, such as from Hannaford, Kraft, and Food Network.  The great part about some of these is that they sometimes include photos of the recipes.  Maybe one day I'll add photos of my own to the recipes I typed, but for now I'll stick with just the recipes - that is a project for another day!

Now when I make my menu on Sunday nights, I can quickly search my binder and have them at my fingertips.  Besides, now when someone asks for one of my recipes, I can easily e-mail it or print it out since I have them all on my computer.  Even better, since I am caught up, when we try another new recipe, it is much easier to type up one at a time, than trying to sit and type 10 to 20 at a time!

Let the Memories Begin Campaign

Disney recently announced their new campaign for 2011.  It is called "Let the Memories Begin."  The theme is sharing guests' magical memories throughout the park, either photos or videos.  Some of these images will then be displayed as part of a nightly show.  You can upload your own entry at the Disney Parks site.



Check out my memory ~ Joey's 1st Trip to WDW

This was taken when my son was just 14 months.  It was his very first trip to Walt Disney World in 2006 and my family's very first character meal.  Cape May Cafe is now our most favorite character meal, but that may because of the very magical memories we had from that first breakfast with Joey. 

Find more information and submit your own image ~ Let the Memories Begin



What do you think of the new campaign?  Are you going to submit a memory to share?  If you do, feel free to post the link to your entry in a comment below.  I would love to see it!





DCWV Diary Giveaway

Have you checked out the blog DCWV Diary?  Erin has a great giveaway this week for you scrappers who are working on fall and Halloween projects.  She is giving away a DCWV Midnight Spell Stack (this is great - I have it!), Amber Autumn Stack, and the Cricut cartridge Happy Hauntings.  Follow the link below to find details on how you can enter the giveaway - good luck!

DCWV Diary Giveaway

Joey's Disney-Pixar Cars Room

Paint Colors - Bone White & Three Cheers for Pooh

We decided to redecorate Joey's room with his favorite Disney characters from the Disney Pixar Cars movie.  It is amazing how well he knows the cars ~ their numbers, name, etc.  He first saw Cars when he was two and now it has become his most favorite of all Disney movies.  We started collecting the die cast cars for him and I believe he may have just about every car in the collection, and I am not kidding.  There are only a few that I know he doesn't have.  At this point, I am not sure who is more obsessed with finding all of them ~ Joey, my mom or me!  Of course, once we think we have them all, Cars 2 will be out in theaters and we will be starting the collecting all over again!  He had such an interest in these cars that I actually used them to teach him colors and numbers.  People thought I was crazy to buy him all 8 or 9 Ramones, but there is one in every color of the rainbow!  Same with the Piston Cup racers ~ I used these to teach him his numbers. 

Wall Clings from Lowe's

Because of his love of all the cars in this movie, it was only natural to create a Cars room for him.  Since I have been without a paycheck for the last four years, I had to be a little creative in what we were going to do because we are on a strict budget.  My dad had already installed chair rail in this room, since it was actually a Disney princess nursery and we were changing over from pink and white to red and tan.  A few years ago, I found on the clearance rack at Lowe's the wall clings of all the Radiator Springs characters and signs from the movie.  We found a Cars comforter on clearance at K-Mart's online store.

Comforter from K-Mart.com

For the paint, we only use Benjamin Moore paint.  But Home Depot, who carries the Disney specific colors, does not carry Benjamin Moore.  So, I took some of the Mickey Ear paint samples (these are also good for scrapbooking by the way) and brought them to my local hardware store.  Now the red we chose was called "Three Cheers for Pooh."  They scanned the sample and were able to match the color perfectly.  We already knew for the "tan" color that we would be using Bone White, a Benjamin Moore color we have used in other rooms. 

Snotrod, Wingo, DJ and Boost made with my Cricut

The room came out great, but it was missing a few things.  First we need to find fabric for a valance.  Luckily, my mom is a sewer, so she is going to make it for us.  The problem is I saw the perfect fabric at WalMart and didn't buy it because I wasn't sure how much I needed and when I went back to buy it, they didn't have anymore, story of my life.  So, now I am searching for something new, though I don't seem to be able to find anything I like.  The other thing the room needed was a few more characters.  I couldn't find many of the characters that Joey liked and the ones I could find were just too expensive, so I decided I would make them.  So I took out my Cricut Disney/Pixar Cars cartridge (by the way, I found this in the clearance section for $19 at WalMart) and went to work.  Joey requested Boost, Wingo, DJ and Snotrod.  They came out pretty nice and I think people wouldn't even know they were homemade, unless you looked really closely!  Joey has now put in a request for Mac, Chick Hicks and The King.  We'll see how those come out!

Here are the characters I created hanging up over the window - no valance yet though!

Edited: I posted in October 2010, an update - Joey's Cars Room is FINALLY Complete! which includes photos of the valance my mom made.

Handy Mommy to the Rescue

Since being a stay at home mom, I find that I have really taught myself how to do many things around the house.  Today I taught myself how to remove my kitchen faucet and replace it with one I found on clearance at Lowe's.

Now I will give you a little background.  We had a house built in 2006 by some people that I will just say are incompetent.  I could go into a full tirade on this but will save my energy.  Our house is structurally perfect, but there are many little things that were done in a cheap and quick way.  Luckily, my dad lives two miles away and is our handy man.  Well, our kitchen faucet has been dripping for about a week.  It is to the point that when I try to go to sleep I can hear it and then obsess on it, resulting in little sleep.  Yesterday, I decided I had enough of the dripping!  I watched my son get onto the bus and off to school, I loaded the girls into the car and we headed over to Lowe's in search of a new faucet.  I was excited to see they had several on clearance and one I really liked.  The girls agreed that it was the one, with Emily claiming that she liked that it was sparkly and Hayley said she liked the "squirter."  So we paid for our faucet and made our way home. 

After picking Joey up from school and making the kids lunch, I decided I was going to attempt to replace the faucet myself.  I am an A type personality, so I read the directions thoroughly, grabbed all the necessary tools and went to work.  Within one minute, my three trusty helpers decided that helping me was more important than eating lunch.  Since I want all my kids to learn they can do things themselves, I decided to let them help.  After some arguing over whose job it would be to hold the flashlight, Emily won out (though I was hoping for Joey, my oldest).  Joey and Hayley then decided they needed their own tools and made their way to Joey's Little Tikes tool bench and gathered a pair of plyers, a screwdriver and the hammer. 

Let's just say the hardest part was trying to figure out how to get the old faucet out.  This was only difficult because with "all my plumbing" exerience I decided it must come off from the top.  For those of you attempting this in the future, it comes off from under the sink, which makes perfect sense after seeing how it is installed. I used the installation directions and worked backwards to finally remove the old one.  From there it was quick and easy.

One funny little thing did happen with the kids.  As I was unscrewing the pipes and such from underneath, I was laying on my back under the sink, little bits of dust and such fell into my eyes.  I told the kids I need some goggles and started to make my way to the basement to find some.  Emily said she would get me some.  Within 30 seconds, she came back with a pair of Disney Princess swimming goggles and put them on me.  They were uncomfortable to say the least, but I wasn't going to tell Emily that since she was so proud to have had such a great idea.  In the end, they worked perfect and nothing else fell into my eyes. 

It was actually much easier than I thought and it was fun to have the kids help me out!  Now I am searching the house for other projects to do.  My dad is out of town, but I just think he may be impressed I attempted it myself when he returns!

Crafts with the Girls

I am always on the look out for little craft activities to do with the kids.  Some days I do take the time to make some elaborate craft item, which can take more time to prep than to actually put together (that is the teacher in me), but other days, like today I try to find something quick and simple.  While at WalMart yesterday, the girls and I decided to see what Halloween things were already stocked on the shelves ~ hard to believe that Halloween is quickly sneaking up on us.  We ended up buying both girls their costumes.  Hayley, my four year old, is going to be Jessie from Toy Story and Emily, my two year old, is going to be Minnie Mouse.  As a Disney fanatic I can say, I was quite excited they both chose Disney characters.  In addition to the costumes, WalMart also had a lot of Wilton Halloween supplies out.  As you may have noticed from previous posts that I really love Wilton cake decorating and candy making materials.  In this section, I found our quick craft for today a candy necklace kit. 

Both of my girls where their dress jewelry all the time, so I figured this would be great.  Not only did the kit come with enough materials for 8 necklaces, but it was only $3!  You can't beat that.  This morning when we took the kit out of the box, what was even better was that each necklace was in its own little bag, so I did not have to do any sorting or organizing.  I just took one bowl for each girl and poured one bag into each bowl.  Ta - Da!  The craft was all set up.

Hayley picked up the ability to string the candy beads pretty quickly.  Emily, being only two, needed a little assistance to get started but then was able to do a few on her own.  Of course, her attention span is a little shorter than Hayley's, so as soon as Hayley was done her own, she then helped finish up Emily's.  The funniest part was that neither one of the girls even thought the beads could be candy.  They were so proud of the necklaces, they wore them while we went to pick Joey up from school.  When Joey saw the necklaces, he said, "You made candy necklaces without me?"  That was when the girls realized they were candy and began munching away.  It was a good thing I made one for Joey and brought it along because all three kids ate their necklaces before getting back home. 

So if you are looking for a quick, fun little activity that really helps the kids develop their fine motor skills, here is one for only $3.  We'll be making them again tomorrow, since Hayley discovered the 5 leftover packages that we haven't put together yet and has asked no less than ten times if she can make another necklace!

Halloween Gift Bag

Before getting into the details of my project, I'll let you know it has been a very busy week here.  My son, the oldest of my three children, started kindergarten this week. It is so hard to believe he is old enough to go to kindergarten.  It seems like just yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital!  He had a great two days and keeps telling me he loves kindergarten, which is a huge relief!  On top of that, my husband has injured his foot and can't walk, and just after that, my car made an extremely loud sound, which turned into a $1,000 repair.  It's been quite a week to say the least!  So, to relieve my stress, I decided to work on a little Halloween project . . . . yes, Halloween again.  I am not sure why I am so into Halloween already, it's barely September!

For Halloween I decided to get my nephew some Boston Bruins diecast cars.  My brother and his family live in Texas, so we have to purchase New England sports merchandise here and ship them out.  I figured this would be one gift, my nephew would not already have!  Rather than just wrap the cars in wrapping paper, I decided to use my Circut cartridge Tags, Bags, Boxes and More and create a small gift bag.  I actually cut the bag at 5.5" in just black cardstock.  Then, I used the Cricut Cartridge Paper Doll Dress Up for the Jack-O-Lantern.  It was the perfect size for two toy cars!