Fun Frames ~ gobble {gobble}

Thanksgiving really snuck up on me this year...and considering this weekend it is my goal to catch up on the last, oh, 4 months of blog posts...this one is going to be right on time!

I didn't do a whole lot of shopping for decor for this season. I was still so sick at the beginning of November {yeah for double ear infections and sinus infections at the SAME time at the age of 28...}. All I really bought was the fake little pumpkins and the mixture that is in the bottom of the candle holder tray...All in all I'm not as happy with my Thanksgiving decorations as I was with my Halloween ones...maybe next year...

above the tv...

The Thanksgiving mantle

Isn't he the CUTEST turkey candle you've ever seen?!?!

Our pumpkins from our Elements Glass Trip.

Jason's pumpkin when there is light behind it...

and when there is not...

Subway Art from the girls at eighteen25

The fall decorations crept into the kitchen...

Fun Frames ~ BEWARE!!!

I had the same Fun Frames all summer...I always have plans (grand plans) for what I am going to do on my summer vacation and this summer, as in summer's past, I haven't accomplished much!! After my last post about one of my favorite's birthday party...I went on vacation, started school, and was sick from September 30th - oh, last week (which is MID NOVEMBER!!!).

Moving on...

I had a blast decorating (and shopping for decorations) for Halloween this year. I wanted to have decorations for Halloween that were on the brighter side! I decided to mainly use the colors orange, black, purple, lime green, yellow and a few silver spiders :) I think I bought about $30 worth of decorations - I was just too impatient to wait until after Halloween to decorate :)

I had a hard time choosing a word for Halloween. The words that were in the running were: BOO!, EEK!, beware, spooky, ghost. I ended up choosing 'beware' and used the "creepy" font from Microsoft Word.

The mantel during Halloween.

The standard teddy bear, some tea lights from forever ago, and candy corn*

*candy corn level suspiciously kept getting lower and lower during the month... 

I really love this piece. It is from Craft Warehouse. It is SO versatile!

Eyeball & glass bead mixture and silver spiders from Pier 1. Fuzzy balls from CW.

Subway art from the girls at eighteen25!!!

Spiders from Pier 1.

Witch's Hat from CW.

Wicker pumpkin - CW. Purple pumpkin - P1.

Teddy bear from Starbuck's. Pumpkins from CW. I wish I'd gotten a better picture of the glittery candy corn from P1. It is cute!!!

Love it!!! I should have taken pics of the other items...silly me!

Fun Frames ~ CLOVER

The next holiday up on the Fun Frames List is St. Patrick's Day. Well, if we are getting technical it is my birthday first, but only by one day, and I don't have enough frames to spell birthday! But don't you worry...that won't stop me from celebrating! I already have a plan in the works :)

Anyways, I asked Jason to pick the Fun Frames words this holiday season. He picked CLOVER. Personally, I was wanting to go with BLARNEY but then I bought only 3 sheets of patterned paper so that wouldn't have worked.

See, when you buy a patterned/striped paper it can only get two Fun Frames backgrounds, at most, out of a 12 X 12. It is especially true if it is stripes or something with lines.

These ones aren't my favorite. I wish the green was a bit darker and I wish I could have found more paper with clovers on the back - I only found 1 piece at 1 store :( Though I do have that already planned to use in another project I"m going to make on Monday!

Up next...Fun Frames {spring}

cakepops {valentine's}

My Mom and I got together at her house the day before Valentine's Day to make some cakepops. We wanted to try a shape this time and obviously wanted to do a heart! My Mom had the genius idea to push the cake/frosting mix into the cookie cutter instead of hand shaping it. That ended up giving it a really defined shape. We also did regular cakepops with festive sprinkles.

We really liked how the different size sticks looked. I think I might paint some of the 2x4s I use for drying white and use them to display (especially since I broke my old one yesterday)...

We had fun coming up with messages to write!

Another thing that we tried with this batch was using Oil Food Coloring. We knew we wanted to do at least 2 colors but we didn't want to have any waste. Good thing we're creative teachers :) We used our brains and thought of the color wheel.

We used most of the white chocolate up, added more and first dyed it yellow.

We dipped about 10 cakepops in yellow.

Then we added blue because...

yellow + blue = green!

We dipped the remainder of the cakepops in green.

This was a simple and cost effective way to get 2, well technically 3, colors out of one batch!

We also tried something else..

Junior Mint Surprise!

We didn't actually remember which ones we'd put them in so I didn't get a picture of the inside!

And I almost forgot to mention I had a VERY special helper in the kitchen that day...

MY DAD!

cakepops {bunco and superbowl edition}...

After I have found out that you could indeed use frozen cake balls for cakepop making I got right to it! I had two events that weekend. One playing BUNCO with my friends from work and one watching the SUPERBOWL - GO PACKERS!!!

Dice - For BUNCO!

With a few hearts - for Valentine's

The loot. All but 4 were gone by the end of the night.

A few for the Superbowl!

Green and Gold! Go Pack!!

I love the Packers!!

cakepops for Halloween...

My Mom called me the other day and asked me to help her with something...which I was totally thrilled and happy. She wanted to make cakepops for someone at her work as part of their BOO! game. You know, the one where you leave a secret/surprise present for someone else then they return the favor to another person... Well, a batch of cakepops yields about 40 - 48 depending on size & accident and tasting rate :) We met at JoAnn's at 1:30 on a Saturday (we won't make that mistake again) and she bought all the necessary supplies. Then she came over tonight and we got to work. She had made the cake mixture the night before and headed over. All in all it took us 2 hours from shaping, dipping, decorating and wrapping. Not TOO shabby if you ask me. By myself it would have taken me at least 3!

I also got to try out a few new things that I had bought on my trip to the The Decorette Shop last month. One was these Paramount Crystals (essentially edible paraffin) to help loosen the consistency of the chocolate. Melted chocolate isn't an easy substance to work with, it is rather temperamental. We did use Wilton but with the Paramount Crystals it was tolerable. We made a variety of orange/black/purple colored and decorated cakepops. Some pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns, sprinkled and dipped ones were in the mix! We had about 22 each when all was said and done. We had about 5 accidents here and my Dad ate some of the cake before my Mom could stop him ;-) Though he was put in charge of crumbling it up... We wrapped these with little cellophane treats bags and tied with ribbon. We did this because they will be delivered in a few days and the sprinkles were a bit restless (ie. messy). I like the wrapped look when they have to be transported or the event is a few days away but I really liked the kitty ones I did a few weeks ago how they looked set up without wrapping. To each their own and to each event a different situation!

I also have recently bought two new varieties of melting chips...so expect some cakepops in the future. We have treats next Friday at school...so maybe then :-)

My Mom and I. Hard at work!

Jack-O-Lantern cakepops!!!

Divided up.

Wrapped up.

Fancied up.

PS. Some will go to my work and some to Jason's work. But don't worry...I'll be making more soon!