Not Quite Christmas Yet !

Despite the fact that everywhere I go now there are Christmas decorations up and Christmas music playing in the stores, I have only just packed away all my Halloween stuff (except for my Spooky Town Halloween village, which is in the process of being dismantled for the season). I also will point out that it is still officially autumn, so I'm not quite ready to put away the fall decor.

Once my Halloween decorations are put away, there are a few things that I leave out until about December 1st, which is when I usually bring out the Christmas decor. For instance, in the picture below; I brought my funkins in from the front porch and then turned them around so the jack o' lantern faces are in the back, and put them on this chair, with a little bit of autumn berries garland. Perfect! Fall-ish looking without being too Halloween-y.

In this photo, I made a centerpiece for my dining room table, using my milk glass cake stand. The beaded pumpkin was in another room, sitting on top of a big tin that had black cats on it, but with Halloween over and the black cat tin put away, my beaded pumpkin has found a new place as a centerpiece. Some fall foliage picks that were used to decorate the mantle in the other room add a little something-something. I like to "recycle" my decorations; sometimes just moving something from one area to another, changing them slightly, makes a fresh look without having to buy more decorations.

And even though these aren't pictures of any autumnal decor, I couldn't help taking a couple pictures of the drawing room with the morning light, which really is my favorite time of day to look at this room. It's stunning to me every time!

All Hallow's Eve

Yes, I realize that I am about 2 weeks late posting some pictures I took Halloween night, but I have been extremely stressed and busy lately with my mother who is currently very ill and is hospitalized. Suffice to say that she is making improvements daily and we are feeling very positive right now for her recovery, which makes me very happy and has also allowed me to feel okay with doing "frivolous" things, like writing in my blog.

Caramel apples I made, perched on my new cake pedestal!
We hosted a Scary Game Night at our house, so I made some snacks and we had some drinks as well.
Besides the caramel apples, I had cupcakes, spiced hermit cookies, chips and dip, BBQ cocktail wienies, puff pastry pumpkins filled with Gruyere and Parmesan cheese, and bone-shaped  warm rolls with pizza dipping sauce.

Stenciled and frosted "spiderweb" cupcakes.

The set-up on the sideboard of the desserts, complete with a lighted 'funkin'.







Below is my cupcakes and spiced hermits on a 3-tiered stand. Mmm!

This delicious and spooky looking appetizer I called "Sinister Sludge", but it's actually a guacamole and black bean dip with blue-corn tortilla chips. The dip holder is a black cauldron and three circling ghost dishes hold the chips. They sit on an orange wooden tray that spins! Genius! It was a birthday gift from my mother-in-law.

Here's some pictures of my front porch and the pumpkins I carved. The jack o' lanterns with faces are funkins that I 'carved' and re-use every year. The other two, with the skull and the rats, are real pumpkins that I carved the day before Halloween so they would be really fresh. So this was my spooky display for the trick-or-treaters (and everyone else) to enjoy!

Sorry for the blurriness; my camera has been having trouble with pictures in low or night time lighting and if I use the flash, it's too washed out. I have to play around with the settings I think.












And last, but not least, I took this picture of this adorable chair that was also a gift from my mother-in-law. She came across this chair at an antique store, I think. It's an old wooden chair that somebody painted black and then painted a pumpkin on the seat. I made this cute little vignette in the front hall using the chair.

Sweet Treats

With Hallow'een just around the corner, it's time to put together some treat bags for my co-workers! Erik and I are planning a Scary Game Night at our house this year for a few couples also, so I will probably put together a few favor bags of treats for them to take home (just in case they don't get enough treats during the party!).

These treat bags (above) were simple and fun to make using card stock, decorative paper and rub-on transfers that I had on hand from Stampin' Up. I also usually have large and small gusseted cellophane bags on hand for various projects as well. I used plain black card stock and some decorative paper with green and black skulls on it. The "spooky" skull decorative element is a rub-on transfer which I put on Natural Ivory card stock and trimmed with my small paper snips.Inside the cellophane treat bags I have Jelly Belly jellybeans in green (Juicy Pear flavor), black (licorice flavor) and a mottled blue-purple (Island Punch flavor). I also put some chocolate and peanut butter foil wrapped "eyeballs" inside also! Gummi worms would also be a great addition too!

These are a little hard to see clearly in the picture, but they are very cute. These are chocolate caramel apples that I made and wrapped in Saran wrap. Around the wooden "stem", I tied polka dot ribbon in a new Stampin' Up color called Razzleberry. The treat tags also were made with rub-on transfers; these were in white instead of black. When most people think of Hallow'een, they think of black and orange, but I like to use other colors that are just as "spooky", like this combination of black and Razzleberry card stock that goes with the ribbon. I also tucked a plastic spider into the ribbon bow. I would have preferred to use cellophane, since it's crisper and prettier than Saran wrap, but I don't have any sheets of cellophane in the house and the large gusseted treat bags weren't wide enough to accommodate the apple. Still, they turned out really adorable and it didn't take very much time at all!

Today's Spotlight On: Happy Birthday Wishes!

My birthday is actually tomorrow, October 21, but here's a shout out and a 'Happy Birthday' to anyone else celebrating a birthday this week, or even this month!!!!  October is a great month for birthdays, in my opinion!

Also celebrating a birthday lately is my niece, who turned 3 years old on October 16. Here is a picture of her doll cake that my mom made:

My mom took cake decorating classes with her own mother, for fun, when she was a young woman attending college and ever since then she was hooked. She made all of the birthday, christening , baby shower, wedding  shower, First Communion and baptism cakes for our family, as well as for some of my cousins and other relatives. For a while when I was young, she even made wedding cakes. My younger sisters and my step-sister have all caught the cake decorating "bug" from my mom and have experienced the delight of making cakes for their own children's parties. Cake decorating is one crafty thing that I do not do. I have made one or two decorated cakes in my life, but since I don't have children, there doesn't seem to ever be much need for me to make cakes like this.  My sister made the birthday cakes the last two years, but this year, my mom wanted her only grand-daughter to have a doll cake and she wanted to make it herself. She made a doll cake for all of us girls at least once!















Here's my niece and my nephew waiting for the cake to be cut!

Mmmm!