Drawing Results - plus a chocolate teaser...

Drum roll, please...

The winner is - Julie! Julie has a wonderful blog, and sells darling things on Etsy. Hers were some of the first things I purchased on Etsy when I first discovered it. :)

The second winner is my friend, Lois. In a nutshell, she is amazing and beautiful.

Well, I wish could give everyone copies of this book and goodies...I do give you all
my best wishes! And, thanks for joining in the fun.

p.s. - If any of you would like to have a scrap shirt, just e-mail me! You can order that way, and pay through paypal, or mail me a check.

**********
Proud Mama wants to share - look what Emmalyn made for her English project! She was asked to find her "golden line" (meaningful statement) from the book, "Great Expectations", and create a visual piece with it. I think it turned out just great!

I wish I had a picture to post of my other daughter, Colette, who performed all weekend in the school play, "It's a Wonderful Life". We saw it Friday eve - and really caught the holiday spirit!! She and the whole cast did an excellent job (we laughed, we cried...).

It's time to get out all the classic holiday films.

I'm grateful for my girls who are developing their talents and sharing them with others. :)
*****************
CHOCOLATE PIE, ANYONE?

Tomorrow I'll post the recipe for this fabulous chocolate pie. This is a great recipe that was put out by the Hershey company over 40 years ago - they were promoting the Hershey milk chocolate candy bars. We've had these pies at Thanksgiving for my whole life. I'm the last in my family to make these every year. I have to make five, or so, of them because everyone (especially kids) loves them! YUM.

This is all you need for the filling, and it's made with traditional pie crust - not graham cracker.

So, get your ingredients and be ready to try out a new pie for the holidays!

thanks...

Spooky Wrap-up (and the give-away)!

Just thought I'd share a little Halloween fun, since I posted about costumes earlier. I got a camera worked out, so I was able to take some shots before everyone left for the weekend.

Colette was "Penelope", from the movie that came out earlier this year. What an easy costume! We got a piggie nose, and a jacket from my closet - done. It was a fun movie, by the way. Emmalyn was the Tooth Fairy. We made over an old formal - those shiny things on the bottom are big teeth shapes. You can't see the little wings sewn onto the dress in the back...it was a great costume for a big girl wearing to school all day. She said this is her last year for costumes (wow- my little girl is really growing up).

Dawson really wanted to be Gandoolf. From Lord of the Rings - not sure how you spell that!

He was so cute in his get-up. People thought he was father time, an elf, etc. etc.

It was a crack-up! I made his costume (tunic and robe) from a king size sheet from the thrift, and a little bias tape. I think he's planning on sporting his beard again sometime at the end of December, with a red hat....this kid loves to pretend!

Dawson is really organized, too. He sorted out all of his candy. I told him that he can have only 5 pieces each day.

So he put 5 pieces each in little bags and got them all ready for the week.

That's my boy!

Daniel was a pirate. My Mom said that he kept his hat and eye patch on for a long time - wow.

I made his costume from an inexpensive sweat suit from Wal Mart. I like to use "real" clothes for the little ones that like to play in costumes for a few weeks after Halloween. His little coat is made with the sweat shirt inside-out and backwards because there was a silk screened image on the front of it. It worked great with red bias tape and brass grommets. I'm getting less and less afraid of cutting things up!

Hubby and I didn't go out of town (like we'd planned). We calculated all the furniture we could buy with the money we would have spent, and decided to go that route. Smart, we are. :)

We had a lovely time shopping together - working on our home addition.

*******

Announcing....

Just another teaser for my first blog give-away!!

Love this book - so I'm actually going to give three of them, each with a Paddywacks Studio goodie. That's three separate drawings. Since I don't have that many readers, your odds are pretty good! Leave a comment...

Official give-away starts tomorrow - check in for pictures and instructions, then leave your comments
through the weekend.
Have fun! :)

Missing the Tree

Usually we set up our Christmas tree the first weekend of October. Now, this is not something I grew up doing. At first I thought it was a little bit extreme...but, hey, really fun! My husband just loves Halloween, and he's been enjoying the Halloween tree for 10 years (we've been married for 4 1/2). Now that I'm used to the idea, I really like having a "holiday" tree - that's what we call it. The evergreen stays up from October until January and evolves through three holidays. This year, however, we have no space at all for our tree. The usual spot is filled with a bed frame and an overstuffed side chair that will someday live in new rooms (our home addition). The other extra spots in our family room are filled with three big exercise machines that will someday live in the "workout" room. If we ever get it all finished. We have no Halloween decorations out this year at all. I just couldn't do it with the house in such a state of disarray...but not for too much longer. I hope. I'm just missing my tree.
Usually we get out old Captain Jack Skully and put him out front. He used to live in the boys closet - he was great at scaring away the other monsters that wanted to hang out in there.
Last year the kids all carved pumpkins, as usual, on big plastic tablecloths on the back patio. We toast the seeds and munch on them, have some brownies, then pose with the masterpieces. I love pumpkins - love the word pumpkin. We're not carving pumpkins at our house this year.


On Halloween I make a triple batch of chili beans. This is a great recipe passed over years ago (before I was born) by friends from Cheyenne Wells, Colorado. It's called Cheyenne Wells Chili (not a very original name, but it works great if you say it with a sort-of "cowboy" accent). Not too hot - just right for every taste. Sometime I may share the recipe. :) We set out a variety of things and sit around munching with any neighbors that want to drop in for a bite of "real" food. And cupcakes.
When the kids are finished trick-or-treating we open our side gate and invite friends to watch a movie. This is one of the joys of Arizona - great weather for Halloween and Thanksgiving. It's just beautiful. So, we show a movie on the side of our house - like a drive in. We make popcorn in the big machine and have it out there...lots of fun! But, not this year. The kids get to spend Halloween this year with their other parents at their other homes. Sometimes that just feels weird - but it's not something I resent at all. It's just the state of things...

We're going out of town (my husband and I) for Halloween. A nice little over night get-away. I don't even know yet what we're doing (I vote Disneyland)! But it will be fun. Then, hopefully, before Thanksgiving we can set up our tree!! The scary stuff comes off and we have a "gratitude" tree. All month long in November we put tags on the tree, listing the things that we're grateful for. We add more tags the day of Thanksgiving at the big feast.

So, right now I'm just really missing the tree. Hopefully, if everything (our construction) goes well, we'll be set for Thanksgiving.

No matter what, we'll still be really thankful for our blessings! And I'll set up the tree - even if it's on the back porch!

It's That Time Again - Halloween Costumes!

I've made a lot of Halloween costumes over the years. We're in the thick of costume preparations now at our house. Tomorrow night is a big church fall festival, and the kids will dress up - I think even the older ones want to join in the fun! Because my camera died, and I don't know how soon we'll be able to replace it, I thought I'd share photos from the past for a few posts.

Colette as a snowball.

Emmalyn, the pink satin cow.

The princess phase. So cute! Clowns really are scary! I loved how these costumes turned out. I made them staring with inexpensive sweats from Wal Mart. I just added the colorful striped fabric ruffles and stuff. Colette's (smaller girl) has bias tape with wire in it for a skirt hem. That turned out really fun.We called these "glamour witches". I bought thrifted black dresses and added more layers to the skirts. We found cool spider webb-ish loosely woven fabric for the shawls. Wigs really help to change the whole look of a kid (see terrifying clowns above). My little witches are standing there with their cousin, Sam. I think he was Woody for about 5 years in a row. Hey, if it ain't broke... :)
Pioneer girls. Sweet...Emmalyn as a southern belle. How darling she is (pre-teen, growing up...)

Colette won a contest with this one. High impact...high maintenance!

Last year. Easy costuming for me. Colette as angel, Emmalyn as dark fairy, and Dawson as vampire. I hope to get pics of this year!

My girls don't really need my help dressing up. They've been doing it since they were tiny toddlers. Well, maybe they do need my help - I had to draw in a top for little pinkie, there!
OOPS!

Slide Show of Fairyland Party

Finally time for blogging!

I have been a very busy Momma lately. Because of the fact that creating a post with pictures takes a ridiculously long time for me - I haven't blogged for awhile. :) I feel quite behind on the sharing...so I made a slide show of some of my recent (last week and weekend) fun. Just in case you don't want to watch it - here's a peek at my weekend projects:

Goodies for baby and bridal showers. I really love to put gifts together! I love to think of a theme and find just the right combination of things - always including something handmade. For baby gifts I usually choose two or three of my favorite childrens books and make (or buy) things to go with them. One book I gave was, Pirates Don't Change Diapers with a package of diapers and this Scrap Shirt, which I made. There are more pics in the slideshow...

Scrap Shirts are one of my favorite things to make. I have several of my own and I love to wear them!

I also put together a fun bridal shower gift. You can see what it was on the slideshow...

Speaking of special occasions...there are some fun things to celebrate this month of March. It's not too late! All month long we get to celebrate National Craft Month. Well, that's easy for most of us - finally a reason to over-spend at the craft store! But did you know that it is also National Frozen Food Month, National Umbrella Month, and Play the Recorder Month (I actually do play the recorder - ha!)? There are plenty of ways to celebrate this month in addition to green stuff and chocolate bunnies. :) I'll share more ideas later -

March is also Optimism Month. I like that.

"One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things."

-Henry Miller

So at our house, we're going to play the glad game with Pollyanna. We'll have a movie nite with popcorn and maybe a huge cake like the one's Aunt Polly's cooks make in the movie. I'll get my crystal prisms out and find a good place to hang them, so we can be glad about the magical dancing rainbows of light that our hot Arizona sun makes...

Happy Day!

Lovely February...

Progress!! I finally have some sweet little pictures to post. Big thanks to my 13 yr old daughter, Emmalyn, for her computer smarts (I think this is a familiar scenario - kid helping Mom w/ computer).

I gave these little quilted heart sachets to some friends for a February giftie. I used a vintage quilt top that is completely hand stitched - a very uneven log cabin pattern (so cute) - and such cheerful fabrics. I've got more to finish today (it is STILL February :)) that I tea -dyed.


We're putting away our Valentine mailboxes today. Sad... It's lots of fun to spend an evening making them - and hard for the kids to part with them when the holiday is over!

Colette (my 6th grader) and Dawson (my 1st grader) gave sweet treats to their class mates and teachers. We kept it simple - I always try to use what I call the "appreciation/time" guage when I help my kids with class projects and gifts. It is easy to over do it!!

Valentines Day is such a fun time of year! This year DeVal and I spent the weekend in San Fran. - just the two of us. It was wonderful, as usual! We missed all of our kids, but we definately benefit from the re-charge that some time away from the daily grind gives us. Hugs and many thanks to Grandma and Grandpa, who took care of our littlest Valentine while we were away. :)

Well, this is pure joy. How I love my little boy...