53 Days

Hello and Happy Halloween! Hope you had a wonderful day and evening! :) We had a great time chasing a very excited pirate around the neighborhood. And I ate a LOT of food. I mean. Lots.

Well, it’s about that time folks. It’s now November…uhhh, well it will be when most of you read this…so I’m allowed to say the “Christmas” word. I’ve actually been talking and thinking about it for a good month now, but November 1st gives me the go ahead to hide it no longer!

I’m freeeee!!

I’m a Christmas fareeek, so bear with me. And yes, I know a little holiday called Thanksgiving comes first, but I’m thankful every day, so I don’t get as excited about that one. :)

This time of year I’m always thinking about the countdown -- I love checking out all of the advent ideas out there. Because many of us love to DIY, I thought I’d share a few of my favorites (old and new) now so you’ll have plenty of time to get crafty. (OR pull out the bank card and order one – I feel ya.)

Click the pics to see more about each one!

Pottery Barn never fails with the countdowns – this snowman advent is too cute!:

The price is not…but there’s gotta be some way to DIY this! I just can’t think of one right this second. My mind is a mush of Halloween candy. :)

This one is adorable and could be knocked off for sure:

Felt cut into stockings and glued on – love it!

This is an oldie but goodie, and SO doable. I searched for mini buckets last year to do this one and couldn’t find what I wanted (for cheap). I even asked the folks at Logan’s Roadhouse and they wouldn’t sell me some – boo!:

Anyone seen mini buckets at a good price?

I love this advent pillow at Ballard Designs:

And I know some of you crafty chicks could pull this one off! I on the other hand, am still working on the sewing a straight line thing.

I found this one at Meijer the other day:

It’s just a round metal sheet and there’s a magnetic glass piece that goes over the numbers and magnifies them. I think it was $10? Super cute!

I’m always blown away with the handmade ideas I see every year. I used cardboard boxes, paper and stickers from the craft store to make these years ago:

They have held up great! I used to fill each one with small toys or treats, but we need more itty bitty toys in this house like we need a poke in the eye.

So I loved these simple activity cards with holiday themes instead:

Sooo doing this! Along with a few treats and toys…just a few. ;)

I’ve found a few more ideas on Pinterest over the past few weeks – love these little felt envelopes!:

Oh, they are too precious!

These Christmas trees are something different, and would be SO easy (and cheap!):

Wouldn’t they be fun across a mantel, in all different sizes? They’d have to be up high in this house – little hands wouldn’t be able to resist peeking underneath. :)

This one is simple and lovely:

Just clothes pins glued to a board, decorated with a bit of ribbon. Clip the little treats up each day – too sweet! I may have to try this one.

But my favorite yet is this idea:

OH my…the cuteness!! This one WILL happen at our house. Just adorable. And it doesn’t involve treats or presents…just one-on-one crafting time with the kiddos for a few minutes a day. LOVE.

Do you have a favorite advent or Christmas countdown tradition? I’d love to hear! If you’ve blogged about about one, feel free to leave a link in your comment. And I promise not to mention the C-word again for at least 24 hours.

:)

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Ohdeedoh

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Snøstorm

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Style At Home

Giveaway Weekend!

Well hello all! Happy Halloween weekend to you! And YOU! ;)

I’m back with another fantastic giveaway this weekend, cause my advertisers RAWK.

MirrorMate sells custom frames made specifically for your mirror. I think most of us have those basic, frameless mirrors in our bathrooms, and MirrorMate provides a fantastic solution for dressing them up! 

The folks at MirrorMate were awesome and sent me a mirror to try out. Since our mirrors are already framed out, I asked a girlfriend if she wanted one. Uh…YES!

She runs a home daycare in her basement, and some day I will show you the whole thing. It is AWESOME. When they remolded their master bathroom (which I will also show you someday!), they moved the huge builder mirror down to the daycare:

It’s a fun little dress up area for the kids. TOO cute!

We sent the measurements of the mirror to the folks at MirrorMate and we had the frame within a week! I gotta be honest…when I opened up the assembly instructions I was a little intimidated:

But it was SO easy to put together people! Just four easy steps:

 

Those little cardboard corners were awesome – they help hold the frame just right and level for you till you’re ready to stick it on for good. (The frame stays up with the super sticky tape on the back that goes directly on the mirror.)

One little tip they offered was to color in the edges of each piece before assembly, just in case you’d see any of it after it was put together. It was a great idea! I used a black Sharpie to color in ours a bit:

It took about 20 minutes to assemble it, and then after letting the glue dry, it only took about five more minutes to actually get it hung.

It’s such a simple change but we couldn't’ believe the difference it made!:

Let’s take a look at the before and after, shall we?

Isn’t that crazy? Love it!

We used Pemaquid Black for her mirror, but they have a crazy good selection of colors and designs:

They also have versions you can paint whatever color you want:

If you’re not sure which one you want, they will send you a four inch sample for free (just a small shipping and handling charge for up to three samples.) Love that!

Well, it’s time for the best part – the folks at MirrorMate are offering one of you $200 to spend as you wish at their site! That $200 will get you far – my friend’s mirror was HUGE and was right around the price.

You won’t believe the difference it will make to your ho hum mirror!

Here’s how to enter the MirrorMate giveaway:

1. Leave a comment here. What are your kiddos going to be this Halloween? (We’ll have a little pirate. Arrrrgh.) Are you dressing up?

2. Visit MirrorMate here. Check out their frame options and come back to let us know which one you would pick out.

3. Like them on Facebook here. Come back and leave another comment letting us know you did.

Remember if you comment anonymously or you have a private blog, please include your email address in each entry, and spell it out with “at” and “dot” to avoid any spammy emails coming your way.

This giveaway is only open to US residents only. It will be open till this Monday, October 31st (buwhahahahaaa) at noon EST.

Hope you have a positively ghoulish weekend!  :)

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House & Home

Halloween up in here

Ummm…people. It will be NOVEMBER in a mere days. What in the world? Less than two months till Christmas! And I still had my beachy vignette up till today. ;)

The new floors kind of put a wrench in the Halloween decor – most of it has been outside till today. But I finally got a little spooky display going with just days to spare!

My Craigslist buffet in the foyer was such a great find – and it’s so fun to snazz it up every season. I love having this space to decorate!:

I threw this together today – and when I saw threw it together I’m for real. I had about a one spare hour today and was determined to get some Halloween out!

The Bub and I started with the bats:

Aren’t they AWESOME?!

We sat at the Silhouette machine for a while the other night cutting out meeellions of bats. (OK, so that part was already done. The rest of the throwing together happened today.)

To keep them from getting too serious, we added some googly eyes to some, some red sticky stones to others:

I did something similar last year, but I wanted to go big this year! I just put them up with sticky tacky stuff and made them “fly” up the wall. 

The vignette was put together with (mostly) items we already had, and just a couple new ones:

We found the black Halloween house earlier this season at HomeGoods. Soooo spooky!

The only other new purchase was the sparkly skeleton that I picked up at Meijer a couple weeks ago (on clearance). I love his bling! And his cute little feet:

 

The BOO letters were a craft from a few years ago, and the “art” usually sits on our mantel this time of year:

And of course, I had to bring back the little surprise on the lampshade:

The spider webs and spiders are just black paper and I used little dabs of sticky tack to get them to stay up.

All of that adds up to one festive Halloween display!:

I smile every time I look at it, and the Bub is SO happy we finally got some Halloween inside the house. Just in the nick of time!

Do you decorate much for Halloween? Has the time gotten away from you like it has me?

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House & Home

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I Heart Organizing

Pumpkin Carving Party

Hey hey! I’m so glad you Squeezies are happy to see the mice again.

Well. Most of you. ;)

We hosted a little Halloween-themed shindig this weekend I wanted to tell you about in case you want to throw one together yourself this weekend!

I’ve wanted to have a Pumpkin Carving Party for years and always put it off because of the huge mess I imagined it would be. I didn’t really want to do it inside, and our back yard wasn’t really set up for it.

But with the addition of our our patio this summer we have such great entertaining space, so I wanted to take advantage of it! It was PERFECT for this little party!

I planned for this for months – I think I bought most of the stuff back in August. (Thank you, retailers, for bringing out the Halloween goodies so early!) I know myself and know I wanted to be as non-stressed as possible when it came to putting this together. I wanted it to be fun for the kids and the moms – including this one. ;)

So I planned early and made it VERY low-key.

The drinks were soda and water for the moms and Ghooooul-Aid for the kids. (How fun is that?) I added some Halloween ice cubes from Crate and Barrel:

I just served it as a punch in a bowl from Target:

The kids LOVED the black drink. OH so spooky. :)

The food was crazy easy – on purpose. I made my little cookie sandwiches with Halloween icing and ready to bake cookies:

You just sandwich two together with icing, then roll the sides in sprinkles:

They are SO yummy. I especially love these with the sugar sprinkles (for a little crunch), but I was using what I had.

The rest of the food was Halloween-themed snacks in individual bags:

I got two big boxes of these at Target and Walmart – I think they were $5 each? One box had cookie bags and one had chips and Cheetos.

This was not a healthy Halloween party. :)

The bowls, plates, napkins and cups were all from the Dollar Tree – can’t beat that!

It was all set up on the DIY potting bench Dad and I made this summer:

The table cover was a few yards of fabric from Hobby Lobby, on sale back in August. Score! (I even threw it in the wash after and it held up great!)

I didn’t plan any games or activities for the kids (other than the pumpkins). I was a little worried they would be bored.

But what am I, crazy?? They just…uh…played and had a blast!:

Imagine that. :)

We set up the pumpkin carving on the deck. I picked up carving tools here and there on sale over the past couple of months, but asked people to bring some if they had them:

Other than that, the only thing I had guests bring were their pumpkins.

I plan to do this again next year and may have smaller pumpkins for the kids to paint and decorate on their own, because of course the Mommas did most of the carving work:

Eww. :)

The hit of the party was this “gutter” I got at Walmart:

It attaches to the drill and makes quick work of getting the goo out of the pumpkin – it rocked! (Click the photo above to see it at Amazon.)

The party was low stress and BIG fun. :) We ended up with some cuties:

(Some of the pumpkins didn’t make it into the pic, but they were all super cute!)

We had such a great time and I can’t wait to do it again next year! I only invited a few close friends this year, but when we do it again I hope to invite even more and put up additional tables so everyone can spread out.

The best part was that I wasn’t running around like a crazy woman beforehand – I was (mostly) chill. ;)

Do you host a Halloween-themed party? Is it for the big kids or the little ones? What do you do to keep it low key and easy going (for YOU)?

 

**Don’t forget I am answering any and all DIY questions over at the True Value Facebook page this week!