Craft Night Tonight!

I love our after work craft nights... usually only once a month but this month we are trying to squeeze in two due to the holidays fast approaching. I brought way too much stuff this time but I wasn't sure what I was going to work on. I will have access to the Christmas Solutions cart and the Happily Ever After cart (both of which I don't own) so I may just cut some of those for future use. I also need to take pics of the cards I have been working on. So look for a post later.

More Blog Candy...

I love the scrapbook world... it is filled with the nicest, most talented people. I mentioned earlier winning two prizes this past weekend just by leaving comments on their blogs. Well, I found another one where the talent is amazing and once again... more blog candy. It's over at Crafty Chatter . To enter to win, I just need to leave a comment on her post and link to it from my blog. She is offering a surprise candy package of approx $100 worth of goodies. Please, pick me... pick me! :)

Pumpkins 2009

Before we get too far into November, I guess I should post pictures of our pumpkins. Once again we have grown our own ginormous pumpkins... aww, who am I kiddin'... Jeff grew the pumpkins. He did a real bang-up job this year too. We were able to harvest 12 large ones. We kept one for each of us and gave the other 7 away. We also set a new family record... the largest one weighed in at a whopping 79.8 pounds!!! That will be the Jack Skeleton head in the upcoming pics.

This year though Jeff was busy working overtime and didn't have time to carve them until - gasp! - Halloween day... then he got stuck carving 4 of them by himself... he told me if I wanted one then I needed to carve it.

Here are our masterpieces:

Our record breaker!

Maleficent

The Pirate Fish (see the eyepatch?)

Bat in the Moon


The Wise Old Owl

I Never Win Anything...

But this weekend received notice from two separate contests that I won! The first I found out about was from one of the hostesses of the BBTB (Bitten by the Bug) Blog Hop, Creative Candy... It's a Sweet Thing. How cool is that?!?!? The blog hop did a challenge where they all had to use the tag from Stretch Your Imagination cart and to use it in a Halloween themed idea. Because of this blog hop, I was introduced to a bunch of talented ladies all of whom I have become followers on their respective blogs. It is such a good way for me to learn how to think outside the box for scrappin'. What did I win? Creative Candy mentioned in her blog post that it would be cartoon dimensional stickers... very, very cool!

Tonight I was reading a new post for Bo Bunny blog. And reading it, once again, saw my name. Now Carrie isn't exactly a common name but it's not all that unusual either. So I went back to the comments on their post about "BOO"ing two people... one from Facebook and one who left a comment on the post commenting on their favorite Halloween memory/tradition and linked them to their blog. That was me... my favorite tradition... growing our own pumpkins and carving them Halloween week (but how sad is it that I don't even have pics posted yet). I wasn't sure how I was supposed to be contacted. Had to search my comments from the previous post and there it was.. on the one from August 3... again, very sad that it's been so long since I've blogged. As for the prize... some goodies from their Boo Crew Bo Bunny line... which is pretty dang awesome! Their paper is fantastic. Bo Bunny is a new product line for me but one that I will definitely be looking for.

So right now I am feeling like I should go buy a lottery ticket... aww, but what could be better than winning from 2 scrapbooking sites... guess I'll forget the lottery ticket, save my money and buy some scrapbook products instead... definitely a better investment!

Halloween 2009

Halloween is supposed to be less hectic as our kids get older, right? At least that's what I thought... but not so. This has been a crazy busy week. My kids are older so no costumes to prep... well, not really. They were all pretty much on their own for them... no one really needed mom's help. But Cheryl at work decided that we should put out Halloween treats for the other members of the office. It turned into quite the spread.





















She LOVES to bake and did quite a bit... including gross but yummy Witches Fingers (the cookies are hers, the witch is mine) and super delicious monster cookies (again, my monster contriubution). Both were made from Paper Doll Dress-Up.





Besides contributing sloppy joes and a pasta salad, I decided to decorate my treats this year. Through the cricut MB, I have discovered lots of creative ladies and one in particula, Kerry, amazed me with her work so I completely stole her ideas and made these... little bats on the kit kats... and spiders on the York pepermint patties. The bats were from Hello Kitty Greetings and the spider was from DoodleCharms.



I also copied her Pumpkin Poop... which I thought was so cute! Mr. Pumpkin was from Stretch Your Imagination.



But thankfully we don't get any trick or treaters at our house so I only had to make about 35 of each and not hundreds!


Halloween Day arrived and with it so did the flu... poor Kendra! Since Kevin had it 2 weeks ago, we've been waiting to see who would be next and very surprised that it took this long! But she had been showing subtle symptoms this week and unfortunately today it decided to rear it's ugly head. So no trick or treatin' for her... but I felt so bad that I went to Culver's and picked her up a double scoop Chocolate Oreo Volcano Explosion. Yummy!



Kaitlyn was invited to a friend's birthday party tonite started with t/t and then bonfire and cake. She threw her costume together very quickly... quite appropriate for her... The crazy cat lady.




Kevin who should really be too old to go trick or treatin' (are you ever too old?) decided to go out with his GF, Kelly. I didn't care as long as costumes were worn. He was a gangster and she was a flight attendant. They were frozen when they got back in... I think it was about 40 degrees while
they were out.
While all of this was going on... Jeff was busy carving our pumpkins as we didn't get to do them earlier this week. But it's late and I'm tired and going to bed.

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Aug 3 Challenge - Fun in the Sun

We had a great day yesterday helping Andrea and Jeremy prep for the babies arrival which is happening this Wednesday!! The nursery has been done but we helped get their bedroom moved upstairs, moved other furniture downstairs and did some general cleaning. We probably should've gone for the whole weekend and more would've gotten done. But I think most stuff is in place. This is so exciting but I am so glad it is not me... don't think I would've survived 3 babies at once. And I just have to add here that Andrea looks FANTASTIC! I don't think she put on any weight that wasn't baby related. Granted her tummy is very large (but let's see you carry 3 babies at one time) but the rest of her is her same old skinny self! Heck I don't think her ankles ever swelled up... she looks good. We made her post for pictures before we left (mean of us, I know, after she spent the day cleaning)... I plan on doing a layout of them so you will have to wait for the layout to see how good she looks.

Back to scrappin'... Today's challenge had to do with the book, Holes by Louis Sachar. I took this one very literally and challenged the ladies to use something to represent holes on their layout.. eyelets, brads, buttons, etc. My layout is the kids back in 2003 (Kevin looks so little compared to today!) playing at the lake by Grandma and Grandpa's house. "Fun in the Sun" is cut from Life's a Beach cartridge.

August 2 Challenge - Hiking

We are off to the in-laws in the morning so I am posting this now. Got another layout done for my Monthly Challenges at MSH. Today's book is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle. The quote I used from the book was this... "Love. That was what she had that IT did not have." Okay, if I am being honest, I have never read this book and I don't think my daughters have either. Is that a bad thing??

The challenge I issued to the ladies was to create a layout on something that we love... not necessarily someone (because honestly so much of our scrappin' already involves pictures of those we love). My layout reflects on the hiking we do as a family. My first few mother's days were spent hiking the Ice Age Trail in the lower Kettle Morraines. The picture is from our last hiking excursion at Governor Dodge State Park. The hiking boots were cut from my Camping Solutions cartridge.