Boys will be boys?

Do you see me shaking my head and rolling my eyes??

Jeff's doing MMA (mixed martial arts) training right now and he thinks he's oh so cool. Last night, my fears came true...he came home looking like this:


Won't he look oh so cute for court today? That's right kids...don't fight, behave yourselves...I'm serious!


What you can't see too well in the pictures was that he had a giant goose egg on his eyebrow. It looked awful. I guess he took an ankle bone to the brow bone? Either way, it looked lovely and it bled like crazy. Hopefully it's not looking quite as bad today.

*sigh* Who needs children when you have a husband??

Please excuse my dumb.

Don't you love when you have a flash of brilliance that merely points out how stupid you've been?

We've been having issues with our remote for months. It's like it has a mind of its own. It will only work about half of the time, especially if you're trying to fastforward and then press play on the DVR. Well, I was watching House last night and I started to fastforward through the commercials and it wouldn't stop. I shook the remote, I begged it to work, nothing. Then I realized that the buttons weren't lighting up. Could the answer really be that simple? Uh...yeah. It just needed new batteries. We were still using the originals that are at least 2 years old now. *smacks forehead* We are technically savvy people, I swear...it just hadn't occurred to either of us that the batteries might be dying. *sheepish grin*

Happy Thanksgiving!

So, we just finally ate. I know, I'm slow.

Since it was just the two of us, I didn't want to get anything crazy, so we opted for this:



I call it my stupid proof turkey. I didn't have to thaw it or carve it or figure out seasonings or how to find the innards or whatever. ;)

It was easy to do, very yummy and even included some tasty gravy! I also made some mashed potatoes and Jeff made Stovetop and I've got a pumpkin pie (from scratch) if we feel like it. Oh, and I made sweet potato casserole too. Yummy! I'm proud of myself. *grins*

Custom Camera Strap GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Check out this fabulous giveaway. How cute are these camera strap covers? I've been meaning to try to make one of my own, but these are so prettty! :)

Custom Camera Strap GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Cuteness.

I think I may have to hunt and see if I can find the ingredients for these.

Jingle Mouse Ornament

I just may need to go browse through this book. Just look at this cute little bunny sock! I'm in love!!


Just for fun, I LOVE these little plush monsters. Don't they look like a cross between Candyland and Where the Wild Things Are?

And finally, DIY Elf Bowling. If Pyper wasn't so into throwing her toys right now (ouch!), I would totally make a set.


Also, on a completely different note, I've been working on my snowflake ornaments and had been thinking about calling that section of our store the "Snuggle Shoppe", but another idea came to me....Snugglebug Memories. Thoughts? Either could encompass just about anything I wanted to do, yet still tie in with the main website.

Pictures from my dad this morning, circa...I don't know, 1987 or so?
(you can click on any of these to enlarge the picture)

Behold the hotness. I think this was probably some time in 4th grade.


On my girl scout camping trip, which I think was either 3rd or 4th grade.
I'm the shrimp on the bottom of this totem pole:


And here's everyone. My brother is on the far left and I'm right next to him in the front row.

Kid talk...

Conversation with the little one I nanny for yesterday:

Me: Miss P, you need to sit down and eat your lunch with me like a big girl.

P: Big gwrl?

Me: Yes! We're not babies...we're big girls! We sit at the table and eat our lunch together!

P: *looks at me and shakes her head* Jenn...you a kid!



LOL...nevermind that I'm older than her mother. Apparently, according to little Miss P, I'm just a kid! :P

Voting, etc! :)

Did you? :) In case you haven't seen the commercials, Starbucks is giving out free coffee if you vote today! Ours offered the regular, decaf or Thanksgiving blend. We both had the Thanksgiving blend, which I highly recommend. It was just perfect for this cold, rainy day! :)

We were there right around 8:00 this morning (when they opened) and it thankfully only took about 30 minutes...which is saying something considering how unorganized our polling place was. Whaaatever.

I saw our neighbor there (the one who's daughter was hit a couple of months ago). She said her daughter is slowing improving and is at least a little more aware of things right now (I guess she had been really fighting them on things, like feeding tubes, etc), but she still can't speak. She just seemed so exhausted. Please continue to send healing thoughts and prayers for this family.

Anyway, I'm feeling rather productive today. We voted, went to Kinko's, got our free Starbucks coffee and dropped off Jeff's resume for the AUSA position here in Boise. I dropped him off and work and then went and picked up our new rug (it was finally in stock!) and now I'm getting ready to head out to work. Woohoo!

The last of my pumpkins!

The first two pumpkins that I carved for our party molded like crazy and I threw them away on the Monday before Halloween. I liked the haunted house enough (plus it went nicely with my graveyard!), so I recarved that.

Here's what it looks like lit up. You can kind of see the ghosts that projected on the wall. I still don't think I got that part quite right, but oh well!




And here's my favorite for this year. Since we had so many little kids last year, I wanted to make a more kid friendly design. I chose Abby Cadabby from Sesame Street. Pyper loves her and I thought the design was cute (though I'll admit that I thought it looked like an easier design. Ummm...not so much!)

Happy Halloween, everyone! :)

Here's a project I did with the kiddos that I nanny for today. Isn't it cuuute?

Halloween party, part 4: Dining room decorations!

And last, but not least, the dining room!


Shhh...don't pay attention to the fact that I made two left hands. Oops!



I didn't have time to paint these, but I thought they looked ok as they were. Closeups of completed skeleton sconces:






There were also mice hiding on the stairs leading up to my sewing room (though they were a bit hard to capture in pictures):


And my favorite, bats in the greenhouse! (Unfortunately, we didn't think about the fact that there aren't lights in the greenhouse, so once the sun went down, no one could see them. Oops!)

Halloween party, part 3: Living room decorations!

An overall shot of our fireplace wall. Here's the right side of the fireplace:


Aaaand the left:


The candelabras, wreath, tiny skeleton hands, little stuffed ghost and gargoyles are all store bought. I made the little garland over the fireplace.

There are also some little mice running around in the bookcase. Can't see them? Let me zoom in a little:


There's even a little mouse hiding out at the base of one of the walls, welcoming our guests into the dining room. :)


We also had some little bats hiding out in our lamps!

Halloween party, part 2: Pumpkins!

Pumpkins. I already posted the haunted house one...which I ended up putting out on a pedestal in the graveyard. The second pumpkin was a ghost ship and it was a giant pain in the butt.



We had tons of problems getting the lid off and it took forever to scrape the insides because the walls were so thick. They actually needed to be thinned down even more so that you could see the light from inside better, but it's already starting to mold (in spite of lots of lysol), so I think it'd be a lost cause at this point. Oh well.



I also think that if I try this again, I'll use transfer paper to map the design. I had so many holes poked that I couldn't tell what I was carving, so it took far longer than it should've. Oh well...

Also, there are supposed to be full cut out sections of the water and parts of the ship, but I just didn't have the patience to deal with it.

Carving and shading pumpkins is definitely more time consuming, but I don't think it's really as difficult as it seems. It's all about having the right tools. Would anyone be interested in a little tutorial?

Halloween party pictures: part 1!

I think I'm going to split up my pictures from our Halloween party (which was Saturday), or I might drive you all insane. ;)

Let's start outside with my little graveyard:






These are all based on the graveyard that surrounds the Haunted Mansion at Disneyworld. I love them so. :)

Close ups:










P.S. The little ghost heads are from the dollar store. They blink different colored lights, you just can't see it in the pics.

Getting ready for our Halloween party!

The tombstones are waiting to be set up....I hand carved and painted these last year. More info about them here and here



and I have one pumpkin mostly carved. It will also get some ghosts cut out in the back that will project up onto the house, but I'm going to wait till tomorrow to do that. I also need to smooth this out some if I get time:

Skeleton hands: Part 2

Last night, I worked on the second stage of the hands.



I coated the "joints" with the adhesive, then wrapped them in cotton, coated them again and molded the resulting putty to make them look a bit more like they're supposed to.


A note: This is certainly not a project if you don't like getting messy. My hands were covered in glue and cotton and I had to wash them off twice so that I could finish.









Don't they look creeepy? ;) They feel really weird too. As they're drying, the adhesive starts to feel cool and clammy. Ick! :P

I think I'll probably work a little more with some details on these and then paint them and attach them to the sconces. Wheee!

Creative Monday: Halloween Decorations

This week's project (still in progress):



In progress:







Here's the tutorial I'm using:
http://www.hauntershangout.com/home/corpsehands.asp

and I'm trying to recreate my own version of these, found in the Haunted Mansion:
(photo from doombuggies.com, if anyone's interested. It's an awesome site!)

Creative Monday: Kit time!

My momma sent me this little kit that she found at Michael's and I just had to put it together.

Here's the kit (glue and scissors not included):


And here it is all finished:


Although I think I like him better without the bow:


Ooo, and as long as I'm discussing Halloween things...how cool are these paper mache pumpkins? (fair warning, there's a finger injury in that tutorial, so if you see a bandaged finger and are squeamish, don't go any further!)