Halloween Party Prep

Halloween is by far my favorite time of the year. I love it. For me, Halloween isn't a single day about getting candy. It's a whole season of creating and creativity! Every year, my husband and I host a Halloween party and I can't wait for it to get here this year (only 39 days left!)

Whenever I see websites like this with adorable tablescapes like that over to the right... I really really want to emulate them. Does that make me a middle aged housewife? I hope not. I'm not ready for that.

But really, how cute does that look?! I'm going to try to make something like that this year. I'm going to go ahead and brain-dump here so I remember what I'm thinking for my Halloween party setup this year.

Dining room:
This is going to be the main area for food. I'm thinking I'd like to keep it black and orange, kind of like that picture up there. Hot foods, appetizers, snacks. No desserts.

Kitchen:
This is the drink station. I'm sort of thinking a Halloween-glam, New Orleans voodoo, type of theme to the area. Sort of like what you see to the left, from this blog. Lots of glitter, glam, feathers, chandeliers.

What's nice is that these two stations won't totally clash with each other. We have an open floor plan in the house, so the kitchen and dining room pretty much open up into each other.

Last but not least...

The Basement:
I want to do the whole basement like a zombie apocalypse safe room. Quarantine signs. Biohazard tape. Yellow and black.

Oddly, I'm not seeing anyone that has done any sort of quarantine, zombie, or biohazard tablescapes for Halloween yet. Come on, bloggers! Zombies are SO 2013!!! Let's do this! I guess I'm on my own planning this area out. That's okay, I can do it. I know it. I'll be sure to post pictures as I craft and try out recipes.

Cheers, lovely monsters!

Twitterpated with Yardwork

First, let me say I haven't felt as alive as I did this morning when I walked outside in the sun with a light mist going on. I was wearing flip flops, so the little blades of grass were tickling my toes, and everything just felt so... Incredible.

I love spring. I love the smells, the sounds, and temperature  It's the perfect time of year. But our house doesn't really have a lot of spots that are very outdoor friendly... So I really wanted to make it my goal to make some good outdoor spaces that we can use.

First up... We have this corner of the house that is just... Terrible. Everything about it. There's some trash, the AC unit and heating oil drum. But there's so much potential! It's a little nook that you can look out into from three different rooms in the house! 

 

Never mind the peeling paint... We'll have to fix that at a later time. But this is what I'm working with. My first thought was to get a lattice and some vines and create some sort of barrier between the world and the AC unit. Frankly, it didn't feel like it did that much. But I'm hoping that once the vines start really growing up and sprouting flowers that it'll look nice.

So what I think I'm going to do next is take some nice outdoor pots and find some pretty flowers to sort of bookend my vine situation. Not sure what to do along the long edge of that space just yet... Maybe a bench.

I also worked on this little fella' over the weekend. Meet the world's ugliest picnic table. It lived in our backyard since we bought the house. I have no idea how old it is, and it was fully covered with this ugly tearing tarp (you can still see it on the seat in the picture above). So we ripped all that off, and started spray-painting it. I know we should have sanded and primed it and done it the right way... But... Well... We just don't do things the right way sometimes. And after a few coats, it's starting to look a ton better. 

Have you ever seen cushions on picnic table seats? I feel like that would be really cool and comfortable. I also have this crazy idea of painting something on the top of the table... but I'm not sure what yet. We'll see!

I'll post more updates as we de-uglify our outdoor spaces!

When things go horribly wrong

One of my cakes from 2008

Husband's birthday was last week, and like a good wifey I decided I'd make him a cake! When I was in high school and college, I made cakes all the time and they were always pretty tasty and beautiful.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time to put the cake together for his Saturday evening birthday party, so I decided to stick with boxed mix and canned icing - not that that's a bad thing. I got white cake mix and added some almond extract (1 tsp per box), and got strawberry preserves to mix with the icing. It was fool-proof.

I even went out and got a brand new square cake pan. Everything was set. Saturday afternoon comes around, I mix up my cake mix and pour it in the greased pan. Little while later, cake was done. Let it cool for a few minutes, then came issue number one...

Cake was stuck.I finally got it out of the pan, but it was pretty damaged. Well, shit. That's okay. It's salvageable. No problem. I went ahead and cut the cake down the middle so I could put a nice thick layer of delicious strawberry icing in between the two pieces. No big problems yet. Iced the bottom half. No issues. Went to put the top half back on...

And it fell apart. It just crumbled.

That's okay. That's okay! I can just use icing to even it out...

Nope. Didn't work. It was awful. The icing was just making it crumble more and I had a major cakedown. I started crying, asked Husband what I could possibly do about it because it was so ugly and awful and I had already spent the money on the cake trying to make it. He tried his best to soothe me, but sometimes there's just nothing you can say.

And then I went crazy.

Just kidding. Sort of. I did go crazy, but I also had an epiphany. I could smash up this ugly horrible cake and make cake balls! I had never done it before, but I watched a friend make them once and it seemed pretty easy... I wasn't sure if my ratios were right at all (turns out the balls were a little moister than usually prepared due to too much icing).

Turns out it was fine. Rolled up the cake and icing into little balls, covered it with blue and green candy melts - which, by the way, I couldn't find a good way to do to get a smooth surface... Everyone loved them. I was surprised! But also happy my disaster didn't ruin the night.

My cake balls and some other snacks for the evening.

Unique Unity

I really wanted to do a unity ceremony for our wedding, even though we aren't particularly religious. We looked at all of the usual ceremonies, but couldn't quite find anything that was "us." We liked the candles, but then again everyone does it. Everyone who doesn't do candles? Sand ceremony.

We had looked at hand-fasting (but apparently some people consider this evil), rose ceremonies (I really wanted something we could take home afterward), and all kinds of other things on Pinterest and wedding boards... But still nothing that stuck out at me.

Until one day I saw a pin like this one over to the left on Pinterest and had an "ah hah!" moment.

Finger print hearts!!! 

There were three things that I loved about this idea:

1. The symbolism.

2. It's really cheap to do.

3. We've never seen it before!

Our minister wrote the following for our ceremony before we did the ceremony:

Sarah and Ryan, this celebration today honors a commitment by the two of you to continue to share and grow as individuals and as a family, today and every day for the rest of your lives. Unity ceremonies involve a symbolic representation of the bringing together of the unique individuals you are into a new and beautiful whole. Here, you have chosen to use your fingerprints, which are unique and represent the differences in you that compliment each other so well. As you make a heart shape with your prints, it represents the bringing together of those unique and different qualities into a unified whole while retaining your individuality.

I loved it. It couldn't have been better! The only thing to remember if you do this unity ceremony is to keep wet wipes or hand sanitizer up with the ink so you don't get any on your white dress!

Oh... And PRACTICE! 

Thanks to Katie for the beautiful pictures!

Pinterest Party: Harry Potter Theme

If you haven't heard of a Pinterest party, they're super easy to put together and a ton of fun! How often do you have a hundred recipes on your Pinterest and realize you will never have time to try them all? Host a Pinterest party with friends and you can knock out more than a few. I'm going to tell you how we do it, but feel free to tweak the steps to work for you.

1. Create a group board on pinterest. Ours is here. When anyone posts, I ask them to tag the pin with the date of the party.

2. Choose a craft and pin it to the board. Pick something that will amount to ~$10 per person - nothing too expensive or too cheap. Nothing too crazy either. Try to avoid anything that will require long drying times, a ton of prep, etc...

3. Ask everyone invited to the party to pin a recipe to the board - and don't forget to do it yourself, too! You could even pick a theme for your party (holidays, movies, etc). Everyone should prepare their recipe and bring it to the party.

4. Get the supplies for crafting and get everything setup for the guests. Collect $10 from each guest, repay yourself, and keep an envelope for next time if there's any leftovers.

5. Eat your delicious food and make crafts!!!

Sounds fun, right? 

Recently I hosted a Harry Potter Pinterest Party for some friends and I and I wanted to share some of my favorite recipes with you!

Our craft was making wands, so I had my dining room table setup with all the different materials needed. I got the idea for the craft from here and even though we aren't kids anymore, I think everyone had a lot of fun. Oh, I forgot to mention in the steps above... Make sure you get a bottle of wine (or two!) to share with the pinners! It makes it more fun, especially if you end up with a "nailed it" moment.

You can check my Pinterest board that I pinned above, but I want to take a moment to highlight my absolute favorite recipes that we tried. First of all, this is the BEST homemade butterbeer I have ever had in my life. The recipe is posted to the board, but check here because I think some of the text is cut off. 

Next up, I had a chance to make Mrs Weasley's Rock Cakes. Mine didn't look quite as good as the ones in the picture on the recipe, but they were really tasty and not too sweet! I would love to make these again sometime, because they were just so easy. I do want to point out that they expand A LOT, so make sure you leave plenty of room between them on the pan, and smaller globs of the dough are better.

I'm not sure what we'll do for our next Pinterest Party, but if you have any theme ideas please post them here! Maybe something related to spring... Who knows!

The Accidental Superbowl Party

Getting the beer ready while we wait for
the cable to come back...

I know I'm a week late in posting this, but I think it's important enough and will continue to be relevant enough to touch on.

My husband and I differ in our definitions of clean. I have a lot of house pride, and he... Can tolerate mess. Now, I definitely don't think I'm one of those crazy women that has to have a model home at all times. The dishes in the sink right now imply otherwise. But I like to keep the house at a certain level, and here's a real world lesson in why...

We were invited to a Superbowl party last weekend. We showed up about a half hour before kickoff and noticed immediately that everyone was sitting around a TV with a "no signal" message floating around the screen.

"So uh... What's up?"

Comcast was having an outage. During the Superbowl.

Stephanie's football whoopie pies! (Delicious!)

Yep... So that was interesting. After waiting a bit for things to clear up, and the game starting in the meantime... We needed to think of a plan B. Few people suggested some local bars, but with all the drinks and food that had been prepared, that wasn't really an option.

"Well, you can all come back to my house...?" Only a slight cringe. We had vaccuumed... So that was something. But still, there were a few people that would be coming to my home that had never been. I hoped that the mess wouldn't be too bad. No tumbleweeds of cat fur in the kitchen. No weird stains on the carpet.

Send Husband ahead to double-check that the cable was fine. Of course, the Ravens got a touchdown as he called and that was enough to get everyone's butts in gear. We were only 10 minutes down the road, but we still had to transport a few crockpots and cookies.

So all in all - we had a good party. No one noticed that the house wasn't 100%. But it got me thinking... How many more times are we going to have accidental parties?

So I've heard about party boxes that people keep with all of the elements needed for a successful accidental party. Plates, cups, soda, maybe some games, snacks, etc...

If you have any tips for what you would keep in your party box... Post it here!

Confessions of a Sentimentalist

There is a fine line between being sentimental and being a hoarder. Sometimes I worry that I overstep that line. As you can see by the picture to the right, courtesy of Katie Vee Photography, I had a big bouquet at my wedding. A cascade of roses, feathers, and greenery. It was seriously beautiful, but unfortunately not practical to keep around forever.

I looked into bouquet preservation, but it starts at $300... And there's a lot of other things I could get for $300 that I would love a whole lot more.

So I decided on a compromise... I kept a couple pieces of the bouquet, hung some roses upside down to dry them out, and sat on them for a few days.

I have a few boxes of dried flowers floating around... A corsage from my first prom, a flower from an anniversary, my husband's boutonniere from my parent's wedding... But this was my wedding bouquet! I had to do something special.

So I scoured the internet (mostly Pinterest) for a few hours until I found something that seemed useful. All kinds of cool ideas were out there, no doubt. But a post on OffbeatBride really got my attention. So I made an ornament with my bouquet!

It was really simple, just took some petals, a part of a feather, and the gem from my rose and popped them in an ornament. Super cute, right? Oh, and that ring around the top is from the favors my mom made for my engagement party. I knew I hoarded them for a reason!