Halloween Party Ready

We're having a party this weekend for the neighborhood and I'm getting the decorations wrapped up. This year I have seen some fantastic ideas on the web and I couldn't wait to try them out.

Crafts and Sutch has a great tutorial for how to put a spiderweb on your wall (found via Be Different...Act Normal). I found a cool spider in all the halloween stuff and decided to try it out on the ceiling.



Since a lot of the people who will be here are still strangers to me (lots of new people in the neighborhood) I worried a bit about people getting into the movies and books. So I covered all of those shelves in spiderwebs to keep busy hands out. The lower shelves aren't covered yet so the kids can get their movies during the week and I will get them covered over the morning of the party.



Cheesecloth and sticky backed bats covered the lights in the great room for a little atmosphere. We'll set up the potluck here. The artwork on the wall is my son's. He really wanted to contribute to the decorations.



The banisters and doorways were covered in cheesecloth and decorated with a few plastic spiders. I found a great idea for bats from Made (also via Be Different). The template came from Country Living.







Even the teddy bear wanted in on the dress-up party.



The pendant lights got a little holiday with some treat buckets that I had left over from a few years ago.



Tonight we'll start baking and cooking and getting the rest of the party ready to go for the weekend. Baking will be Joe's favorite part. Anything with sugar.

No Mess (but still cute) Pumpkins

I love decorated pumpkins. I HATE gutting them. Eewww, gross, never liked it as a kid and my own kids hate it now. But decorated pumpkins are fun!

Enter adhesive felt.

I started doing this last year and it worked so beautifully. The kids can draw whatever picture they want (on regular or construction paper) to decorate their pumpkin face and cut the shape out.



Then you turn it face down on the adhesive backing and trace with a marker.



Cut out your shape, remove the backing and stick on the pumpkin. You can layer felt on top of felt which is what I did here for the eyes and later for the tongue and teeth.



If you want to add hair to your pumpkin you can make it really cute with pipe cleaners. Just twist them around the stem of the pumpkin...



And style to suit



You can add ears with the felt too. Just make a little tab that will stick to the pumpkin in front of the ear (only remove the backing from the tab, not from the actual ear)...



And place a tab on the back to help it stick out



Want arms? My daughter came up with this idea and I really love it. Shape your hands out of pipe cleaners and use a piece of the felt to hold it on. I found it helps if you wrap it around the felt a bit to help it stay up.



Shape your arms and say hi!



And voila! When the kids are done you will have some cute little pumpkin families!





And after Halloween? Since you didn't actually carve these, the felt can be peeled off after the holiday and you have pretty pumpkins still for fall that didn't rot because they weren't cut. Last year these lasted past Thanksgiving and I bought them 3 weeks before Halloween. I think you could probably even keep the felt and stick it on a piece of wax paper if you have a face you want to reuse next year.

Here's a link to the pumpkins from last year.

10-10-10 = 42 and Happily Ever After

This Sunday, I was a 10-10-10 bride. A little over a year ago we were deciding on dates when hubby, being a computer geek, noticed that the date was all 1s and 0s and could be a binary number. Since he was sitting at the computer anyway he converted it to decimal and behold, it was 42, the answer to life, the universe and everything At least, it is according to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but maybe there is something to it because it sure felt like a great day to me.



Our ceremony was in a casino since I do live in Reno after all. And I must say if you are getting married in Reno, the Atlantis really was beautiful. We looked at several of the chapels here and considered the possibility of an outdoor wedding. Unfortunately, the weather in mid October is a little too unpredictable to guarantee good outdoor weather (though it did turn out to be a beautiful day) and all of the chapels we saw looked like they might have been decorated in the 80's and then forgotten. I wanted something a little prettier and the Atlantis certainly delivered. They partition off ballrooms and bring in an arch just for the weddings and it's quite pretty.

I didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on a wedding since, as lovely as it was, it's only one day and we have the rest of our lives to be married. Luckily my family and friends are fantastic and honestly, I don't know how anyone pulls off a wedding without the help of friends and family.

All of my photos were taken by family members and friends. Luckily, someone got a nice shot of the Atlantis for me.



Selena made my cake and cupcakes and did a beautiful job. I feel that I am seriously indebted to her for this. The cake stand (cupcake tower) I made with what lumber I already had in the garage and I think it turned out pretty. My nieces Brianna and Julia helped make and place little 42s on every cupcake, too.





Since this wasn't my first wedding and we both came in to this marriage with children we decided that the kids would be our bridesmaids and groomsmen. My children walked me in and gave me away.



Technically Keith was a groomsman but he was 100% sure that he was our miniature Master of Ceremonies.



Family vows were also added to include the children as they are a very necessary component of this life and relationship.





Groomsmen


Bridesmaids


Our first family photo. I told Eric that we should come up with more reasons for him to wear a tux because he looks fantastic in one.



We actually managed to get all 11 grandkids in one place at the same time.



Though very soon we will need a new picture so we can have all 12... These are my sisters, without whom (along with Selena and Mom) I would have never pulled off a wedding so well.



Not at all hard to tell what the kids are thinking about.




Erin was glad to finally get her hands on some chocolate. Yum!



It was impossible to catch all of the family in any one shot so we took lots. The man on the left of the second shot is Eric's best friend and also our Pianist. I owe so many thanks to him as well.




All of the children had fun blowing bubbles everywhere. So did many of the adults.



All in all, quite a lovely day.