debor026

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 wan...

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...

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 want...

I found an album of love letters to my grandmother from her husband. 20 years of love letters just sitting among the photo albums in their cardboard boxes (treasure troves, I tell ya). They're in a yellowing album that smells like old books (Which, by the way, is such a fantastic smell and until the Kindle can include that I can't imagine why I'd ever buy one. Psh!). Anyway, I can't believe that nobody jumped to claim the albums and I'm so glad that I did. Since there is a LOT of family history to catalogue and share (and hopefully my family will contribute more) I have started a seperate blog for all the loveliness. Come take a peek if you like over at Og The Little Frog .

I started seeing a new doctor this morning and I have to say that I am not impressed. Actually, I'm a little appalled. On my chart, under medical allergies, I list Aspirin. I do not take it for any reason. Why? Well, as a child I was hospitalized with Reye's Syndrome . It's a condition for which they don't exactly know the full cause but basically after a child (possibly older but usually kids) has a flu/fever and takes aspirin/salicylates for relief they have a very serious reaction requiring hospitalization that typically affects most bodily organs (especially liver/brain) and can be fatal. I had a trip to the hospital for this when I was around 3. Today, this new doctor says to me "Really? You had Reye's? I thought that was just theoretical?". Um, no. It's not just theoretical and it's very serious. It's why you aren't supposed to give a child aspirin/salicylates. So either she has it confused with another condition or she hon...

Please, please, PLEASE ignore my flood curtains. I am moving the green curtains upstairs (only cream down here soon) but I haven't finished their replacements yet and they're a little short. As many of you know I am completely over the moon about finding the KnockOffWood blog. I have SO many projects in the works right now, some from her plans and some of my own design, now that I'm inspired to be creative. I have just finished off one of my family room projects that I was inspired to create after going through the easy plans at KnockOffWood. Note, this is not one of her plans but I did adapt some ideas from there. If you're interested in doing something similar I have posted below the steps I took in making the shelves. If you've never built something yourself before I would highly recommend checking out Ana's site and looking through some of her instructions first as she gives some really easy to follow instructions and tips. I decided that I didn't ...

Still catching up on my backlog. Here are some shots I took of my oldest son's birthday party last month. He is very much into all things military (games, toys, etc) so I thought that an army party would go over well. I made sure all of the little soldiers were set up with helmets, binoculars and dog tags. Since the girls were revolting a little (not so into army stuff) I added little pink bows to their helmets/party hats and that seemed to make everyone happy. To keep the kids occupied I gave them a scavenger hunt, disguised as military "missions". As they completed each mission a clue for a new mission was waiting for them. They had to: ~ Rescue their comrade (I tied up a teddy bear and put him in the laundry room) ~ Observe and report (Tell me about some objects in a particular room) ~ Cooperate to help our allies retreat (Get 5 army men and bring them back) ~ Traverse a mine field (Obstacle course in the living room) ~ Sneak through enemy territory (Get to the k...