Framed Burlap Pumpkin Patch for Halloween/Fall

So basically, I've only been using this site to host images. What gives!? The lest I can do is combine both my review/freebie site and this one. I'll have to look into that...

Yeah, that type of stuff might scare you, too
if you saw it outside your window every night.

I think fall is my favorite season for crafts. Between all the beautiful colors I can use, the materials available to me, and the delicious roasting foods, I just can never decide where to start! However, I dislike halloween. Maybe it's from my childhood gore-crazed neighbors who set up scenes from "Saw" and other scaries every year in their yard. Large floating feet? Nope. Someone burried alive? NOT for me. Spiders, snakes, witches, black fog, ect- no way.

HOWEVER, we did dress up our puppy, Maya! If you haven't met Maya yet, she is simply the sweetest, most charming dog. She LOVES love, other dogs, people, kids, and chewing on everything. We got super lucky. She was a bumble bee. She didn't mind wearing a costume, but she LOVED chewing it! This is the first and last costume she'll be getting.

Anyway, onto the craft! As I stated before, I don't like Halloween. All the decorations I could find were somehow directly related. I thought about painting pumpkins, carving pumpkins again, maybe putting some tied up cornstalks outside, but I wanted something festive for inside, too. I found some cute jeweled owls at Michael's and put out my painted "Thanks" wine bottles. Our living room colors are already brown, red, ect, so that room doesn't need much sprucing. I finally figured out something to put in the kitchen, and this is what I came up with :) A framed pumpkin patch!

Framed Burlap Pumpkin Patch

They were super simple to make and were even easier with my awesome Silhouette I won last year in a Thanksgiving customer appreciation drawing from ConsumerCrafts.com. You'll need:

variety of papers (pumpkins)
scrabble tiles
burlap or other fabric
frame with glass
hot glue or strong fabric adhesive
scissors
Silhouette (or scissors or punch for pumpkins)

Cut a piece of burlap to fit the inside of the frame with extra to wrap around the glass. You'll be gluing the burlap onto the glass and wrapping the extras around.

I used my Silhouette to cut out a bunch of pumpkins with all my different papers but you can use scissors or a punch instead. Or just buy cutouts from the store, I saw some again at Michael's.

Next, I lined them all up and placed my scrabble tiles on the bottom.

Finally, glue them on BEFORE glueing the burlap onto anything. I had to use hot glue to get everything to stick well to the burlap.

Finally, glue the burlap, centered, onto the piece of glass that came with the frame. You could use a heavy piece of cardboard as well.

Wrap the excess around the edges and trip if you need to. Especially with burlap, because it's so thick, you have to glue the excess edges down to the back of the glass. Otherwise, it may come unglued when things brush against it and start to wiggle around the frame.

It hangs gorgeously in my kitchen!! Festive without all the connotations!

Mocha Cappuchino Knockoff!

What a great week it's been! Absolutely beautiful! John's been a bit busy working on his class and work to notice, but I'm hoping that dies down. Here's a picture from the other night. I finished working out to find that my husband had built our cat a house out of pillows. She stayed in there ALL NIGHT and didn't think we could see her :)

We had a game night this past weekend and it was so much fun! It was great to be able to see everyone during that long dull stretch of time during the winter after Christmas when everyone kind of hibernates. (Us, hibernating!?) We've gotten extremely lucky, there are snowmobile tracks all over our area! Right behind our house is a giant field with four wheeling tracks that some local snowmobilers have taken to. They've also taken to driving straight through our lawn and plowed driveway to get there versus the streets. One day...

Anyway, this morning I couldn't find any substitute jobs, but the rest of my week is booked, so that's possitive! In the meantime, I've been working out and, since I don't much care for most meats and am getting sick of shrimp and tuna, decided to get some of those DELICIOUS Bolthouse Farms juices!!

 If you've never tried one of their amazing blends, you're missing out. My favorites are their carrot-orange, vanilla chai tea, and mocha cappuccino. They're so good, you just can't help to drink the whole thing! However, there are some MAJOR drawbacks- they're expensive! These two are the 32oz size and cost me $4 each at Kroger this week, but there are only 4 servings in each.  The other night after a workout, I didn't want to break into any protein powder because there's taurine in it and I wanted to sleep, so instead, I had some of the vanilla chai tea. Oh. My. Goodness. Having assumed they were good for me I had never looked at the label... until I was tossing and turning and not able to sleep. They are LOADED down with sugar! So much sugar! Now, I am trying so hard to eat healthier and sugar is my one catch... no wonder I like these! So anyway, I wanted a healthier option and cheaper, too! So I came up with a recipe for my own. I'll figure out the chai tea one later. Here's my finished product :) It's just as tasty! I wasn't going to add NEARLY as much sweetener as the Bolthouse blend, but since I prefer dark chocolate anyway with less sweet, it doesn't bother me.



Bolthouse Mocha Cappuccino Knockoff

•  1.5 cups skim/fat free milk
• 1 tsp cocoa powder
• 1 small packet (1 tbs) agave nectar
• 1.5 cups coffee (I used the medium Keurig setting and a Starbucks dark roast. Add more or less depending on the strength you want your drink. I like mine strong, so this is what I added.)

Brew coffee. Add agave nectar and cocoa powder while still hot. Mix in milk and add ice.Depending on how much ice you add, it will change sizes.

It's not a total match, but it's delicious and only clocks in at 100ish calories for 8oz instead of 160 with 16 grams of sugar from agave instead of the 28 or so that Bolthouse has. These are total approximates using MyFitnessPal, I haven't actually measured everything and don't plan on it!


In other news, I'm doing the spring craft-show at Nat's high school again with my aunt. It's only a day, and only Saturday, and obviously no where near Christmas, so we'll see how it goes. I have a TON of "Mother's Day" tags to add to my books that can be easily taken off, so I'm hoping it'll make them more of a selling point! Here's a picture of my newest creation line. They measure 4.5"x2.75" and are cute as a button! I made all these little mini "Scrabble Tiles" and I just want to eat them up! This is my "fruits of the spirit" book. I made this sweet little tea time one that I'm FINALLY keeping! It just looks too perfect next to me vintage teapot candle.

Some silhouette love!

So I have been EXTREMELY blessed to have won this awesome SILHOUETTE CAMEO!! If you know what that is, your mouth may have just dropped open. It is super duper exciting and I'm LOVING it (most of the time.) Anyway, here's some wedding album stuff I've been working on.

Eating Healthier.

Eeeeek, one thing I am striving for this year is to be more CONNECTED! I haven't officially released this blog yet for that very reason; I wasn't sure if it was something I was going to stick with. I think if I had the following, it wouldn't be hard at all... but I don't know if I will, so we'll see.


One big thing that John and I started doing in early December was eating healthy. I'm a pretty healthy eater as is, I just take giant portions! I also am a die-hard sweet tooth, so anything sweet and savory is up my alley. I also love carbs. love love love. Mac and Cheese, Mashed Potatoes, Waffles, Homemade bread... OK, so I guess I'm NOT that healthy of an eater! John is opposite me. He can usually do without sweets and even carbs, but he LOVES salty things and dairy. I am telling you, that man eats at LEAST three times his daily amount of sodium (which, when you look at the DV of sodium on labels isn't that hard to accomplish. Salt is in everything and there's a lot of it.) I think we're still in a transition period grace stage. For example, for a snack, I'll have a LITTLE portion of icecream... or a LARGE portion of sherbert. John will have a banana... and load it up with peanut butter. Hey, we're getting there.

Anyway, the point of this is that I've been having a super fun time finding new recipes to try, as Emily will tell you! I will find myself on the phone with her salivating together over salads and bakes and chicken things... who knew I'd ever be that excited about dinner. I've found some great recipes that I can throw in the freezer until we're hungry. I've been told the crock-pot is man's best friend, but I've only used it once. SOMETHING likes to jump up on the counter and curl around it and poke her nose under the lid whenever I use it. Trust me, the counter is one of the most off-limit things for Penny and she knows it. Thus, I either have to be home with my eye in the kitchen or there's no crockpot stuff happening quite yet.


Here's one of the delicious things I've been creating:

 PIZZA! This is goat cheese, ground turkey, spinach, and tomato (at least on my half.) I used a Pillsbury pizza crust and just baked according to those directions, adding as much as I wanted (or as little.) It was super, super, super good and I'm just bummed I didn't have time to make homemade pizza crust!!

Anyway, so that's new with us. I'm still subbing, but rarely lately as there aren't many openings right after Christmas. I'm just reading, undecorating, organizing, and crafting in my spare time. John has been so busy with work. Pray for him because he's really getting down about it. He is constantly on conference calls and comes home from work drained. Penny is going crazy. Everyday, we find her in a new spot that she is not supposed to be in. Here was one from last week:
We have NO idea how she's even gotten up there, but it involves jumping on kitchen stuff and that is a total no-no. Very frustrating.

Also, I was offered a part-time resource room job in South Lyon at an elementary school. It would only be until the end of the year and it was every day for three hours, so no extra subbing. I was really excited that I was chosen but SUPER bummed when I found out it takes me about 2 hours to get there during rush hour in the morning. 23 SB is nice... but not that nice at that time. It is a long. Long. LONG. way.