Happy Halloween!

Little Pumpkin Heads

 

I've gotten back into crochet this past week. These little pumpkin hats were a lot of fun to make while the days were getting cooler. I talk a lot about my love of summer, but October really is my favorite. It's gorgeous outside! Plus I made pumpkin bars today so my house smelled heavenly.

 

 

My littlest pumpkin head. Such a cutie!

 

 

For the hats I used THIS super simple FREE pattern. Loved it!

The stem I kind of just made up, and it shows... don't look to closely :)

For the vine I used THIS pattern. I could have made these little corkscrews all day, they were a lot of fun!

 

 

 

Some Autumn shots of my kids playing in the leaves...

 

 

This beautiful canyon was just a short 10 minute drive from our home.

 

 

"Every leaf speaks bliss to me,

fluttering from the autumn tree."

Emily Bronte

 

 

The Blanket Recovery Project

 

Our little C has a "B" that she loves more than anything in the world. About 5 years ago when I was brand new to quilting, I was sorely tempted by some cute fat quarters at the quilt shop I had just started working at.

 

 

I brought home my new purchase and set to work making a quilt for my brand new baby girl. Little did I know she would become very attached (I should have know, my other daughter has a "wiggy" that she still sleeps with every night). Had I known, I would have taken better care to do it right and I might not have ended up with this 5 years later...

 

 

Dreadful!

 

I pieced the top but never quilted it, just tied it. So all those seams started to come undone and lately I've been finding pieces of it around the house. It was time for a facelift. The experienced quilter in me now couldn't stand it any longer!

 

 

I let my daughter watch me do this to her beloved blanket because I wanted her to know it was still her "B". I assured her that "B" would be much happier when all this "itchy" stuff was off her. She even helped me and only cried once when I accidentally ripped a hole in the back. We mended it and got back to work. Then we went through my fabric stash and she picked out the fabric for her new blanket.

 

A full 32oz diet coke gone, a headache, very soar arms, and only 3 hours later... this is what we accomplished!

 

 

"B" before was fun to crawl inside and wear as a toga :)

 

 

"B" after! A beautiful, usable blanket again.

 

 

Our recovery project was a success (I was quite worried the whole time!). She has been carrying it around all day and told me that "B has never been so proud".

 

 

With her new facelift, B might just make it to college someday!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Favorite Recipes: Soft Sugar Cookies

 

You know those long hours of waiting until the sun goes down on certain holidays... Halloween, Christmas Eve? The kids are going nuts with excitement and you've used up every good idea you had earlier in the month. That's when I like to break out this recipe for these super soft and delicious sugar cookies. They take awhile to make, well at least they don't come from a box, and the kids can take their time decorating them. It eats up a couple hours from start to finish in our home. And they taste so very good. They turn out a lot like those Lofthouse sugar cookies we love so much! There is a reason I save this special recipe for holidays, I eat way to many!

 

Soft Sugar Cookies

 

1 Cup Butter or Margarine, room temperature

2 Cups Sugar

1 Cup Sour Cream

3 eggs

1 tsp. Baking Soda

1 tsp. Vanilla or Almond Extract

6-7 Cups Flour

 

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the sour cream and mix. Add the eggs, mix. Add the baking soda and flavoring and mix. Add the flour two cups at a time, mixing after each addition. It is best to refrigerate the dough before cutting.

 

Roll out on a lightly floured board. Keep the dough about 1/4 inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters and put on a paper-covered cookie sheet. Bake at 325 for 8-10 minutes. Do not overbake! Do not let them get browned! Cool and then frost and decorate.

 

 

 

Thank you Grandma Franson for this yummy recipe and the family traditions!

 

 

A Wickedly Easy Little Pillow

 

I'm going to eat my words a little bit here. I've tried printing on fabric before and the freezer paper that I used jammed my printer and made me angry, so I suggested using heat n bond. But I decided to give it another try and it worked! Not sure what, if anything, I did different but this time it worked wonderfully.

 

So in order to create this wicked little pillow all I did was pick out a font on the computer and chose a Halloween word. Some other words I played around with were "spooky" "fright" and even "October 31". I liked "Wicked" the best.

 

Cut a piece of fabric 8.5 X 11 inches and a piece of freezer paper 8.5 X 11 inches. Adhear the fabric to the freezer paper by ironing it to the waxy side of the freezer paper. The freezer paper will stick to the fabric well enough to go through the printer but peel off cleanly after it's been printed.

 

 

Peel the freezer paper off the fabric. I trimmed up my fabric a little bit to the size I wanted my pillow to be. Cut a piece of fabric for the back the same size as your front.

 

Now sew the two pieces together and leave a little hole in the bottom to stuff your pillow. Stitch up your hole when you are finished.

 

 

 

 

 



 



 

FREE Halloween printables for your home

 

These fun printables make a huge Halloween statement in our home for very little money. The frames I gathered from around the house and the prints only cost a few dollars to have printed out. I love the way they look grouped together in our entry way!

 

 

I made one in blue as well. Not a very traditional Halloween color but it matches our living room perfectly.

 

 

You can download your own set of Haunted Home Printables on box.com...

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN WITCH

 

CHEVRON BATS

 

WHEN WITCHES GO RIDING

 

HAUNTED HOME PURPLE

 

HAUNTED HOME BLUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spider Web Table Topper TUTORIAL

 

Believe it our not this is a super easy table topper that makes a big impact. It's just strips cut at an angle to make that spider web look!

 

 

I made 2 sizes, one fits nicely on my table as a table topper and the other would make a prefect candle mat. It's easy to adjust the size of the spider web by adding more or less strips. I think my little googly eyed spiders are happy to have such a cool web to hang at :)

 

 

To start you'll need six 2 1/2 inch X width of fabric (about 44in) strips. Sew your strips of fabric together like you see I've done below. Press all your seems to one side.

 

 

Most quilting rulers have a 60 degree angle line on the ruler. Your going to use this line to cut out 6 triangles. Like you see I've done below, lay your long strips of fabric out on a cutting mat and line the top edge with the 60 degree mark on your ruler.

 

 

A little clearer picture of that 60 degree angle...

 

 

Now using you rotary cutter, cut one side of your triangle at a 60 degree angle.

 

Now turn your ruler and line up the 60 degree line with the side you just cut. (see picture below) As you cut your second triangle you'll notice now that the triangle is flipped so that the longer bottom of the triangle (black with bats in my case) is now the point and the green circles will be the longer bottom on the triangle. See the next picture after this one if that seems confusing...

 

 

Cut out 6 of these triangles. If you are using 2 inch X WOF strips then you should be able to easily get 6 triangles. If you increase the size of each strip you'll need to increase the length of each strip. For instance, I wanted a larger table topper for my dining room table so I increase each of my 6 strips from 2 inches to 4 inches, but then I needed twice as much length so I ended up sewing two strips of fabric together end to end to make them long enough to get 6 triangles.

 

 

Lay your triangles out like you see I've done in these pictures. Start by sewing together the 3 top and then the 3 bottom.

 

 

Now sew the top 3 and the bottom 3 together in the middle.

 

 

Open it up and press and you'll have something that looks like this...

 

 

You can now quilt and bind your table topper using your favorite method. This is a perfect project to practice quilting yourself on your own machine. See THIS POST for tips on how to do that.

 

 

As you can see I made 2 different sizes. For the smaller size I only used 4 strips instead of 6. Make sure that you use an even amount of strips (4,6,8...). If you use an odd number you will end up with a middle strip that doesn't alternate when you rotate each triangle.