Finally, the Halloween Costume; Plus a few other projects!!

As promised, I finally have downloaded all my photos to Flickr! It took a while because it's been so blasted long since I've done anything worth taking pictures of. Geeze my life is boring...

So this first photo has all of the things you'll need to make a woodland sprite costume on the cheap. A longsleeve shirt from Wal-Mart (which can be used later as a regular shirt), fall foliage leaves, red glitter balls and glittered leaves, red and gold spray glitter, green pipe cleaners from Hobby Lobby and a pair of pliers from the tool box from under the sink!



Don't forget the newspaper adds to protect your table surface. Use more paper than I did, the spray left a spot on my table. Good thing it was a K-Mart table and not Chippendale(sp)!



Leaves and Bits and Bobs.





Enough of the pretties, let's get down to brass tacks. Take all of the leaves off of the branches. They come off rather easily.



Owen was quite interested in the project, so much so that he didn't "mess" with any of the items on the table. He was really pleased that momma was "making" him a costume for Halloween. :-)



After you take all of the leaves off of the stems, spray them with the glitter paint. Oh, the glitter, I just LOVE glitter!!!!!



This is what your hands look like after making sure that the leaves look "just right". Well, at least this is what "my" hands looked like after this part of the project.


Feel free to ask questions about the size discreptancy in my hands. I'd rather you ask than speculate. :-)

Here I am, the scary glittery hand monster. Or am I a frustrated mom? The former. I really enjoyed this part of mommyhood.



Close up of the leaves.



I used artificial foliage to make Owen's head dress. I took the pliers and cut the leaves from the thick part of the stems and separated them as needed. Then I took two pipe cleaners and measured Owen's head, then twisted the ends to make circle. Then I took more pipe cleaners and attached the leaves to the circle with the pipe cleaners. I must be a real momma now that I can make a head dress out of fake leaves and pipe cleaners. :-)



Did I mention that I love sparkly things? Here you can see why.


Here is the finished head dress.



I took the dried leaves and lightly tacked them onto Owen's shirt with a little thread. They stayed on pretty well, he only lost 3 leaves and I found two of them. Not too bad. :-)



Here is the finshed product with the shirt.



Owen finally gets to wear his costume!! He makes an adorable sprite, doesn't he.



They took pictures of the kids at Owen's school, so I got one of him and one of his class.





Here is the boy playing a game.



After he got his "prize."


Such a happy boy!

Getting a tattoo.



This is Owen's friend Zoe twirling in her Tinkerbell costume. So cute.



Owen really enjoyed himself for this Halloween season. We had his "Fall Festival" on Thursday and then on Saturday, we went to a friends house. This really should be another post, but I'm just going to put it all into this one.

I had this friend from middle school that I used to hang with all the way through to college. We hadn't seen each other since just before Dave & I got married. I was on classmates.com one day and came across her name and decided to send her an e-mail. I didn't expect to hear from her because it had been so long and I thought that maybe she had forgotten who I was.

Six months or thereabouts later, I get an e-mail from her saying that she remembered me. Too awesome!! So Saturday night after several e-mails back and forth we finally get to see each other again. She looked exactly the same, cute and bubbly!!! She has been married for ten years and has two beautiful daughters! They have this party every year celebrating Halloween, Thanksgiving & Christmas, I call it "HallowThankMas!"

Anyway, I made a cake for them because it was also their anniversary. It was not just any cake, but a "Checkerboard" cake. My mil bought me this checkerboard cake mold a few years ago for Christmas and I've been to nervous to use it for fear that the cake wouldn't turn out right.

Well, I pulled it out and used it. This is how the layers looked. Keep in mind that the cake was totally made from scratch, no boxed mixes for this "Domestic Goddess"!!!



Top Layer:


Note the alternating layer flavours: bottom:chocolate, middle:vanilla, top:chocolate...

Then came the icing. I swear, I had powdered sugar all over me and some on Owen! This was a true butter cream icing with butter and cream, not just shortening and milk or water.



Mary(my friend) has told me that she and the hubby like purple, so I put purple sotas (squiggles) on the top of the cake and to set off the colour I piped in green leaves around the inside edge of the shell border. Who would have thought that I was so talented. I'm not that good, but I do have a great set of frosting tips! <--- bugger won't let me change font colours!!



The finished product!! As Tina would say, "F*ckin' Deelish!"



I also made another dessert called a Four Layer Delight. Well, that's the church name. It is also known as the "Better Than Sex" cake! It almost is!!!
It's got a graham cracker crust that I add cinnamon and cloves to, a cream cheese, whipped topping, and powdered sugar mixture, chocolate pudding and then on the top more whipped topping and then decorated with double chocolate and caramel syrup. That is truly absolutely deelish! OMG it's good!!! Here's a pic.


Dave did a great job putting this one together so I could take a shower and get ready for the party.

We stayed until 11pm. Owen was knackered and Dave & I were too. The next morning I had to be at church ready to sing at 7:30am. It was Reformation Sunday & so I was there all day, well, until noon. When I got out I went to pick up Dave, Owen & Linda. Linda treated us to a seafood lunch at the Baytown Seafood. It was so good!!!

When we got home our neighbor, not the crazy one, was having abirthday party, so we went over to join the celebration. We had a blast! Owen was knackered yet again when we got home. It was a super busy weekend, but we had fun.