Why did the chicken cross the road?

...to go trick-or-treating of course!

I found this costume on Martha Stewart and fell in love with it!  The instructions are so simple but I made mine a little more complicated.  I decided to make some orange pants and also some chicken feet instead of using rubber gloves.  I also made my own hat instead of buying one.  I had to make the thing around his neck because the feathers were in his face and he was NOT happy about it!

It is a great costume if you live somewhere that is cold because of all the layers.  Another modification I had to make was cutting a big slit half way down the back because we couldn't get him in the costume once it was stuffed.  I just put some Velcro on the back so once he was inside we could close it up.  Check out Make It and Love It's virtual costume parade to see my little chicken and get some more great ideas for next years costume.

This is what my floor and pants have looked like for the past month!  We have feathers all over our car and house from this costume.  I don't think even real chickens shed that much!

The extent of my Halloween decor...

I still haven't decorated my house so I found it VERY difficult to decorate for Halloween when I don't have anything to put the decoration on.  So after searching through Martha Stewart's Halloween Crafts, I came across several of her crafts that were made from paper.  She includes the templates for her projects.  I used THIS template for most of it and the rest I just found on Google images.  The picture above was taken at night from outside my home and the picture below was during the day from inside.  It is extremely easy and loved by 2 year olds!

......

......

.......

In a few days I'll post some pictures of my son's Halloween costume!

I'm still here...

I've got a lot of Halloween stuff that I'm working on....will have pics next week!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!

Baby Blanket and Toy

I found both of these fabrics at a yard sale and thought that they would make a wonderful baby quilt when a friend of mine had a baby girl.  It is pink and black stripped flannel with black fleece on the back.  It is so soft and cuddly and will be perfect for the cold weather to come.

I did the baby quilt 30 by 35 with the back 1.5 inches longer and wider so I could us it as the binding.  I then took some scraps and ribbon and made a small taggy ribbon blanket.  I did it 10in. by 10in. with the same fabric as the other blanket and then I put the right sides of the fabric together.  I pinned the ribbon to the edges with the loops of the ribbon between the fabric.  I then sewed it together leaving a few inches to allow me to flip it inside out.  Finally I just closed up the opening by hand with a hidden stitch with a needle and thread.  If you would like a tutorial, go to Melissa Sews.  She closes her hole with the machine and then does an added top stitch around her blanket.

I just wrapped up the blanket and the taggy ribbon blanket together and wrapped it with ribbon and a small card.  I just clued the ribbon to itself and the card to secure it together.  Very simple but still looks nice.

Quilts

I've been trying to get my quilt project done but I just keep running into issues. PLUS, I'm not that happy with how the colors look together. In the mean time, I've found so many adorable quilts on other blogs that I want to share. These are some of my favorite sites for quilting.

This first quilt is from a blog called Side Notes that a friend of mine is an author at. I love the color combinations and the simplicity of this quilt. I can see pink and brown in my head for a baby girl quilt. Go check out this quilt and their other great quilts by going here.
This second quilt is from one of my favorte quilting sites called Moda Bake Shop by the author of my final favorite quilting site, Crazy Mom Quilts. Moda Bake Shop not only has wonderful ideas but they actually explain how to do it yourself! This quilt is one of many that I have loved from them. It is a sweet baby quilt measuring 45" by 54". Click here to get the instructions for this baby quilt.

This final quilt I love so much. It is from Crazy Mom Quilts called the tinker tape quilt. She made the quilt out of scraps. What a great way to use all of them up.
I absolutly love the ragged square top. So simple! I've also decided to stop by IKEA as soon as possible and hope that they still have the fabric for the back of the quilt around! How fun is that!!!

Pinata #2

Again, out of cereal boxes...took much more time than the first because I had lots of little areas to cover, but I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out!

Garbage Bag Dispenser

Since I've been married, we've stored all of our grocery bags under the sink. I've hated every minute of it but didn't do anything about it. The bags under the sink would always have that threat of having something really nasty on them or be all wet from water dripping. I FINALLY put a stop to that! Make It and Love It came up with a really good tutorial to make a multi-fabric grocery bag dispenser. I thought hers was adorable (like everything she does) and her tutorial is really easy to follow so I made mine one night.

I'm doing my kitchen in red, black and white and I had this fabric in my scrap stash. I'm not thrilled with my fabric selections though. I think that some of the red fabric looks more pink then red (especially in the picture.) Luckily no one is ever really going to see it...well except everyone on blog land!

I'm currently working on a project with these. Can you guess what it will be? I got all four books for $.25 cents at a yard sale! This picture doesn't show very well how much fabric is there. After I took the books apart I had a stack that was 5 inches high......FOR .25 cents!!!

Yummy Color Matching

The other day I was in a time pinch...needed to get the kitchen cleaned up and dinner started, but my son wanted to play a game with me. So I printed off these circles on a piece of cardstock and gave him a bowl full of fruit loops and told him we were going to play a cool matching game. I started out playing with him for a few minutes and then invited him to do it all by himself. It was yummy, educational, and occupied him so I could get my stuff done. Win! Win!

Bumper Border

Was doing some organizing of closets this morning when Ivan saw his old dinosaur crib bumper and wanted it back on his bed. There really was no space for it on his little toddler bed, so I came up with another use for it. I tacked it up on the wall as a border, so now he can look at it everyday. What do you think?

Daniel's Quiet Book

The idea for this quiet book actually came from a quiet book someone made for Keri's son, Alex. Each page's theme was derived from a letter in Alex's name. Another friend of mine showed me her quiet book, of which she only made one page. 10 women got together and each of them made one page 10 times and then combined them into adorable quiet books. So I merged those two ideas for a baby shower I threw a week ago. I picked the theme for each page, came up with a rough templates, cut out "kits" for each page, and then had each person at the shower help assemble the book. We didn't really play games, but spent our time eating and working on this cooperative quite book. Some people got really creative and went above and beyond what I could have ever imagined, and some did the bare minimum--and that is OK! Now our friend has something to cherish from her baby shower that each of her friends and family there had a hand in. It turned out to be pretty amazing (my scanner is smaller than the pages, so the pictures don't do the book justice) and a very fun and productive shower. I got many positive responses from the atypical baby shower I threw so I think I will definitely do it again.

D- Dinosaurs (felt dinos behind pockets of rocks)
A- Automobile (toy car in garage, roads, signs)-- I love this page because the 8 year old sister of the gal we threw the shower for sewed the lines on the road. I think she did a great job.
N- Noah's Ark (zipper pocket on ark with plastic animals inside it)
I- Insects (matching colors, magnets)
E- Eating (plate, cup, velcro silverwear, velcro food in fridge (doors open)
L- Letter (Envelope with paper, mailbox that opens and closes) The coolest thing about this project is that is cost me less then $3.00 to make. Now that is not an accurate estimate for the cost of this project, but when I thought of making it--which was only a day before the shower--I was calculating how much everything might cost and quite honestly, I didn't want to go shopping because it sounded EXPENSIVE! So I decided to see what I already had in my fabric and crafts drawers....I had everything we needed except for the bias tape binding! Pretty cool, eh? I thought that was a good reminder to check out all of your materials before you go shopping for project stuff next time...you might already have it on hand!