Happy Halloween

I made a couple of Halloween treat boxes based on a tutorial on Splitcoaststampers.  Here's the link with the directions.  I happened to just get an order of plastic card boxes which came in really handy for these.  

I made a little card for each of the grandsons that fit perfectly inside with some Trick or Treat money.

The littlest with his first pumpkin.   

Some of our teachers have younger children who go another school in our district and they catch the bus from our site in the morning.  I made these little packets up for them because I knew they would have their costumes on this morning. So there was a little office trick or treating before school.

It rained in NJ today which put a bit of a damper on the festivities.  We still had a costume parade at school, but we had to uninvite the parents because the school just could not accommodate them all safely.  What a crazy afternoon with all the early pick-ups!

And our littles in their Halloween costumes today.  

This little guy looks so happy in his dragon costume but he's not feeling well.  He's got the coxsackie virus, poor baby.  And he's really feeling miserable.  They had visitors this weekend whose child was sick and didn't tell them.  So they're very sad that he's missing his first Halloween.  Our daughter said they're going to dress him in his costume next week and take him to the mall with a sign that says "Missed my first Halloween because I was sick."  

So just a little PSA for all of us - "Don't Kiss the Babies".  It's that season when all these viruses show up.  Coxsackie is easily spread to the littlest ones because they put everything in their mouth, but one of the most harmful is the RSV virus which is highly contagious and can be fatal to infants and the elderly.  Our older grandson had it when he was about 8 months old and wound up in the hospital and it was tortuous for him and his parents to have to have a tube inserted in his nose to drain the mucous.  Working in a school I feel that I am in a petrie dish of germs sometimes, but I am constantly washing my hands and making every effort to keep my hands away from my face.  And I don't go to work if I'm sick.  It really bothers me when people show up to work and tell you that they're sick.  

But I'll get off my soapbox now and hope that everyone had a great Halloween.  Tomorrow we start Chapter 11 of 12.

Cape May - Anniversary

Catching up with some events - we took a little trip to Cape May near our anniversary.  Did some shopping, some eating, and some sightseeing.

This is a quick picture of one of the storefront windows in the outdoor mall.  I can't remember for ceratin the name of those fuzzy brown stalks, I think it's ornamental millet, but they're pretty prevalent at this time of year in fall arrangements.

Yes, we had dessert first - Pumpkin/Cinnamon frozen custard.  Mainly because we were there first and weren't going to backtrack after lunch because finding parking at that time would be an adventure.

And lunch was at the Lobster House where we secured an outdoor table on the dock, HWNSNBP enjoying his pre-meal appetizer, oyster crackers and horseradish sauce.  

A view through the rail.

A quick stop at the lighthouse with a drive around that secluded area.

The purple martin houses were still up but the purple martins were gone for the year.

The last stop was back at the West End Garage antique mall.  This bouncing flying pig managed to follow us home.

Walking back to the card this driveway grate caught my eye......

....as did the bark on this sycamore tree.   

And a very fuzzy picture of the card I made for HWNSNBP.  

It's always a quick trip there and back, but always enjoyable.

Pink Christmas for the Cure - Jingle Belles

I haven't finished a Christmas card in quite a long time.  I've started a few, but my Christmas mojo has seemed to have lost its spark.  There are a few cards that I started over the last months that just didn't come together.  I'll get back to them.  But I couldn't go without taking part in the annual Jingle Belles Pink Christmas Challenge.  Our lovely hostesses Stephanie and Lauren each make a donation for each card posted to the challenge to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  Kudos to them and kudos to all the participants for backing such a great cause. 

This lovely angel from Tutti Designs just arrived this week and I paired her with some white embossed snowflakes from Hero Arts and an SU sentiment.  She's die cut from some sparkly white paper on Pink Pirouette background.   

Our school wears pink on the third Wednesday in October in honor of two teachers that we lost to breast cancer and ovarian cancer.  We have a crab apple tree and a redbud tree planted in front of the school in their memory.   This was the message on my message board.

I'm heading over to the Jingle Belles to check out all the other Pink Christmas cards.  You can join me by clicking here.

Inktober 2019 - Days 1-14

Yes, I'm participating in Inktober again this year.  Some of the official prompts are going by the wayside as is usual for me.  I also saw that there's an Inktober Tangle list of prompts, so I'm either combining them with the official prompts or having them stand alone.  In any case, here are the first two weeks of my attempts.

I purchased a Pink Pig 4x4 sketchbook just for this challenge.  It has a little more than the 31 pages that I will need to complete this challenge.

Cover Page

Day 1 - Ring

Day 2 - Mindless

Day 3 - Bait

Day 4 - Freeze

 Day 5 - Build 

Day 6 - Husky

Day 5 - Enchanted

Day 8 - Frail

Day 9 - Swing (off Prompt) 

Used prompt from Inktober Tangles - Lola

Day 10 - Pattern

A Tern with the pattern Cubine

Day 11 - Snow

A snow globe chrysanthemum using Tangle Inaflux

Day 12 - Dragon

With Tangle Floo

Day 13 - Ash

Day 14 - Overgrown 

Flying Pigs

Some flying pigs have been sighted recently.

This cd was given to me by one of our teachers.  Admittedly I haven't listened to it yet, but I will eventually.

This flying pig came home with me after a recent trip to Cape May.  I couldn't resist.

At school we had events for Say Hello Week - a week of get-to-know you kind of events.  One of the days you were to wear something that expressed something about you/what you liked.  Students and staff were encouraged to wear their favorite sports jersey or something else that would tell a little bit about themselves.  I chose to wear my flying pigs.

And these flying pigs actually came home from our trip to Cape May last spring - I don't think I had shared them yet.  (I keep telling myself that I don't need anymore flying pigs, but sometimes they just can't be resisted!

World Card Making Day

We had travel plans for Saturday, October 5th - World Card Making Day but I really wanted to make some cards.  So, I hurried getting ready and had a half hour before we were to leave.  I challenged myself to make as many cards as I could in that time using mostly what I could find on my work table.  I did have to cut the card backs and die cut the two sentiments and the leaves below, but all the other elements were there just waiting to become cards.  

This square was saved from a pocket calendar I used a few years ago.  The calendar was in a vinyl sleeve so there was no harm done and I couldn't see throwing it away.

When I've been able to work on my cards I've been trying to create more than one of the elements that I'm using at that moment to have on hand for another quick card.  Case in point, I believe I used a similar circle on a birthday card for my daughter-in-law but had made two of them.  Adding those die cut leaves was easy enough to pull this one together.

I had colored this elephant a while back and even mounted it on the polka-dotted paper.  All it needed was a sentiment.  

The circular element on this one is one of a couple of tags that I had saved from a project long ago.  The watercolored square seemed like it would be good pairing.  

I can always add sentiments to the two that don't have them, but without them they can be used for a simple notecard, or just have the occasion on the inside.

I should do this more often and not just on WCMD - I might be able to clean up a lot more off my work table!

National Homemade Cookie Day - Cookie Fest II

We celebrated National Homemade Cookie Day at school again this year on October 1st.  I put out an "all call" to those that wanted to take part the week before and sent out reminders.  The teachers and students had Monday, Sept. 30th off so I had to remind them before their long weekend.  It was a busy morning because it was also our School Picture Day and the staff picture is taken before school starts.  I had taken that Monday off, but the building was open so I snuck in that afternoon to set the table/room up.  I had done something to my neck that weekend and was dealing with a muscle spasm so I opted for a simpler cookie - Brown Butter Brown Sugar cookies.

Believe it or not, these are both supposed to be dark brown sugar. They're from different packages.  I think the one on the right might have been mislabeled but it didn't affect the taste.

I pre-rolled all the balls and kept them on a sheet of parchment paper which helped things go a little faster.

As we did last year, I put out a collection jar for those that did not bake to make a donation.  All the money collected went into our Student Activity Fund to be used for those students who might have a need for assistance during the school year.  

I asked everyone to bring their recipe to share also.  It was a delicious assortment.  (There were a couple additional cookies not pictured.)