Tombstone Cupcakes

Happy Halloween:) I hope everyone is having a happy Monday and a great start to the week!  Last night when I wrote my post called I Heart Halloween, I promised that I would write a tutorial for my creepy, but yummy tombstone cupcakes:)  Well, fellow bloggers, here it is!  The cupcakes were pretty easy and just about anyone could make these fun looking cupcakes.

~I Heart Halloween~

Alright, lately I have been posting tons on Halloween crafts, inspiration, or what I was planning for our Halloween party!  Last night was our party and even though I was feeling a little under the weather:(, the party went over extremely well!!!!  I had planned quite of few games to play throughout the night, I didn't know how everyone would like them, at first they were kinda leery of them, but as the night went on they had a blast with what was planned.  In my It's All Fun and Games post, I explained 3 games that would be played throughout the night, and I have to say the favorite for everyone would have been the scavenger hunt!!!  I had listed some pretty crazy things that each group had to take picture of and I was surprised by what they did and checked off their list!  These had to be my favorite check offs of the night:

Number 6 on the list was to ride a broom down an isle.  This just made me burst out laughing!  I LOVE it!!!

Change is Grrrreat!!!!

One of my passions and things I enjoy keeping myself busy with is decorating.  I'm definitely not a pro at this, and that's why I'm asking for some suggestions!  Don't you love trying to find new pieces for your newly decorated room?  I know I do!  It was about time to update our "master bedroom", time for a much needed change.  Plus, I've been itching to get out there and start shopping and searching for some decor for our house:)  Here is our bedroom before:
Now before I show you "the after", I have to explain that I'm not finished and it's only the beginning of long decorating process!  I wanted to go with a drastic color change.  Purple and gray, I think are very deep, rich, and romantic, and they compliment each well:)

My inspiration piece for this color was my dress which was a recent spur of the moment birthday purchase:)

That's me in the middle, all happy to be with great friends:) Isn't it crazy though, how you can find inspiration?  The thing that I love about this dress is the fabric, beading, and the deep color!  I think it looks classy and that's how I want my room to turn out!

Organization is Key!

Hey fellow bloggers! This past weekend, I was working on organizing odds and ends things throughout the house! I have been saying I will organize them, but just never get around to doing it. I have a pretty limited space in my kitchen, so I need to keep things organized to make use of the space that I have! Over the years, I have been printing off recipes for supper, drinks, and holiday parties. Since I'm in such a hurry, I just throw all of the recipes in a folder in no rhyme or reason. Then when I come back and look for it, it always takes me an extra 5 minutes to find my recipe! My solution was easy and quick to fix, buy a binder, paper puncher, and use my tabby dividers to section off each categories of recipes! Easy peasy lemon squeezy!!

Fall in Full Bloom!

I have to say "fall"  puts a smile on my face!  One because all of the beautiful colors and the crisp, clean air that Fall has to offer.  Two because it is my FAV season!  It makes me feel like a kid again because  it reminds me when I was younger and would rake the leaves into a pile and I would take a running JuMp into them:)

My camera definitely has gotten a workout this fall and here's the proof:

Warning: Work In Progress!

Hey lovely followers!  Just stopping in again, to show you the progress I'm making on my kitchen wall decor.  Lately, I have been starting all kinds of projects and I just need to finish one at a time, I think!  That's what I tell my students, take it one step at a time, I need to follow my own advice.

So, here are my flowers that I made so far by using the tutorial from Craftaholics Anonymous.  The only difference from the tutorial that is listed and my flowers is that my flowers are little bit bigger.  On Craftaholics Anonymous, they say to make it 2" wide which I did for my 1st layer.  Then what I did was for each extra layer, I added 1" to the width.  So, for example, my second layer was 3", third layer was 4", and my 4th layer was 5"I have started my 3rd one, but haven't quite finished it! Here's a couple pics of my flowers:)

Spooky, but cute party favors

Hey girls, happy Monday:)  Yet again it's a beginning of another wonderful fall week!  I sure hope you are enjoying this lovely fall weather.  I know soon, at least around here, the winter will be fast approaching and become very snowy and cool.  I have to say though, I really do LOVE the snow, but just not the cold.  I know it doesn't make sense, but I guess that's just how I roll...

This past weekend, like I said in yesterday's post, I was SUPER busy with projects and just keeping myself a busy girl.  One of the things that I received in the mail were my favors from Oriental Trading, which I adore.  They really have some quality items for a pretty great price:)  Anyways, my candy favors and pens came in from them!!!  I almost forgot that I ordered those.  For Halloween, I like my decoration mainly to be "true" Halloweeny, guts, and gore type of things.  So, I ordered gummy eye balls, french finger fries, and boo boo licks which look like already used band aids.  Plus, I ordered a singreng pen and they were much better than what I expected.  I had bought some clear gift baggies from what better than the Dollar Tree.  I divided up my favors, put them in the clear baggies, and now I have one less thing to do on my list:)  I think they will make nice little party gifts.  I couldn't resist at least trying one of the treats and there were really yummo!!!!

A Crafty Weekend:)

Well, this weekend, I kept myself busy since my husband went home to combine again.  Thank goodness this was his last weekend:)  It just seemed like this weekend flew by, but I guess every weekend feels that way!  Friday night I tried to work on my fabric flowers for some wall decor for our kitchen(will post a tutorial of this soon).  I didn't finish all  3 of the flowers, but I finished at least 2:)  Since I don't have a sewing machine, it took me an extra long time to finish up.   It seriously took me about 2-2.5 hours to make one flower!  It could be just that I'm that slow, but I'd like to blame it on not having a sewing machine.  I made some more mummies and put the candy favors together for party favors, decorated my pumpkin for our contest at school, put together my scrap booking storage, decorated our house for Halloween, and on top of all of that cleaned the house!  Needless, to say I was a VERY busy girl.

I wanted to share with you my oh, so cute lady bug pumpkin:)  At school all of the teachers are taking one pumpkin to decorate and I had a hard time choosing what I wanted to do...but I finally figured it out.
Here is what she looks like:

Truckin' Along!!!

Hobby Lobby

I have to admit, ever since I've started blogging, I've been spending a lot of time either on my blog or crafting more than usual:)  This is such a great destressor(if that's even a word:-/ ) for me!  Since, I'm trying to craft more, you know what that means...HOBBY LOBBY trips and several a week that is!  I must say that I am a Hobby Lobby-a-holic:)  This week I frequented it about 3 times already and it's only Wednesday.  Whenever I stop there, I always go to get a few things, but I end up with the whole store...LOL...but really, it's true!  I could practically live in that store!  Who is with me on that one?

I blogged yesterday that I was going to try the mummy tutorial from Craftaholics Anonymous.  If you get a chance you should go check it out!  It is really simple, super cheap, and soo cute!  Well, I officially finished my very first mummy and here it is:  (Drum roll please.....)

Spooktactular Inspiration:)

First of all, I wanted to say that I'm so glad that I started blogging because I get to see all different types of crafts, decorating ideas, organizing, or just odds and end things that I never thought about before!  I also wanted to thank everyone because all of your blogs have motivated me to try more of a variety of crafts:)  It's just what I needed right now, to keep my mind off of other things that stress me out!  Since I have started blogging, which was within the last 2 weeks or so, I have already started many projects and started organizing rooms throughout my house.  I even made a little craft area in the spare bedroom, well it's still a work in progress, but it's getting there:P  Here's just a little of my inspiration that I have found on other sites:

I found these mummies from www.craftaholicsanonymous.net I thought the mummies were just the cutest things and plus I needed prizes for the Halloween party.  So these will work out perfectly just for that:)  I have already begun this project and will post in a couple days or so!

It's All Fun and Games!

Since we are hosting our annual Halloween bash, we wanted to find some exciting and unforgettable games that can be played at our party. I have put together a couple different games that I think will be a blast, or at least I hope so! A couple months ago I was researching on the Internet to try to find some adult Halloween games and I found some different ones on Halloweenforum.com. In the past, we've played drinking games and they are fun and all, but I wanted to go for something different. Here is what I've put together:



1. Toe Tag Mania - As soon as the guests arrive, I will give them 3 toe tags that have been all filled out and ready to go! Each toe tag has a number on it and the purpose of the toe tags is for a drawing at the end of the party for gift! The more toe tags you get then the chances of winning the prize is a higher percent.  So, the rules of this game is try to get as many of them as you can by stealing, bargaining, and/or exchanging. For example, someone might give another person a toe tag for getting them a drink, or doing them a favor. As the night goes, and the more people drink, I think it could get a little crazy for some of the things that could be asked in order to get a toe tag. I found my toe tags on http://www.flickr.com/photos/26295076@N04/5040146018/, these ones had to be my favorite and most authentic looking ones that I found.

In the Valley...

This weekend my husband went home to go combining, that's his true good ole country boy side of him:)  Why should I have stay home and not have any fun, so I planned a fun weekend to go see the fam.  Friday I got to enjoy some time with my dear gma, sister, her boyfriend, and my mom.  My sis whipped a fabulous meal together for all of us and we just caught up with each other.


I've been wanting to go to Galena, IL , which is pretty close to my hometown, for a while now and just haven't been able to.  I thought why not go on Saturday with my sis and that's what we did:)  If any of you have been to Galena then you know that it is a town with lots of unique houses and stores scattered throughout the down town area.  Most of the shops, cafes, and odds n' end stores are situated in a hilly area with many trees surrounding it.  Since it is fall, it's the best time to visit this quaint little Midwestern town because the leaves on the trees are turning all sorts of different colors from red to yellow to brown.   I wasn't the only one thinking this same thing, when we got closer to Galena, we soon found out how packed it was!  The streets in Galena are very narrow and on top of that there is parking on both sides, so it makes for a tight squeeze to get up and down the streets.  On top of that, parking is atrocious.  This town has a lot of history,  SO much character, and that's what brings me back to the town every year.    You can find some unique gifts for just about anyone here and that's just what I did:)  I found something for a couple of my family members and my husband!  I was searching for something for my big puppy, but couldn't find what I was looking for.  My husband is a HUGE fan of the Hawks, so this is what I bought him.

I think he will like this and it will work for the fall season:)  I bought a "Halloween" sign for myself because it was just too cute, I couldn't pass it up!

Then I came across, a little ornament that I knew would work perfectly for a Christmas present for one of my family members!  What do you think?  You don't really see too many of these!

Fashion Friday!!!!

Hey there fellow bloggers!! Shopping is my second job other than teaching, and I can always find some cute outfits:)  I just wanted to share a couple of my most recent purchases with everyone!

I bought this top from Maurices, which is the BEST store ever!  They have really cute clothes for a pretty good price! I got my necklace from Kohl's it has to be one of my favorite necklaces so far.  I bought this shirt because I have a lot of dressy shirts and didn't really have many, if none at all, casual shirts.  At first, I wasn't to excited about the sleeves, but I like how they look especially with the scoop neck line:)

 This is my new favorite top!  I purchased this from Maurices, too.  Layering is a good way to add color and interest to your outfits and that's just what I tried to do.  I thought purple and light gray would be a complimentary color combo.  I'm debating whether or not to go with the same color combo for our bedroom....I still can't decide.  I found the necklace at Maurices also.  The jacket can be worn with many other tops, so that's a plus!  Again the reason why I bought this top is because I don't have many tops that are casual.  What do you think of these?  Which one is your favorite?

It's beginning to look a lot like Halloween....

So, tonight I felt like I should start to decorate our house and get it ready for our party.  It usually takes me about a week or so to get the house completely decorated, but I like to start the decorating a little sooner than that.  Plus, I'm just excited for Halloween and how the decor will turn out!  I LOVE Halloween and decorating for it is my fav:)  So here is what I did so far, it's not really whole lot, but like I said it's a start!

This one has to be my favorite picture!  Don't you like the DIY photo frame in the background?  This picture is a close up of the one below this.  I purchased the skeleton head for only $0.88 and the skeleton candle holder for $1.00, great deal, right?!?!  I think so!!!! Most of my Halloween decorations, I have bought on sale after Halloween.  So, if your looking for Halloween decorations, wait until after Halloween to make your purchases.  It is soo much cheaper. Oh, and also check out your local Dollar Tree!  They are some pretty neat things that you can use for crafts or just to sprinkle of Halloween to your decor

DIY Halloween Invitations

Crafting is what I like to do with my free time during the week. Since my favorite holiday is Halloween, I have been working on a couple crafty things for our bash that we are planning on having later on in the month.  One of the first things I decided to work my magic on was the invitations!  As I was leafing through the Oriental Trading catalog, which is one of my favs, I saw an invitation that caught my eye, but these invitations would have cost me about $25.00 or so.  I then decided to do some research online to look for some template or any idea that was out there for making this type of invitation.  I was in search of invitations that would be sort of creepy and fun because I wanted it to have the same feel as how we would decorate our house.  Boy was I lucky because I stumbled upon Martha Stewart's coffin template for an invitation and it worked out perfectly!

Oh....the Places the I've Been!

Traveling has always been a one of my many loves in life!  If only we had more moola to go on many different adventures:)  I've traveled to several places throughout the United States such as: Wyoming, Las Vegas, Philedelphia, New York City, Atlantic City, Florida, South Dakota, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Tenneese, Virgina, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinios, Washington D.C., the Bahamas, and several other places that I know that I'm forgetting.  Soon I will be traveling to Hawaii for our honeymoon....YAY!!!!  I can't wait :) :)  My plans are to visit all 50 states, Mexico, Europe, and Australia before I get to old to travel which I know that I have a long time until that day comes, but why not start early right? 

One of the reasons I find traveling so much fun is because, depending on where you go, you can see the  different ways of living and cultures.  For instance, I fell in love with Chicago because of the sense of community that the city has.  I was surprised that for such a huge city, the people are friendly and very helpful!  When we went on our mini-moon, of course I had to document everything we did and everything we saw, so i guess you could call me the picture queen, but the locals were always asking us if we wanted them to take our pictures.

 Just arrived in Chi town and living it up!!     On a boat tour around the Navy Pier!

A Lil' About Me:)

This will be my 3rd post, and I haven't explained who I am or what I do.  Well, from the title of my blog, you can see I'm living in the midwest and always have, always will:)  The thing I love about the midwest is the change in the seasons, the down to earth people, and my friends and family are within an hour drive!                                             

Here is my family:

This is me, my momma, and my sis:)                                               This is my "adopted" sis, my brother, and     me:)

Life As We Know IT...

Why does life have to be soo complicated?  Why can't life be simple, easy, and great all the time?  I know some people say you have to have the bad times to realize the good ones.  Why do terrible things happen to deserving people?  Why is it when life is going great there is a HUGE road block lurking around the corner?  How can people look you in the face and tell you something that's a complete lie?  How can people live a lie for six years and be sorry even after being given a second chance?  Are they really sorry or sorry for being caught in their lies? Are their lies so big and complicated that they lie to themselves to make it feel better and make themselves look better?  Can they even trust themselves?  Can people change for themselves or do they change for others just so they can get what they want?

This weekend has been a VERY trying weekend, as you can tell, and I just wish I knew the answer to all of these questions.  Wouldn't it be simplier if you were given a book that was about how to live the best life.  Be given step by step instruction on how to make it happen?  The truth is life isn't as we know it and life isn't cut and dry, straight and simple.... and it never will be!  Are we all alone in this world and can only rely on oursevles?  It seems the older we get the more things go wrong and astray. Why is that?  Shouldn't it be the older we get then the happier we become?

Well, here is to hoping for a much better and restful week ahead!

Halloween is Lurking Just Around the Corner:)

I've had this blog for quite some time now, but just haven't posted anything yet, so here it goes:)  I have to say that Halloween is the BEST holiday ever!  Maybe it's because you can feel like a kid again, and I truly am a kid at heart:)

Every year we have a Halloween bash at our house, our maybe I should just say I do because my husband is usually combining during that time.  This year I wanted to make the party more fun and better than last year.   So, I have found some pretty neat adult games to play from other blogs or websites out there.  One of them is a scavenger hunt, but this isn't one for little ones, nope!  It's an adult scavenger hunt and I can't wait to see what some of the people come up with!   You know, of course, it wouldn't be a Halloween bash without some type of drinking game and that's just what I purchased from Party City.  If you haven't been there before they have the best things there!  You should go check it out if you need party items or Halloween costumes!

In case your wondering, I have picked out what I'm going to be this Halloween and have started thinking about next Halloween already.  I told you, I am completely crazy about Halloween:)  I'll post some pictures after our Halloween bash of what I was and hopefully my costume makeup will look alright:-/

I have plenty of things to keep me busy for planning for this party!  One of the things that I do EVERY year is decorate our house, every single room!  Yes, it takes FOREVER to do it and take it down, but once it's up, it looks aMAZing or at least I'd like to think that:)  Here's a couple photos from our Halloween party's before: 

  This is how my kitchen was decorated....spooky huh?!?!