Teacher Gifts

Being the holiday season, it seems there is no end to the "required" (or expected) gifts to give. With 3 kids, teachers are pretty much a permanent fixture on my Christmas list. This year's offering is an apple.

You like my apple? Red ramekin, red cellophane, red candy, and a green chenille stem (pipe cleaner).

From a roll of cellophane, I cut 15" squares (cause it was 30" wide) and I cut the pipe cleaner in half. Each one has 1 cup of candy - you could use red jelly beans, red gummy bears, these have boston baked beans. Now, gather it up, "tie" it off with the pipe cleaner, and trim the extra cellophane.

We can't decide which looks better. Do you prefer the cellophane inside the cup (taped it to the bottom so it stays) or around the outside of the cup?

Do you have other fun teacher (or other) gift ideas?

Animated Beauty

A friend shared this video. Hope you'll take time to watch it, as it's hauntingly beautiful. It's animated by a guy at BYU.

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

Thanksgiving and Life Rushes On

Clearance tablecloths, napkins, glitter pumpkins (from Halloween), 3 bags of candy, and 14 place settings with the Harvest Blessing Mix treat bags and turkey napkin holders, and we've got our Thanksgiving table. My girls helped me put together the turkey napkin holders.

I think the tables turned out looking pretty good. Thanks J and K for helping. Too bad I forgot to take pictures during dinner, when there were actually people in those chairs.

Thanksgiving was a week ago, and I live for Christmas, so I'm always anxious to start the Christmas music, get out the tree and decorations, and make lots of crafts and gifts. But since going back to school, I feel almost Scrooge-y. I think it's because I don't have the time to do what I usually do during the holidays. This year, I haven't completed gift shopping and making, I'm not completely on top of Christmas decorations, and we haven't got the tree out, yet. But I did manage to pull out the red tablecloth (while putting away the orange from Thanksgiving) and change the contents of my vases. So I have one Christmas decoration out. At least I can say I've started.

Now, ribbon bow around the vase bottoms or not? I can't decide what would look best. That, and I don't actually have any appropriate red or green ribbon on hand. Does they need a ribbon?

Silhouette Giveaway

If you've ever heard of Silhouette, get on over to Grosgrain (blog) for a chance to win one. Oh, I want. It's a die cut machine I've been drooling over ever since I heard about it 6 months ago. Isn't it purrdy?

Click for more information or to enter: Silhouette Machine Giveaway

Harvest Blessing Mix

A friend of mine shared this with me, and I thought it would be a perfect favor for Thanksgiving this year (which, although I'm not hosting, I am planning). With one batch, I made 4 big bags (to share with some ladies I visit in the neighborhood) and 21 small bags (for Thanksgiving dinner guests). It really does make a lot. Now, there's no recipe, cause you just add as much of each thing as you'd like. We wanted it colorful, but not too much candy, so we started with pretzel.

(Sorry about the quality of the pictures. My camera will not take good colored pictures in my house at night. The color of my walls reflects on everything. But ignoring the color, you can see what it looks like.)

As you can see, the mix is very versatile. You could change candy corn to popcorn, or goldfish to swedish fish. You can choose whichever dried fruit and nut or seed you'd like (or add several, like I did here), and add as much of each item as you think looks good (or will taste good). You do have to use the twisted pretzels (to represent prayer) and I can't think of any substitution for bugels, but they're easy to find. I just love that it's fast and easy.

You can make your own card to tie on, or print the one pictured:

Harvest Blessings Mix printable.

Halloween

I totally and completely fail. I was in charge of a Fall Festival church function. The tables got decorated with all my pumpkins (and candy corn), there was plenty of good food, most people dressed up, and we had a blast. But, I loaned out my camera for the night and didn't get any pictures of my own family. Jessica was good enough to catch these first 2: of Colton, and me and Katie. Sorry, they're so dark. Then when heading out to trick-or-treat, my camera was dead, so no more Halloween pictures. Later, at Grandma's, I did get one of the girls with their cousin, but that was it. Luckily, someone at the church got a picture of the old man (Rob came up with his own costume, and shaved part of his head for it).

We did finally get pumpkins carved for the week, and the kids did theirs all by themselves - the painted ones and the carved ones. Katie wanted hers to be a cat, and Jess's was usually sporting a clown wig.

Popping Pumpkins

What's the best way to dispose of wilting Jack-o-Lanterns? Take 'em up in the hills and shoot 'em. Apparently, we weren't the first ones with this idea, cause the smashed up one in the middle was there before we set ours up.

Jess loves to go shooting, Colton's becoming more secure, and Katie can barely hold the gun up. Each pumpkin got a few hits, and we left them there for the next target seekers.