Happy National Popcorn Day!

They pretty much have a day for everything now, don't they?  But this one - for me, at least - was fun.  I read a blurb about it a few months ago in Paper Crafts magazine, and put it on my to do list.  Because all of my guys LOVE popcorn.

Matthew has a particular thing for it.  I did this page several years ago, but he hasn't changed since.  If given the opportunity, he can down a large bucket at the movie theater with no problem.

To "celebrate" this important national holiday, I made envelopes containing a bag of microwave popcorn to give to my 3 guys, the boys' teachers, and my in-laws.  The popcorn box was made using a Silhouette 3-D popcorn box template.  I modified it to only present one face of the box.  October Afternoon's Egg Basket paper from the Cherry Hill line made for perfect popcorn, don't you think?  (Unfortunately, though I scaled the font to be large enough to read on the background piece of paper, ever since Epson "upgraded" their printer interface, my wide-format printer, which is supposed to give edge-to-edge printing, won't do so.  It will no longer print pages larger than 8.5x11, which was the whole point of my getting that printer.  And so the font printed much smaller than I'd like it to be.)

Make sure you have a bit of popcorn today!

Washington DC trip

We spent Memorial Day weekend in Washington, DC.  We took the subway (Jeremy's favorite) and walked around the National Zoo on Saturday.  On Sunday, Matthew and Ryan headed to the Nationals-Padres game, including batting practice prior to the game.  Here's Matthew after having his hat signed by Rick Ankiel.  They had seats on the 3rd base line, right near third base, and enjoyed the game.

Jeremy wanted no part of the baseball game.  He instead wanted to go to the Museum of Natural History and look at the gems in particular, and some of the other exhibits that interested him.  Here he is in front of a huge slab of crystals found in Arkansas.

On the way home we stopped into Ikea so I could get a few storage items for my office/craft room.  It was very hot here on Monday, and we were all glad for a swim in the afternoon.

It's hard to believe, but tomorrow's the last day of school for the boys.  I've made these crayon monograms for their teachers to thank them for their hard work and creativity. (These have been a hot item on all the crafting blogs recently.) 

Got Mummies?

I do!  I found a little tutorial for making these adorable mummy pops (candy covered oreos) at How Does She and decided to give them a whirl.  I did order the eyes that were used in the tut, but they didn't arrive in time, so I substituted some small candies instead.  I found it takes 2 14-oz bags of candy melts to make 25 mummipops.

And they came out just adorable!  Here is a closeup:

And here's one of them in the spider clothesline basket I made last Halloween:

For Halloween this year, Matthew went as Dan (from Bakugan) and Jeremy as Harry Potter.  Matthew's in that "don't take my picture stage" and it's driving me nuts to try to get a decent picture of him.  But I keep telling myself that it will be good blackmail material in a few years...

We went to trunk-or-treat at the school last night, and the kids had a ball.   This is a picture of one of the witches hosting a trunk - hands down, my favorite adult costume of the night!

Potion Making

My guys love all things Harry Potter right now, whether it's the books, the video games, or just make believe play pretending to be Harry and the other characters.  Jeremy will be HP for Halloween.  And the new HP Lego sets are some of the top items on their Christmas lists.

Since they're having such fun with it, I made these potion bottles to add to our Halloween decorations.  The yellow bottle contains Petrification potion (will turn you into a stone statue), the green holds Aconitum (will turn you into a werewolf), and the purple has Time Freezing potion.  The boys love pretending to drink the potions and acting out what would happen.

Supplies: Alcohol Ink (Tim Holtz/Ranger), ColorBox Fluid Chalk,
Silhouette SD Digital Cutter, Labels from Silhouette store,
glass bottles with cork stoppers (Michael's).

Other than getting costumes and preparing for Halloween, we've been getting necessary outdoor chores (like planting pansies, pruning and garage cleaning) done while we have some gorgeous fall weather.  I guess planting pansies in October may sound quite strange to my northern readers - down here in the south, they just can't handle the summer heat.  But they do quite well through the winter, and bring a welcome burst of color on dreary gray winter days.