Hurrah for Halloween!

Hurrah for Halloween...the best darn day of the year to be a kid, if you ask me!

Last Saturday we held our annual Halloween party. This year we had a superhero theme and asked our friends to come dressed as either a superhero or a supervillain--either an established character or one of their own design. Our friends were such good sports and so creative; I loved seeing their costumes! You can see two of them here and here. As for Quin and me, I knew what I was going to be the minute we started planning the party back in September, but we didn't come up with Quin's costume until a few days before the party. Here we are:

Quin is Michael Phelps, the closest thing we may have to a real-life superhero with the whole super-speed thing. I'm The Junker (not to be confused with The Joker). I wore a utility belt loaded down with a bag of quarters, a tape measure, my kitchen collectibles identification book, a bottle of hand sanitizer and a flashlight for looking in dark estate sale basements, and my 'cape' was a vintage apron!

We had fun decorating our house to be The Secret Lair. We constructed the ubiquitous superhero Giant Wall of Screens on one wall of the front room, had a Secret Disguise lab with funny glasses, hats and wigs, and my favorite--'autographed' photos of some of our favorite superheroes! (Click on the photos to enlarge so you can read the writing)
The party was such fun and we're already planning what to do next year!

We did a bit of pumpkin carving this year with Maren but kept it to the standard jack o' lantern face, unlike my brother Kristjan who whipped up this little piece of produce magic:

Isn't that awesome? He and my other brother made up the pattern in Adobe Illustrator. I actually suggested that my brother dress up as Prince this year--and as my bro is a 6'5" blond white guy, that has the potential to be pretty darn hilarious! Not sure where he'd find a purple velvet bullfighter suit with a 40" inseam, but maybe he'll come up with something.

And one last decoration from around my house:
When I bought this urn at the thrift a few months ago I knew I wanted to use it to display a pumpkin! I meant to put Spanish moss under the gourd and use a white pumpkin, but neither thing happened and it's too late now. Maybe next year!

Today I need to make a quick run to the thrift to hopefully find one final piece for tonight's costume (I'm dressing as something different from the Junker). Tonight we'll fairy princess-ify Maren and then head to Trunk or Treat at the church, followed by a bit of trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. The weather here should be gorgeous and we're looking forward to a FUN night. I wish you all the same!!!

The Eve of All Hallow's Eve

I'm getting to the end of my Halloween decorations, but I still have a few fun things to share. This darling banner was made for me by my sweet mom! She cut the pennants with a really cool Big Shot die from Stampin' Up! To get the great texture on the triangles, she covered them with black lacy fabric and made the little 'bells' to hang from the bottom points. Here's a close up of one of the letters:
The whole thing is glittery and has so much texture and I just love it! Stampin' Up! also sells a really great scallop punch that she used on the edges of the pennants. It's on my wish list for sure.I did this 'eyeballs on a platter' piece last year, and it still squicks me out just as much as it did then! The new addition is the 'ick' flash card that I purchased from Jen's shop, Rosey Little Things. The flash cards are meant to be word suffixes but when I saw that ick card I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it! I think it's oh-so-appropriate, because it's just what I said when I had to handle all those sticky, gooey eyeballs to pile them on the plate!


My Sweet & Sinister Swap partner Julie B. made me this really neat art piece but I didn't have a photo of it when I posted about the rest of my package. Julie made a really neat rosette for the middle of the hanging by using pages from an old Who's Who? book, and she even found entries for both my last name and "Poe"! I hung it over my beloved black feather wreath, which seemed perfectly appropriate.

Just one more sleep until the big day! Maren has been asking me for weeks if it is Halloween yet and she danced with delight this morning when I showed her the calendar. I can't fault her--I'm excited too!

I think my favorite part of the house to decorate for each holiday is the top of my china cabinet because it's well out of Maren's reach, meaning I can actually decorate with things I don't want molested or destroyed by curious three-year-old fingers! It also helps that it's a nice large surface. I try to do different things from year to year although I may re-use some elements. This is what I came up with for Halloween 2008:


I kept it a bit more spare than usual and stuck to a mostly black color scheme. Here's a closer view of the left side,

the center,

and the right side.I do love those funny vertebrae candles that I bought last year! I prefer Halloween decor that is a bit spooky and macabre but not too gory, and those fit the bill. The black feathery things in the champagne bucket are not actual feathers; they are black and glittery and plastic but oh so cool! They have wires in them so they can be shaped, and I love how they look with the dried Spanish moss spilling over the top of the bucket.

(Side note: I lived in Savannah for a couple of years, where Spanish moss grows naturally in the beautiful old oaks and adds to the charm of the landscape. What you may not know is that stuff is positively CRAWLING with chiggers! You are never supposed to touch it or pull it down. We heard tales of tourists who found that out the hard [read: itchy] way when they took some moss home as a souvenir!)

One of my favorite elements of my display is my crow. He is helpfully identified by the vintage flashcard stuck in an old flower frog. :)

Just a few more days until Halloween, yet I still have more decorations to share with you. I may go a bit overboard with the decorating, but it sure makes it easy to find blog topics in October! :)

Toadstools for every holiday

My love affair with red and white toadstools began sometime last year and hasn't show any sign of abating, so you can imagine what happened when I opened up my October issue of Family Fun magazine earlier this month and saw this spread:



Yup, I almost wet my pants with sheer glee! Although we'd already decided on Maren's costume I was sorely tempted to make her into the cutest little toadstool our neighborhood would ever see. Maybe next year! Don't you think a little boy baby would make the most darling chubby garden gnome? The patterns don't seem to be available on the FF website, so if you want to make a last-minute toadstool you'll have to find a copy of the magazine itself. Those pages go into my keeper file for sure!

Saturday morning Maren and I made a thrift store run. We were looking for some items for our party that night and for a few more pieces for my Halloween costume. We found neither, but did find that they've already begun putting out the Christmas items and they were all 50% off! I scored some great vintage stuff that I'll share later, and also bought a whole bag of other ugly wooden ornaments just to get these little sweeties:

I love them SO much, I can hardly stand it! I'm half considering keeping my silver tree & vintage glass ornaments in storage this year in favor of buying a green tree and doing it up in red & white, toadstools, and a general sort of German/Swiss/Austrian theme with lots of wooden ornaments and such. It would be a total departure from my usual sparkly tree, but it sounds so charming! I thought about it last Christmas too and had meant to look for an inexpensive green artificial tree while yard sale-ing this summer, but that never happened. Maybe I'll just keep collecting toadstools for another year and shoot for 2009 instead!

Phoneix-bound and more Halloween projects to share

Hi Blog friends! I need help from any of you who live in the Phoenix area (Linda T, I'm talking to you! :) My mom and I are going to the area in a few weeks for our third annual Girls' Weekend. We're taking a couple of art classes (soldering & beeswax collage) at this great place in Mesa called Blissful Living Studio, but we're looking for a few other fun things to do. We plan to hit Melrose Vintage and we have some family in the area we might like to see, but we're wondering if there's anything else we should put on our must-see list? We're flying in Friday morning, taking classes during the day on Saturday and then leaving Sunday afternoon so it won't be a long trip. We like antiques, crafts, funky stores like Anthropologie, and my mom knits so local yarn shops might be fun as well. We're open to all suggestions!

Now that the business is over, let's get back to Halloween! First, head over to my friend Angie's blog and see the darling wreath she made! She used a simple grapevine wreath form and a selection of ribbon from the $1 bins at Michael's. All she did was cut lengths of the ribbon and knot them around the grapevine branches. So simple, yet so cute--and it's even cuter in person, let me assure you! What I really love about it is the colors. For me, purple makes the whole thing just pop! What an easy decoration that could easily be adapted for any holiday or to match any decor.

And here's a little decoration I made:

I can't remember exactly how I stumbled upon this blog, but as a lover of Halloween it had me instantly hooked! My favorite thing are these very cool apothecary labels that the designer has very generously shared for public use here on Flickr. Just right click and save the images to your own computer and you can make your own potion cabinet!

For my bottle, I used the large poison label. I measured my bottle (a decanter I thrifted with just such a project in mind!) and sized the label accordingly in my Word program. I printed it out and added a bit of brown chalking to make it look appropriately aged, glued it on the bottle and filled it with colored water. Easy but fun! Wouldn't you love to have a whole shelf of old bottles and jars with scary labels?

Celebrity Crush Sighting & a cute Halloween jar

When autumn rolls around, one of the movies that I always get a jones to watch is the Anne of Green Gables series. Although the movies take place all through the year, the autumn scenes are so full of glorious color that they've made a Pavlovian-type connection in my brain. Those movies are definitely on my Top 10 Best of All Time list--if you count them as one, they might even make the Top 5.
So you can imagine my squeals of absolute giddiness when last night I got the opportunity to see GILBET BLYTHE live and in the flesh! I know! {squeal!} We had tickets to see the touring production of "The Drowsy Chaperone" last night. I was already excited for the show as it's one I had the good fortune to see in its original Broadway run and I loved it. When I got to the theater and saw the name Jonathan Crombie on the cast board in the lobby, I knew exactly who it was: GILBERT! I ran inside and confirmed with the Playbill that he was in the show--he actually played the main part (the narrator), then hurriedly told everyone I knew within earshot who might share my excitement. That just wasn't enough, so with 1 minute to curtain I called my mom to tell her the news, and she squealed just like I did!

The show was just as good as I remembered and getting to see one my favorite movie crushes was a treat. The show begins in the dark with only the narrator's voice and right away, I could tell it was him! Of course, he's 20+ years older but he was still cute. :) Seeing handsome Gilbert was just the icing on the cake of a really great night!

Another Halloween decoration to share:

The jar was thrifted a while ago with no purpose in mind, but it was perfect for this project! The creepy-but-cute spider is a vinyl Decor Element from Stampin' Up! (I'm trying to decide if he needs some red sparkly jeweled eyes--what do you think?) The jar is filled with various-sized glass ball ornaments in Halloween colors. The original was filled with candy which looked yummy and festive, but that is a seriously bad idea for a household where both Mommy & the 3-year-old have a dangerous sweet tooth.
Here's the original version of the jar that I copied. The spider vinyl also comes with the 'spooky' letters and extra lines so his hanging thread can be as long as you want it. I didn't have room for the letters on my jar so I'll save those for another project. I love doing projects with decorative vinyl because it's so easy to apply and so versatile!

Marie-Therese Gown GIVEAWAY !!!!!!!

Marie-Therese Gown GIVEAWAY !!!!!!!

So, you wanna see something that will make your jaw drop wide open like mine did? Click on the Marie-Therese Gown Giveaway link above to see what has to qualify as THE most spectaular little girl costume ever created! I actually gasped audibly when the first pictures opened on my computer, no kidding. And here's the kicker: Kathleen, the talented person who made this dress, is GIVING it away! No, really! Each week Kathleen makes a wonderful dress and then just gives it away, FOR FREE, to one of her commenters. Amazing, isn't it? I know. If you want a chance to win this amazing confection of a Halloween costume or any of the other lovely things that Kathleen makes, just head on over to her blog and follow her directions.

It is going to be one lucky little girl (and happy mama!) that wins that dress, and I sure hope it's MY little girl! I'll have every finger and toe crossed between now and Sunday, when Kathleen does the giveaway. Now, where did I put that lucky rabbit's foot?.....

I also wanted to show you all how I decorated my beloved muffin top table for Halloween. I removed all but the Halloween-ish colored jellybeans and filled it with dice, dominoes, spider rings, orange slices (which Maren will NOT quit asking me to give to her), candy corn, eyeball erasers, and my favorite--rubber rats! This table is still my favorite piece of furniture in the whole house. I was poking around eBay and found this large muffin pan. It doesn't have the large wells like mine does but it could still be made into a neat table.

The weather this weekend was lovely, and we took advantage of it by going to a local nursery on Friday afternoon to pick out pumpkins (Nick's, for anyone local). They have lots of fun things for the kids to do (a bounce house, a maze, wagon rides) and it's all FREE! The pumpkins are a bit on the pricy side so I'm sure that makes up for it, but it was still fun and still cheaper than our usual journey to the pumpkin patch across town that costs us $20+ just in tolls. Here's Maren with one of the giant pumpkins for sale:

One of the other reasons I love going to this nursery is that they sell all the unusal kinds of pumpkins that you see in magazines around this time--the varieties that are green and pale pink and shaped like giant wheels of cheese. I find that I gravitate much more to those than the perfect orange orbs that make good jack o' lanterns. The more unusual, warty and bumpy the better! I had to laugh because yesterday we had visitors who, upon seeing my crazy gourds, remarked, "Hey Maren, those are some pretty ugly pumpkins!" I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder for those! :)

Halloween Happy Mail & a Spooky sign

Now that we've established that Pushing Daisies is perhaps the most charming show evah, let's talk about the other big TV event of last night: no, not those two pin heads yammering at each other on the Presidential debate, the Project Runway finale!

I get why Leanne won, but I did love Korto's line and thought it was really beautiful and ultimately much more wearable. Kenley's clothing was pretty but not fab, with the exception of this dress:
which was my absolute favorite outfit from all three lines combined. Where can I buy one RIGHT THIS MINUTE? The mandarin collar, kicky full skirt and gorgeous hand-painted flowers make me covet it completely. Oh, and I would totally wear it with feathers in my hair too.

Best line of the night was when Kenley realized that Tim Gunn was the third judge and said that maybe she should have improved her attitude. Hello, Karma? Meet Kenley. Ha! And now that Leanne has won, do you think show sponsors Tresemme and L'Oreal could put their heads together and convince her to ditch the stringy hair and art school-nerd glasses? Yikes.

The other day I was delighted to receive some Halloween Happy Mail from the lovely Shara. I have to show you what she made because I am so in love with it:

Shara used an old book (appropriately ORANGE and titled Suddenly A Corpse) and altered it into a Spell book! You can't see from the photo, but the edges of the papers are covered in black glitter as well. Love the vintage 13 card and all the little witchy trinkets hanging from the front! I adore it so, so much--how very clever of her! She also sent a beautiful handmade paperweight with vintage Halloween images inside. What treasures to add to my Halloween decor and what a sweet friend. :)

One other piece of my Halloween decor to show you:

I bought this wall hanging at a great place called Tai Pan Trading Company in Utah, but I was thinking that you could make something similar pretty easily at home. This one is large--11"x19"--but it seems that I've seen smaller unfinished wooden plaques at craft stores. The background is German text printed in a blackletter font (what is it about that combination that looks so creepy?) on aged-looking paper. The 'Spooky' is printed on top of that, and the whole thing is decoupaged on top of the painted plaque. Easy as pie!

Random Wednesday stuff

Quick...hop on over to Wendy's blog to enter her giveaway to win three gorgeous sparkly glittered pumpkins! I want that silver one, so my name's in the hat for sure! :)

And while I'm being bossy, can I just request that if any of you blog readers out there have one of those fancy schmancy Nielsen boxes that measures TV ratings, will you pretty please with a cherry on top start watching Pushing Daisies?

It's my favorite TV show since Arrested Development got unceremoniously yanked off the air, and I'm afraid it may meet a similar fate if ratings don't improve soon. Pushing Daisies is sweet, romantic, funny and quirky. It's like some writers took a cross-section of my brain and all the things I love and made a whole TV show around it: bright, saturated colors, pie, a love for puns, the dulcet tones of Jim Dale, Swoosie Kurtz, Kristin Chenoweth, and a decidedly 1950s fashion sensibility. The sets and costuming are visually stunning and Lee Pace isn't so bad to look at either. ;)

Fried green tomatoes, anyone? I mentioned last week that I had to go pull the remaining tomatoes in my garden before we had our first hard freeze. Now, that is a child's wheelbarrow but I still think that's a pretty amazing pile of green tomatoes, especially when you consider that I had approximately one dozen actually turn red over the course of the summer. That's right, a dozen. This year was terrible for tomatoes in Colorado so it wasn't just me, but it's not quite the harvest I had envisioned when I planted my garden in June. Can you imagine if they'd all turned red? I'd have tomatoes coming out of my ears! I need to go through the green ones to see if there are any that can be ripened. Otherwise, I'll be Googling recipes for green tomato relish!

And one last silly thing for today:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Sweet and Sinister Swap--sent

Check the post below to see what lovely things I received in the Sweet & Sinister Halloween swap. I must admit that I had a tough time sticking swap guidelines to use chiefly black & white with "a touch of orange." I used a heavy hand on my touch of orange but I just can't do Halloween without it! I didn't take photos of all of the things I sent to Julie, just the things I made.

This little jar started life as an old milk glass cold cream jar, sans lid. I used some fun bat rub-ons on one side and some velvety letter stickers on the other. Around the neck of the jar I hot glued some gorgeous black velvet scalloped ribbon and a bit of bling (a vintage earring).
This poor pumpkin went through several iterations before it was finished. I started out by painting it with a black harlequin pattern, an idea I saw somewhere online. Great plan, except I couldn't figure out a way to draw nice straight lines on my bumpy, round pumpkin so I just sort of free-handed it...and it turned out horrible! Laughably bad, really. I'm not so good with a paintbrush.

I then found a forgotten can of black chalkboard spray paint in my basement, so the next plan was to make it into a cute chalkboard pumpkin, an idea I saw in a magazine this year. The chalkboard paint took several coats and when it was finally done, I tested it by writing on the pumpkin with orange chalk. Great, but when I tried to erase it the chalk smeared all over and left an ugly mess! On to Plan C...paint the whole thing white again using a can of spray paint from my basement. But I forgot that I hated that particular type of paint, as it seemed to come out in droplets rather than a nice fine spray, resulting in an ugly, mottled black and white pumpkin that looked like it had a bad case of mildew.
At that point I employed Plan D: Give up and buy a new pumpkin. I decorated it with a big vintage velvet leaf, and now that I look at the photos I wish I had thought to coat the stem with silver glitter! Maybe Julie can do that part. :) I also decorated it with a big feathered crow that I adorned with a necklace of vintage seam binding, metallic fibers and of course, more vintage jewelry bling.By far my favorite thing that I made for Julie was this collage. I was inspired by the collages from the Bits & Pieces swap that Jenny Holiday hosted a year ago. The base is a 9" x 12" canvas which is then divided into a dozen roughly 3 x 3 squares. I had such fun creating all the little individual collages! That's what I was making back when I posted these photos.

In fact, I had such fun making Julie's collage that I kept going! I created two more collages, and both are available now in my etsy shop.

Sweet and Sinister Swap--received

I was excited this year to be able to participate in ArtsyMama's Sweet & Sinister swap, a vintage-style Halloween swap where the theme colors were black and white. My partner was Julie B, who doesn't have a blog but is someone I had the pleasure to meet at Silver Bella last year. Julie sent me the most delightful package! It was tough to keep to the black and white color scheme (I know I added more than a touch of orange) but she did it well. Here are the fab things Julie sent:

The glittery Trick or Treat sign is hanging right outside my front door--very appropriate, no? The little glittery Boo is on the window ledge in my kitchen, where it looks just perfect. I can't wait to use the Martha Halloween banner in a garland I'm making--the letters are glow in the dark, how fun! Maren ran off with the googly eye glasses as soon as we pulled them from the box. Here she is modeling them:
Maren has also been enjoying the big jar of candy Julie sent! YUM! Julie decorated the jar with hand-stamped twill tape. Isn't it neat? I've actually been thinking of doing a little blog tutorial on how to stamp and print on twill tape. I love the little black crow she added!

I had mentioned to Julie that I'm really loving crows right now, so she made the neatest hanging with the words from Poe's "The Raven". I just realized that I forgot to take a picture of that so I need to add it later.

Julie also sent a darling handmade journal, great die cut felt ghostie garland, and look at these neat letter balls she made. They were in the candy jar--how clever, Sweet & Sinister! These remind me of the very pricey porcelain letter balls I've seen in catalogs and in boutiques. Julie made these by painting wooden balls and applying scrapbooking rub ons. Very neat! She also sent some great black 'pine' garland that will be perfect for decorating.

Julie sent her treats to me in a huge box filled with packing peanuts, and even that was enjoyed! Here's Maren taking a "bubble bath" later that evening:

Thanks again, Julie! You were a fabulous swap partner! Next up I'll show you what I sent to Julie. Right now, I need to go see what I can salvage from my sad tomato plants. We're scheduled for rain and snow and generally yucky weather for the weekend so I've got to work while I can. Have a lovely weekend!

Getting rid of UFOs

My house is besieged by UFOs. Not the shiny flying kind that divulge skinny little men with bulbous heads, but the Unfinished Object variety. It seems that everywhere I look I see half-finished craft, decorating, cleaning or organizing projects. I get excited and start projects, but inevitably something happens and midway through I lose my motivation or run into some other sort of technical snag that causes my momentum to grind to a screeching halt.

Take my curtains, for example. I've been dealing with (or rather, ignoring) that disaster since last year at about this time, when the original wood blinds gave up the ghost. Currently, I have curtains and a curtain rod but the rod is hung incorrectly and has been that way for months. I purchased the curtain rod for another window but it's still leaning up against the wall in the corner of the room, where it has been for quite some time. I'm finally to the point that I'm willing to pay a handyman to come take care of that mess for me.

Another such abandoned project was a gorgeous old mirror I bought last year at a thrift store for $10. The backing (a piece of old cardboard) that held everything in was falling off and needed to be replaced--an easy fix. I had planned to use mat board so I checked at the framing department of both JoAnn's and Michael's, but each time I asked the cost of a sheet of mat board I was quoted a completely ridiculous price--upwards of $25! I couldn't stand paying that much money for glorified cardboard, so I just waited and figured I'd find a cheaper option.

That was about a year ago, and the 'cheaper option' has remained elusive, so my beautiful mirror has stood collecting dust in the corner. On Sunday night I finally got fed up with these stupid UFOs and decided that no matter the cost, the next day I was finishing that mirror! Monday I went again to the framing department at Michael's, and when I explained my dilemma the very nice employee sold me the perfect piece of mat board for a whopping $3.50! At home, it took me 45 minutes to remove the old tacks, cut the new board and secure it using the old tacks. Here's my new OLD mirror (and it is old; the back was dated 1938!):


I am in love with it, and I can't believe that it was so easy to fix! All this time I could have been enjoying it, if I had just been a little more motivated to find a solution. That gave me the impetus to get working on a few other UFOs, and there are still plenty more where those came from! Hopefully I'll have more UFOs turned FOs to share with you soon!

October Giveaway winners & Embellishment kits!

Thanks you all for entering into the BIG October giveaway! Time to go drag the Goblet of Fire from its shelf in the basement...
Phew, it's dusty! Let's reach in and find the TWO winners for the giveaway!

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

26 9 

Timestamp: 2008-10-03 23:53:37 UTC

Comment #26 is....Jenny in Maine! Jenny has a gorgeous blog of her own...wish I had design skills like that!

Comment #9 is....Heather from Party in Pink! I love what she did recently to dress up one of those plastic drawer things we all have.

Jenny and Heather, please email me at stampinfraulein AT yahoo etc. etc. with your mailing address so that I can get your goodies in the mail to you ASAP! To everyone else who entered, thank you so much for stopping by and taking the time to comment. It means so much, really--and now I have a whole bunch more new blogs to look at! I tell you, blog reading is like a full-time job. LOL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And my other exciting news for today... I've put together three special Trick or Treat Halloween Embellishment kits, stuffed full of great vintage goodies to inspire your Halloween crafting! I'd like to offer my blog readers first dibs on them, and anything that hasn't sold by Monday October 6 will go into my new etsy shop, The Merry Magpie!

What's in these kits, you ask? Well....

3 vintage cream and black Bingo cards
1 chandelier image stamped on vintage ledger paper
3 packets of vintage trim (seam binding, rickrack etc. Each kit has one each orange, black, yellow)
1 skein matching embroidery floss
24" orange and black tissue festooning
all of the Halloween Dresdens & scrap shown
a bag of pure silver German glass glitter, fine grade
Scrabble letters that spell out BOO, EEK, GHOST depending on the kit
vintage black buttons, a mini orange clip, acrylic gems
a vintage shoe clip
2 black and white birthday candles

Here are the photos of each kit's contents. The Dresdens & scrap in each kit are the same, so there's only one close-up photo. The main difference in the kits is the color/type of vintage trim, the type of vintage shoe buckle, and the Scrabble letters.

The 'Boo' Kit

The 'Ghost' Kit

The 'Eek' Kit
The Dresdens and German scrap included in each kit

Cost for each kit is $14.50 and Priority Mail shipping is $4.80. If you're interested in purchasing a kit, please email me at themerrymagpie AT gmail DOT COM and we'll work out the PayPal details. I absolutely adore everything in the kit! The Dresdens can be tricky to find (especially in an assortment!), as can the festooning so I'm happy to be able to include some in these kits.

Have a wonderful weekend! My grand plans include listening to Conference, getting out my Halloween decorations and working in my craft room--all things I love to do. Hope you're able do do some things to make you happy as well!

Recipe share: Salmon-Potato Cakes

Just a quick recipe share--this is what we had for dinner tonight. It's so quick and easy and yummy. The recipe originally appeared in the February 2008 issue of Better Homes & Gardens and can be found here as well. Here is the recipe with my changes:

Photo from BHG.com

Salmon-Potato Cakes

14 oz fresh skinless salmon fillets Here is my biggest change: I am lazy, so I used a 14 oz. can of salmon instead of fresh. I will admit that canned salmon is right on the high end of my gross-o-meter because I hate having to pick out the bones and skin, but once I get over that I'm okay.

2 cups refrigerated sour cream and chive mashed potatoes This would also be a great way to use up leftover homemade mashies. Also, I don't care for the Country Crock brand as I thought they were a bit dry.

1/2 cup seasoned fine dry bread crumbs
3 Tbsp snipped fresh dill I used dried, about a teaspoon
Nonstick cooking spray
fresh mixed salad greens enough for 4 people
bottled Honey-Dijon salad dressing

If you prefer to cook your own salmon, refer to the BHG link for the microwave cooking directions. If using canned, dump it into a big bowl and pick out the skin and bones, then break up with a fork. Add mashed potatoes (I find they mix better if they're not ice-cold from the fridge), bread crumbs, and dill. Form mixture into 8 cakes.

Heat a skillet coated with nonstick cooking spray over medium-high heat. Cook cakes 3-4 minutes on each side, until heated through and browned. Place salad greens on plates. Top with salmon cakes; serve with dressing.

The recipe yields 8 cakes which they call 4 servings, but the cakes are quite large so if you eat a lot of salad, you might just need one. That would also help cut the calories & fat on the NI.

Nutritional info for 4 servings of 2 cakes: 503 calories, 31 grams of fat (7 g saturated), 2 grams fiber

Enjoy! Don't forget, you still have until Friday (tomorrow) at noon MST to enter your name in the October giveaway. Just leave a comment on the post below!

Hooray for October GIVEAWAY

Sorry to be so late--I had some last minute technical difficulties on a project for my Sweet & Sinister Swap package (which was due out TODAY!) that took up quite a bit of time. But my package is now in the hands of the USPS and I promised a giveaway, so a giveaway we shall have!

Announcing...the Vacuuming in High Heels and Pearls "Hooray for October" giveaway!

To celebrate the advent of October and the fact that Halloween is a mere 30 days away, I thought I'd spread some love in the form of Happy Mail. For this giveaway I will chose TWO winners! And what will the winners receive?

Each package will include one of these darling Making Memories chipboard kits. Each kit has three big chipboard shapes that can be decorated with the papers, ribbons, stickers and small chipboard embellishments that are also included. How fun!

Each package will also include a set of these spoooooky haunted house Jolee's dimensional stickers, a set of cute witchy diecuts from Stampin' Up!, and various and sundry other Halloweenish tricks and treats!

To enter, please leave a comment on this post anytime between now and Friday, October 3 at noon MST. Don't forget, there will be TWO winners this time! Happy October!