Our Halloween Weekend

Hey Y'all! 

So sorry for the break from the Blog. Last week was kind of crazy. My grandparents came to visit from Illinois for the weekend, and so the last minute cleaning frenzy was real! Then, of course, they never even came over to my house. Oh well, at least my house was clean for a little while. 

We had a great time this weekend shopping and sharing some of our favorite restaurants with my grandparents. On Saturday, instead of going Trick or Treating, my church puts on a Fall Festival for the community. Hubby and I usually work at it, but we volunteered to set up that morning so we could actually enjoy the Festival with our son and my parents and grandparents. It was so much fun! 

Little Man got to do his second hayride, and his first pony ride. I was so afraid of him being afraid of the pony, but he loved it! 

Now, for what I promised last blog post! 

Technically, this was from a week and a half ago, but here are Hubby and I's costumes! 

Say Hello to Fear and Sadness from Disney's Inside Out! 

These costumes were so fun! I was actually kind of shocked that Hubby let me paint him! He doesn't usually go for stuff like that. The facepaint was from Walmart. My blue wig and glasses were from the Spirit Halloween Store. The sweater and sweater vest were from Goodwill and were $5 each! (I regularly do my Halloween Costume shopping at Goodwill!), and the bowtie was from a seamstress friend! She had made them for a play her grandson was in, and she let us borrow it! I love having talented friends! Everything else was things we already had. All in all, these costumes were very easy to put together. The hardest part was finding a sweater vest. I found the ONLY sweater vest my goodwill had. lol. Trust me. I scoured that entire store! 

Little Man's costume was even easier! 

His pirate costume was found at Target. It came with all you see here, except the jack-o-lantern. Then, I just took some eyeliner and drew on the mustache and goatee. He was adorable! This picture is right after I told him to say, "ARRRRGH!" 

Now he tells me everyday that he has to put on his costume! This weekend has been fantastic! Yesterday, I went to two events, and I can't wait to share them with you! Be looking forward to that post either tomorrow or Friday! 

Have a blessed Wednesday! 

Brain and blood clot cupcakes

Hey y'all! 

This weekend a friend of mine had her annual Halloween Party! Hubby and I left Little Man with the grandparents and had a great time! You will get to see what our costumes were on Wednesday. 

A few years ago, my friend started having a contest for the yummiest, most grotesque looking food. This is the first year I actually participated. I found this link on Pinterest and decided that this was going to be my entry. 

The cupcakes are a doctored up version of boxed French Vanilla cake mix. I promise I will do that post soon. It's really quite easy!

The cupcakes are then cored and filled with strawberry jelly. This is the blood clot part of the cupcakes. The tartness also helps break up all the sweetness of the cake and icing. 

The icing is my standard buttercream recipe from Wilton, with Almond extract as flavoring. I mixed together pink, yellow, blue and a tiny bit of black to make the fleshy grey color of the "brains." These we're lot easier to do than I thought they would be. All I had to do was do a big squiggle on each side of the cupcake, and a smaller squiggle on top of each big squiggle. The squiggles were made with Wilton Tip #3. 

And there you have it! They were big hit at the party, and although there weren't any prizes, I won the contest! We had a blast at the party, and are already planning what we will befor next year!! 

Happy Halloween Week! See y'all Wednesday! 

November Sub - Give Thanks

Hey Y'all! 

Hubby and I are getting ready for a friends Halloween Party this weekend, so basically, I am getting ready for the Party. I have gotten all of our pieces to our costumes, and am baking cupcakes today! It's going to be awesome and you can expect pictures next week! :) 

For now, you saw that title and were expecting to see a post about Thanksgiving, not Halloween! So let's get to it! 

The November Sub actually came to me about 3 weeks ago, but I thought I would post about it a little closer to it actually being November. 

Also, it's not my favorite sub. It's not strictly Thanksgiving, it's a VERY similar color palette to the October Sub, and there are a lot of stickers that I probably will just not get a lot of use out of. Let me quit yakking about it, and let you see what I'm talking about. 

I do like that she remembered to include the Purchase Sub reminder sticker this month. If you didn't get the sub last month, she sells a sampler sheet that has those reminders on them, here. I'm not thrilled about the card, because I already have my own thank you cards leftover from when my little man was born (ENDLESS BABY SHOWER THANK YOU CARDS!!) lol. I don't foresee myself using the label stickers much because they are so wide! They take up a big chunk of the EC boxes. 

I like the half boxes. Those turned out really neat! The quotes page looks awesome, but I don't really put quotes in my planner, especially not full box quotes because I want to fill it up with things I do. I like the idea behind the acts of kindness stickers because I think we should always strive to do kind things for others, but I never really plan out doing those kinds of things. They usually just happen. I don't know, maybe I'll use them. 

The Thanksgiving sticker set is adorable. That one will most likely get used with the leftovers I have from the October Set! 

Overall, I don't love this month's sub. I will still order a December one, so it hasn't deterred me at all because I have been ordering these each month since June, and this is the first one that I really just don't like. That is not bad at all. 

Don't worry Kayla! I still love your shop, girl! In fact, I just ordered a bunch of washi from her website, so expect a haul once that shows up! :) 

Have a great weekend, and I will see y'all Monday! 

Birthday Cake Fail, and Redemption!

Hey y'all! 

As promised, here is the story of my dad's birthday cake. His birthday was Sunday. As you all have probably figured out by now, I enjoy decorating cakes. I took all four Wilton Cake Decorating classes last year, and have done a few special occasion cakes since. 

Well, as my gift to everyone, I have been doing my family's birthday cakes. Except my husband......he never wants to make a big deal out of his birthday, and it's kind of hard to surprise him with a cake because we live in the same house. 

Anyway......
So I go to Pinterest and find this cake design. It looks simple enough, and goes with the fall designs we usually do on dad's birthday cakes, so I got to work making it. It turned out beautiful!

However.....

....this happened. I. Was. Devastated!! That cake was simple, but time consuming! I felt so bad. And my dad, being the awesome dad he is, ended up comforting me on his birthday!

Well, this year, I was determined to right this tragic wrong! I got my redemption in the form of the new cake....

It's not as pretty as the original one was, but it didn't fall on the ground so I call it a win! Just to be sure, we had it at my house so I didn't have to try to transport it anywhere! And sorry for the blurry photo, not sure what was up with my phone that day. BTW, don't you just love Timehop? It's great when it brings up past cute photos and videos of my little man, not so much when it brings up past failures!

I like this cake because it is chocolate with chocolate icing. I filled it with Marshmallow fluff, which actually ended up soaking into the cake and just made it extra moist and yummy! When the slices are cut, each slice looks like a candy corn!

Dad was very happy with his cake this year, and is grateful that he finally got one! lol. Here's to hoping this doesn't happen again with any of my cakes!
Hope y'all got a good laugh! Have a great week and I'll see ya Friday! 

Pumpkin Patch!

Hey Y'all! 

So...... I'm getting kind of bored of the planner posts, and judging by the number of views on my last one (a big, whopping 3!), you guys are too. So, I am going to take a break from those for awhile. 

Today is all about the fun we had on Saturday! We took my son to an honest to goodness pumpkin patch on a farm for the first time! His first Halloween he was only 4 months old, so we didn't go anywhere to get a pumpkin. Last year, we went to one of the church pumpkin patches set up on the side of the road. It had a really cute area to take pictures, though. 

That was my sweet boy last year! Adorable, isn't he?! 

This year, we went full out! The farm had a playground for kids, a petting zoo, a mini hay bale maze for toddlers, a little tractor for kids to ride on, a hay ride, and a giant corn maze! We all had a blast! 

We took my nieces, my Father in law, and my parents and crammed into my mom's minivan to drive the hour to the farm. It was actually quite fun! 

We ran into some friends from church there, which was awesome, because Little Man ended up having his own friends there to play with! 

This farm had many opportunities for pictures! 

Hubby and I even joined in the fun! 

And the weather was perfect! There was a strong breeze the whole afternoon!

There was so much to do, that Little Man didn't even fuss with missing his nap! The only meltdown we had was when we took him off the tractor ride. He wanted to do it again, but it was time to go. :( 

This hay bale maze was flipping adorable! Little Man ran through it with his buddies for, like 15 solid minutes! That's like three days in toddler attention time!

Once the corn in the corn maze started getting taller, Little Man enjoyed riding on his Daddy's shoulders. It was so fun, because he would just giggle along while we walked through the maze because the corn stalks were tickling his cheeks! 

We ended the trip with a big pumpkin to take home, and I do believe some carving adventures are in our immediate future! 

We had such a great day! I definitely think we will be going back there next year! 

Sunday was my dad's birthday, and I have a fun little story about his birthday cake, that you will just have to come back on Wednesday to read about! 

Hope you have a great Monday!

Week of 10/12 - 10/18

Hey Y'all! 

Happy Columbus Day! 

This week continues the Halloween themes I've had going in my planner for the entire month of October! This week starts some pretty fun fall festivities, and I can't wait! 

It's Freaky Fountain week! :) I have been looking forward to using this Darice Book for awhile now! Halloween is such a fun time, anyway, but when you add in the cuteness of a soda shop theme, this is bound to be a great theme!

All of the wash tape used this week is from Michael's except the skinny washi separating the weekend. That one is from Hobby Lobby and was part of a set. 

As usual, the hydrate sticker is from Oh, Hello. The half box is from AWigsDesigns, and the rest are all by me! I am actually enjoying being able to slowly become independent in supplying my own stickers. It feels nice to be able to save money on everyday functional stickers, and it helps me justify purchasing some more elaborate stickers that I wouldn't be able to design for myself (at least not easily). 

Appointment stickers and churches are from Oh, Hello. I used some of the fall stickers from the October Sub (posted about here), and again, the half boxes are from AWigsDesigns. So are the baking stickers. Everything else is my own designs! 

As you can see, my dad's birthday is Sunday! I'll be baking his cake this weekend, and since his birthday is in October, he always gets a Halloween cake. I will be posting about how I made it next week! We will also be going to a Pumpkin Patch on Saturday so I will be posting about that experience as well! 

In the meantime, look forward to Thursday! I have my November Sub from Oh, Hello, and I will be posting about it then! 

I hope you are all having a wonderful Monday so far! 

Talk at ya later! 

Drawing Challenge Update 2

Hey y'all! 

So, I have finally done some more of my drawings! Here are days 8 through 14!

I hope you all enjoy these pictures! As long as it takes me to do them, it's because I actually want to put some thought into them. I enjoy doing these very much, and it's fun to have things prompted to you and try to figure out how to best do them! Next week, I will put up the next seven drawings! 

Love you guys! 

Week of 10/5 - 10/11

Hey Y'all! 

This weekend was a wee bit crazy. My son and I were rear ended on Friday. We are ok, but my car is a little worse for wear. There may be a new (to me) car in my future, but I don't know for sure. Just kind of waiting on the insurance company to call back. Bleh... 

Anyways, on to the more fun stuff! 

Here is this week's Halloween spread! This weeks sticker book is Witches Way! 

Not a super heavy week as far as happenings. Monday and Wednesday are kind of busy, but everything else is pretty bare. However, things are already starting to pop up, so I have a feeling it will fill up quick. 

The Hydrate Sticker is from Oh, Hello (as usual). The Half Box on Monday is from AWigsDesigns, which apparently is closed now. The rest, (except the Witches Way stickers) were all made by me! I am so excited about being able to make my own stickers!

The Church Stickers are from Oh, Hello. 

So, I love decorating my planner, and I love sharing the spreads with you guys. But after awhile, it gets difficult to think of things to say. Especially, now that the majority of my stickers will be self-made.

I might switch to doing one of these every month so that you can see my favorites. Or maybe, I will just post pictures without descriptions. I don't know. I haven't fully thought it through, but there may be some minor changes coming soon. 

Hope y'all have a great week! If you have any suggestions about what you would like to see from me, please let me know in the comments! 

Fall Darice Sticker Haul

Hey Y'all! 

I was trying to save this for when I had more, but I have not been able to get out to Michael's yet (it's about 20-30 minutes away depending on traffic). Plus, I am not sure that there would be any out there if I went. My Michael's isn't as up with the times as others I have seen. 

Case in point: I had to go to a Michael's while we were in Orlando to get these four books. 

Plaid Pumpkin is the one that I have been REALLY wanting since I first saw it a few weeks ago on the Helloigan Facebook page. It did not disappoint! It is super cute! I think that one and the Give Thanks books are my favorites!

Of course, I love Turkey & Blessings, and Gobble Gobble too! 

November will be featuring these four books! 

I will also be on the lookout for Winter and Christmas sticker books soon too! 

Put pictures of your favorite sticker books in the comments! I would love to see what you love! And it might give me something else to purchase (which I am sure my husband would just love, right?!)!

Week of 9/28 - 10/4

Hey y'all! 

This week is an exciting week in my planner because it is officially the beginning of my Halloween Spreads! It's also exciting because about 90% of the stickers used are stickers I made myself! Remember how I told you that my Mother in Law was going to let me use her Silhouette Cameo? I got to use it this week, and so none of these stickers were cut out by hand! Woo Hoo! The cut was a little off on some of them, but all in all this was not a bad first attempt. 

The half boxes, appointment box, pencils, to do list, single strips (except the purple ones, and the bottom one on Monday), books, weekend banner, and TV show stickers are all stickers that I made myself! I LOVE the way they turned out.

The book sticker is similar to Oh, Hello's. I love hers so much, but can't afford to keep buying them in all the monthly colors, so I designed my own. They are slightly different because I didn't want to copy them exactly. 

The Hydrate sticker, drawing challenge stickers, church sticker, and little Oh, Hello logo are all from the Oh, Hello Etsy Shop! Thursday her November sub goes live! Check it out! I know I will! :) 

I found the washi tape at Walmart! 98 cents, you guys! It's amazing! 

Closer looks at each side:

You can see where the cuts were slightly off, but I am not worried. I will figure it out better for my next batch of stickers I make. 

I used the Movie Mayhem Darice Sticker book for this Halloween spread! I figured the use of purple in the stickers would be perfect for combining the September and October colors. 

So, as you can see, nothing too crazy planned for this week, just fun planning, and maybe a few baking sessions need to happen! I can take pictures, and let y'all in on the process! Let me know if that would interest you!

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If you would like $10 off an Erin Condren Life Planner for yourself, follow this link! 

https://www.erincondren.com/referral/invite/kelseymercer0330

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P.S. If you missed the livestream of me singing at my church yesterday, here is the link. You can watch the whole service (a little over an hour), or you can skip to 21:16 for my song. 

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/74266560

Drawing Challenge Update

Well, clearly, I am not keeping up with this like I said I would. The downside of showing you my weekly layouts in my planner is that you can tell when I fail to get something up on time. I figured since I didn't get this post up on time, that I would get it up once I could! Sadly, this is as far as I have gotten, so I am almost exactly two weeks behind schedule with this challenge! Someone please motivate me to do this! 

This challenge has been a great way to get me out of my comfort zone when it comes to drawing things. I have also discovered that I like using markers much more than colored pencils. A lot more of the drawings will be done in markers from now on.

I think this one needs a little explanation.... This is my family (I am not great at drawing humans yet, so I drew basic figures). I colored each person in with our favorite colors. Then I surrounded us with things we like to do.

My future consists of Hubby and I relaxing on our personal piece of beach, watching the sun go down while sipping on sweet tea! We will travel many places in the meantime, but we will always come back home to the beach!

Hopefully, I will be able to post some more next week. If not, take away my PSL's until I get caught up! (That ought to motivate me, right?!) 

Week of 9/21 - 9/27

Hey y'all! 

Fall is officially here! Today is the first day of the Fall season, and to celebrate, I have decorated my planner in all fall stickers and washi!

Here is last week's layout all finished! I like the way it turned out! Definitely better than it started.

It started out that the main theme was going to be Delightful Lemon's Fall in Love sticker set, but I also ended up including stickers from the Apple Picking set, and stuff from the Oh, Hello October Sub (posted about here). I included some stickers that I made for myself.

I was able to find the sticker paper that is very similar to the paper Delightful Lemon uses (it doesn't feel exactly the same, but it is close enough for Government Work!). So, now I am able to make these really good quality stickers for myself. My MIL has a Silhouette Cameo and is letting me use it so soon, I will have stickers that I don't have to cut out by hand anymore! Yay! That makes my hands happy!

The TV stickers were of my own making again. The pencils are also mine. Everything else is either Delightful Lemon, or from Oh, Hello, except the hydrate sticker. That is from VintageGypsyRoad.

As you can see, I have a solo at my church on Sunday! If you would like to see what I look like, and hear an awesome song about God, tune in to my church's livestream here!
If you are not an early riser, we also save our services in our archives. They are on the same page as the livestream!

I had to get creative with my weekend banner decoration. I didn't have any weekend banners printed out that would have gone with this layout, though I suppose I could have used the September ones that I had.

So Sorry this didn't make it live earlier today! I had the best intentions, but didn't have my pictures uploaded so that I could post. The Drawing Challenge Update will be going up tomorrow! It's already written, just have to click Publish! Have a great evening! 

Week of 9/14 - 9/20

So, since we went out of town last week, I really didn't get the chance to post much of anything. Plus, it's not super wise to post that you are GOING to be out of town on the internet for the world to see. Especially in a planner where there are details. 

That being said, I have decided to post last weeks spread today, then I will post this weeks spread on Wednesday. It looks fantastic, if I do say so myself! 

Last week, I went with a Halloween Theme because Hubby and I went to Halloween Horror Nights! It was SO much fun! We used to go all the time, but haven't been since before I was pregnant with Little Man. It was great, but we were exhausted! Little Man has been sleeping through the night since he was about 2 months old, so we have not stayed up that late in awhile!

I decided to combine the Delightful Lemon September Set with the Spooky Pumpkin Darice Sticker Book. Then, I threw in a few of my own stickers, and some Oh, Hello Stickers. (surprise, surprise)

Here, you can see the Hydrate sticker from Oh, Hello, and the Drawing Challenge stickers, also from Oh, Hello. Oh! And the books are from Oh, Hello too! All the pumpkins are from the spooky pumpkin sticker book. The Scale, and Pill Bottle stickers are all from AWigsDesigns. Little Man had a double ear infection and Pneumonia in his left lung so he was on lots of meds for that. Poor thing. Lucky for me, he is still a happy little boy no matter what! 

The To Do list, and the Dancing With The Stars stickers are mine. Everything else is from the Delightful Lemon September Set. 

This is my favorite side of the spread! I think it turned out great! The Universal and Islands of Adventures Stickers are mine, along with the Weekend Banner. I didn't write what we were doing at church last week because we weren't there. It's back to normal this week though. I found the road wash at Hobby Lobby and it is perfect for road trips! You can also see some of the October Sub stickers in this spread too! 

I had lots of fun with this Halloween Spread, and I think it looks even better all filled in! Let me know if you would like to see a spread after it is all filled in for the week! I might be persuaded to post that! :) Hope your Monday isn't too bad! See y'all Wednesday! 

P.S. So sorry for the lack of links! AWigsDesigns is on a break from her shop, and Oh, Hello is out of a lot of her stock because of her website opening yesterday! You should check it out!
http://ohhelloco.com

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If you would like $10 off an Erin Condren Life Planner for yourself, follow this link! 

https://www.erincondren.com/referral/invite/kelseymercer0330

Oh, Hello October Sub

Hey y'all! 

I know, I know. You want to have me lynched because I haven't been on here since Friday! Ugh, I am disappointed in myself for that one. However, I plan on making you forgive me by posting about my October Sub from Oh, Hello! She has changed when her subs ship out. They used to ship out the 20th of the month, now they ship out the 5th! I got mine on the 9th! That was kind of awesome! 

Her theme this month was Fall Into Autumn. Kayla said that this was her favorite sub so far, and being a fan of autumn, I kind of have to agree with her! 

The patterned stickers are boxes and strips of varying sizes for decorating the Erin Condren boxes. The half boxes and meeting boxes are her usual ones just in fall colors. Then she included a sheet she calls the Fall Outing sheet. It is kind of a Fall Bucket List of sorts with things like, Drink a Pumpkin Spice Latte (already did that one! :)), Carve a Pumpkin, and Decorate for Fall (you guys know I have already started that one from this post, and this one). The last sticker sheet is unlike any of her other sheets. It is entirely a decorative sheet with no functional stickers whatsoever. I love this because it is not something I would normally purchase for myself (outside of the Darice books). You can see all the animals, trees, pumpkins, apples, and leaves. There are even a few PSL's in there too! 

Unfortunately, it appears that these sheets are all sold out already, but she usually restocks things fairly quickly! 

I definitely have to agree with Kayla, that this is my favorite sub so far! the next one goes live on the 1st of October! She and her fiancé Alex are launching a new website on Sunday so be sure to check that out! 

So, don't be mad, but Hubby and I are going out of town this weekend, so there won't be anymore posts until Monday. I promise I will make this up to you somehow! Maybe extra posts next week! 

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend, and maybe enjoy a Pumpkin Spice Latte or two! I know I plan to! 

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If you would like $10 off an Erin Condren Life Planner for yourself, follow this link! 

https://www.erincondren.com/referral/invite/kelseymercer0330

Pumpkin Spice is Oh, So Nice!

Remember this little wooden sign I mentioned before? 

I told you it would become a feature in a post soon. I am going to turn this blank piece of wood into this cute sign for my mantle! 

First, I painted the frame. I chose a bronze color, but you can do whatever you want. I also thought gold would look nice. 

As you can see in the picture, it doesn't have to be perfect because I will be going over the inside with a darker color. For that darker color, I mixed brown, blue, and black. It made it come out to this really neat charcoal grey color! 

I know it looks black in the pictures, but up close it is a dark charcoal grey. Plus the paint was still wet in this picture. 

I let the paint dry overnight. Partly, because it is a good idea to let it dry all the way through, and partly because I have a 2 year old, and nap time was over. ;) 

Then, I sketched out what I was going to paint. In the interest of full disclosure, I didn't come up with this out of thin air. There was a print that said this at Hobby Lobby, and I loved it but it was HUGE! And it didn't have the coffee cup on it. Also, I practiced on a piece of sketch paper before committing it to the sign. 

You can see, that even with practice I had to do some erasing. 

Once I got it looking exactly how I wanted, I painted in the words and pictures with white. 

Honestly, you could stop here. And I almost did, but I decided it needed a little touch of color. 

I also painted over the spots of the background that were affected by my erasing mistakes. Once the paint dried you weren't even able to tell the difference. (it's still wet in the picture) 

Here is my finished fall mantle! I love the way everything turned out! The sign looks like a chalkboard, and in case you couldn't tell, I am absolutely LOVING chalkboards! The saying on it is also kind of tongue-in-cheek, which is totally my sense of humor! Soon, I will have some more fall decor for you guys! 

Talk at ya later! :)