The Halloween Fairy

As I have mentioned before, both of my boys have a peanut allergy.  Needless to say, Halloween is not the holiday for them!  But they both absolutely LOVE trick or treating and getting tons of candy.  Go figure.  Since they have been trick or treating, the Halloween Fairy has been coming to pay our house a visit.  When the boys get home from their adventures, they carefully sort through their candy and can pick some pieces (usually 10) that are safe.  Everything else gets hung on their bedroom door and is replaced with a non food item giftie from the Halloween Fairy. (whom in the past enjoyed eating the candy herself, but will NOT be doing that this year! cough, cough)
While she used to leave small lego sets and such, this year, with the boys being nearly 10 and 12, she is leaving some iTunes gift cards that they can use for their iPads. (I miss the days of the lego sets :()

 And all packaged up, ready for delivery ;)

Those little cellophane bags and the tissue paper sure do come in handy!  Glad I keep a supply on hand!

Halloween Lunch :)

Spooky lunch that C and I made (yesterday) for the boys' lunch today. As is becoming the norm, inspired by Dixie Delights!!

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

Boo to you!

I should probably be posting this over at my other blog, but it's been hard to keep that one going, so I'm posting here!  C's class is having a little Halloween party at school tomorrow, so I volunteered to make some cookies.  Something I always like to do.  One, I have a ton of fun making them, and two, C has a nut allergy, so if I make them myself, I know they are safe and he can have one too!  C had a very specific idea of what he wanted.  Pumpkins with boo! on them.  I baked the cookies yesterday.  (just in case we lost power due to Sandy, which thankfully we did not)

I started by outlining the stem.

 Then I outlined the body of the pumpkin.

 Then I flooded them.  First the stem, and then the body.

 And then I added the pumpkin lines and wrote boo! on them.  

I hope they live up to what C was envisioning!

Disney Birthday Trip Day 1

We boarded the Magical Express to The Wilderness Lodge.  C was very excited to be having a birthday vacation!  We are usually traveling for J's birthday, as is falls during the boys' spring break.

C turns 10 next month!  How is that even possible??

After getting our "keys to the world" we headed down to the dock and hopped on the boat over to the Magic Kingdom!  

Up first, the Jungle Cruise!

C is not one for many rides, but he loves the Jungle Cruise!  We were able to grab some passes for this ride and while we were waiting for our time, J and I went and did the Pirate's of the Caribbean ride.  Fun!  Now, just keeping it real here at Tickled Pink Talk...everyone was very tired from arriving in Orlando late the night before.  There were some blow outs and we decided to head back to the resort since our room was ready and chill before we went over to Fort Wilderness for the Hoop de Doo Revue.  Good choice!

C was chosen to ring the bell to call everyone to their tables for the Revue.

We all enjoyed the silliness of the evening!  I have more pictures, but for the life of me can not find the cord for my camera.  These were taken from my phone...

I will be back with more pics from our other days!

My Disney Binder

Most of my preparations for Disney are all about my kids, but this one was all for me!  My vacation binder.  Sigh.  I just love this!  

 Inside I have all my travel information as well as a page for each day we are in Disney.  Each day has what park we will be visiting, along with any dining reservations we have.  I used this website to plan out each day at the park.  So helpful!  We also used Mandy Gonzalez from MEI-Mouse Fan Travel in planning our vacation.  She helped us last time too, and is extremely knowledgable about all things Disney!  She was the one that made all our dining reservations and secured tickets for the Halloween Parade.  

Each page in my binder is in a plastic sheet, so all I need to carry with us each day is the sheet for that particular day.  And we will stray from the plan if we need to, but I just like having a plan in place ;)

Preparing for Disney continues!

The Disney prep continues!  I really don't know how people go to Disney without any pre planning!

We've had our dining reservations made for months, and now I am just finishing up the final details to make our stay even more fun :)

These are the autograph books I made for the boys two years ago.  They still have plenty of pages, so we will just take them along again. (For years I have always done two of everything, one in red and the other in blue. They boys know by now whose is whose just by color!)  For these books I just wrapped the cover of a sketch book with scrapbook paper and decorated away. And we have Sharpies ready for all the characters to sign away :)

 And a little something for the plane trip.  We are leaving the iPads at home, so I put together some things to keep them busy.  Gum (since you can not purchase it in Orlando), Gummi Bears (a favorite), a word search book and a book of MadLibs. (Do you use these with your kids?  The boys think they are SO funny!)

The bags and ribbon I already had.  The printables I found at Peonies and Poppyseeds.  I just discovered their site yesterday, and it is chock full of printables and fun craft ideas.

Getting Ready for Disney!

We are getting ready to head to Disney for C's 10th birthday.  I'm so excited!  We were there 2 years ago for J's 10th birthday (sure beats a birthday party!!).  One thing we made the mistake of doing was letting the boys start collecting pins!  Very expensive!!  Henley on the Horn just happened to be at Hollywood studios the same day we were and she gave me a great tip for next time...buy pins on ebay and then let the kids trade them with cast members.  So a couple months ago I ordered a lot of 25 pins and just got them ready today.  I also went to Walmart and Things Remembered for some little gifties for the boys to help avoid buying things in the souvenir shops.

Day One: Glow stick, pins and Pirates of the Carribean game

Day 2: Glow stick and pin

 Day 3:  Cars pez dispenser, glow stick and pins.  We are hoping to go to the Not So Scary Halloween Party this night, so the ghost themed pins are quite appropriate!  I lucked out with that one!

 Day 5: (day 4 came out all blurry-just a pin and glo stick)  Mickey finger skateboard (boys love these!) and a pin.  No glow stick for this night because we are heading home.

once again, I gained inspiration from Dixie Delights. (she sure has some good ideas!!)

A little Halloween surprise!

Somebody keeps leaving this on my pillow!! 🎃👻(I'm not naming any names, but I believe it is my younger red headed son!!)

Nantucket Girls weekend

We left Thursday afternoon for our third girls weekend.  Me, Bevy (It's a Golden Day), KK (Pink and Green and Southern) and Jess (Entertaining House).  

We got the weekend started off right:

 We went to the Brotherhood for a quick dinner Thursday night.  Nothing fancy, but you have to go to the Brotherhood at least once!

Friday morning we got up and went for a walk to (and on) the beach.  Gorgeous.  And so empty!

 Friday night we danced the night away to a band at the Chicken Box.  Don't think I have been in there for about 15 years!  It was super fun and I am actually looking forward to going back with John. :)

 On Saturday we drove out to 'Sconset and took a walk.  We walked down a path to the beach and were greeted by about 30 harbor seals!  Amazing!  Although I won't be surprised if there are more great white shark reports...

 I have always loved the sundial on this house.  And yes, it was 1:30 :)

We had a great weekend and I am already looking forward to next year when we go back to Pawley's Island!

Girls weekend in Nantucket!

Fall Hike

Of course the rest of the weekend ended up being beautiful.  Oh well.  I am off to Nantucket with my bloggy friends on Thursday, so no complaining from me!
We set off yesterday morning to meet up with my sister and her family and go here. What a great day it was for a hike!

My parents and the four grandkids.  Everyone has their trail maps and is ready for a climb!

 C found a place off the trail to have a snack.

 The boys and their cousins.  They led the pack the entire way up the mountain!

 I was behind my sister (the one taking the pics) so she kept taking pictures of me :)  And C was nice and came to hike with me for a bit.  He does that skiing too.  He will ski ahead (because both boys are way better skiers than I am) and then wait and ski with me for a bit.

Me and J.  It wasn't really cold enough for his hat, but he was excited to wear it again after spying it in the bag of winter gear.

(We saw great views by the way, just no pictures of them.  We could see Boston, New Hampshire and Stratton Mountain in Vermont!) 

We headed to my sisters after the climb.  The boys collected eggs (my sis has chickens) and had fun playing with their cousins.  Then we were treated to a yummy lasagna dinner.  Mmmmmm!!

Much better!

I went ahead and added Rs :) I'm glad I did!

Fall Weekend

 We were supposed to head to Nantucket last night, but the weather forecast looked a bit iffy, so we made the call not to go. :(  Woke up to a gorgeous day here, so off to the farm we went to pick out pumpkins and go apple picking.  I think J tried to pick the absolute biggest pumpkin there was!  It weighed in at almost 30 pounds!  C went for the roundest. :)  

 I started decorating for Halloween.  That fabulous ghost is an actual gourd.  And he lights up.

 and now I need to figure out what to do with 2 pecks of apples.  Think I am going to make the caramel apple dip from Southern Living.  Looks yummy, and we have some friends coming over for the game tomorrow, so I think that will be a good football app.

And here are the pumpkins in their new home.  I also found two little round ones for my urns.  I think I still need to add some moss or hay.  Any suggestions?

Basement Redo (otherwise titled how many things can I paint with a quart of black enamel paint!)

One obligatory before picture...
Oh, and a reminder of the before of the chairs (and you can see the table in the background...)

You can see more before pictures of our basement here.  I have been working down in the basement a TON!  First we cleared almost everything out and then painted.  SO SO happy not to have the yellow walls anymore.  Don't know WHAT I was thinking 6 years ago when we first painted!!  We also finally painted the windows and actually cleaned them.  What a difference!! Then we had the carpet cleaned (need to remember to schedule that once a year...)  My mom has been coming up and helping me with sewing (i.e. ironing!!)  We still have one set of curtains to hem, but love love how it is all coming together!!  And very much enjoying working with my mom.  She has Alzheimer's so this time together is just very special to me. (Thanks to my Dad for providing transportation!!)

 

 I got this storage idea from Dixie Delights (ahem, among other inspiration!!  LOVE her style!!)  Please ignore the need to be painted adirondack chairs in the background.  Sigh.  Another project!

 The Lego storage/buffet set up.  Works great for putting the football food out :)  Heading over to HomeGoods to look for a bigger bin for the arsenal. ;)  Ah, boys!

 Another area for food.  Plus game storage.

 The poker corner.  So pleased with how the chairs and table came out.

Cozy area for movie watching and football game cheering!  Do you think I should add some R's on the red pillows?  I have enough navy and white chevron to do that...

(I just added the Patriots "art".  Found it at HomeGoods.

Eventually we will replace the ceiling, but we need to recover from our bathroom projects first!! ;)

Room color: Benjamin Moore Sand Dollar

Fabrics: Premier Prints from various online sources

Things I painted with ONE quart of black enamel paint:

6 Poker Chairs

1 Poker table

1 Island (now bar area)

Lego storage table

2 sofa side tables 

and 2 mirrors for the boys bathroom (obviously not shown here!)

Linked up to Positively Splendid, and Homemaker on a Dime