Muffin Tin Monday - Halloween

It's MTM! Yay!


This week is the Halloween theme and I've been looking forward to it for a long time now! But, unfortunately, all three of us have been sick this weekend so I didn't do the tin I really wanted to do. :( Oh well, I was still able to throw a little something together. Ashlyn doesn't have much of an appetite when she's sick (like her Mama) so it was very simple.


She had a witch-shaped piece of toast, some chicken noodle soup with princess shapes (she's going to be Cinderella for Halloween), and a special treat... a pumpkin cake pop! Not the best cake pop (it had fallen off the stick and my food safe marker was dying on me) but she loved the little surprise. :)

A Look Back

Over at Funny Days with Mommy and Maddie, Amanda is reminiscing about past Halloweens and what her cute little girl dressed up as. I thought I'd join in! I know I have pictures of Ashlyn in her Halloween costumes on my header, but I thought I'd talk about them more. :)

October 2008
Ashlyn was about a month old and we didn't want to get a "real" costume for her. One day I was walking through the NEX and saw the cutest ladybug pajamas that came with a little hat, complete with antennae attached! It was just perfect.


October 2009
Both Aaron and I fell in love with this costume the moment we saw it online. We could just imagine how adorable she would be as a little tulip fairy! We were right. :)


October 2010
I know Halloween hasn't come yet, but this is her Halloween costume for this year. She has already worn it to our latest trip to Walt Disney World (last month) and she just loves dressing up in it! She'll also have a chance to wear it to the library's Halloween party the night before Halloween. So I know she'll enjoy that. I know you can't see her face in this picture (and I like the one in the header better) but I just LOVE how she's picking up her dress to look at her shoes. SO. CUTE.


Go check out Maddie's costumes over at Funny Days with Mommy and Maddie and submit your own pictures!

Precious Paper Pumpkin Painting Project

I had been trying to figure out for a little while now what Halloween/fall crafts to do with Ashlyn. I was about to throw out some poster board that I had used for a contest type thing for Ashlyn's birthday party last weekend when I realized that I could totally have her paint on the other side! I hadn't tried painting with her recently because it was just such a pain. I didn't have a set up that worked for us.

Late last week, I had an idea! We bought an inexpensive sheet awhile back to use as a drop cloth for messy crafts. That way we can just throw it in the wash and even if it doesn't get all the stains out (which we haven't had an issue with yet) it's only used for crafts so no big deal. Anyway, so I used pushpins to put the sheet on the wall. There was plenty to lay on the floor, too, in case any paint fell on the floor. After drawing a pumpkin in pencil on the poster board (on the back side that hadn't been used yet, of course), I taped the poster board to the sheet at Ashlyn's level. Then after pulling her hair back and putting a little apron on her, I let her paint!


After the masterpiece was dry, I outlined it all in a Sharpie and cut it out. It is now up above our TV as a wonderful decoration.


It would be really cute decorated as a jack-o-lantern, but I would like to keep it up through Thanksgiving, too, so I kept it as is. We both enjoyed the experience so much more than any past painting projects just because the set up worked very well for us. We will definitely be painting more often now!

Muffin Tin Monday - Pumpkins

Things have been crazy around here for awhile, but I'm happy to be getting back into Muffin Tin Monday!


I've missed it and I think Ashlyn's gotten to the time for her where she will have even more fun with all the themes and just switching things up. I am very happy that I'm able to jump back in with Pumpkin week! :)


Ashlyn had some pumpkin-shaped Reeses peanut butter cups (which honestly I didn't really realize how big they were until I put them in so she ended up just having one), a pumpkin-shaped tuna sandwich, and some crackers and Babybel cheese. I didn't have mini pumpkin cutters or I would have probably cut some cheese in shapes, but since I don't I just tried carving the Babybel into jack-o-lanterns. It didn't come out perfectly, but it at least resembles one! ;)

One Down, MANY To Go!

I have a pretty decent-sized list of projects I want to do. And that's just ones that I want to do right away... I have a ton of ideas bookmarked that I'm not even going to look through until my first list is done! So I finally sat down, physically wrote out the list of the most important ones (and/or ones I can do without having to order stuff and wait for it to arrive), and designated Thursdays during Ashlyn's nap time as my craft time. I had to set a specific day otherwise I would always put it off to do "important" things like "housework." :P

Anyway, yesterday I completed my first project since designating Crafty Thursdays! For awhile now I've wanted to turn an old Quaker Oats container into a cute, fun container to hold Ashlyn's hair things. Well, at Ashlyn's birthday party this past Saturday, a good friend of mine made Ashlyn the CUTEST bow holder! I put it up in Ashlyn's room and was re-motivated to make this container for all of her ponytail holders.


All I did was adhere some scrapbook paper around it (I used a different, coordinating pattern for the lid), hot glue some cute ribbon along the tip and bottom, and put some stickers on to spell out her name. I had all the supplies lying around already so this was free to make! It's not perfect, but I really like it. And I'm already excited to tackle my next project!

Getting Into the "Spirit" of Things

Wow, I've been neglecting my blogs lately (this one and my Disney one)! Things have been a bit crazy lately, but it's settling down and we're getting back to a schedule. I'm going to be diving back into Muffin Tin Monday this coming Monday and am starting to decorate for Halloween today! With that comes searching the internet for cool projects to do with Ashlyn as well as inspiration for decorating.

While searching for great Halloween ideas I came upon this simple but fabulous idea at Redberry Barn.


Framing a napkin! How cool is that? It gave me one of those "why didn't I think of that?" moments. But it also gave me one of those "I must do that NOW!" moments. :) I'm going to go find a frame... see you all later!