DIY Costumes and Halloween Showoff 2012 with Link Up

'Tis the day before Halloween and hopefully the greatest nightmare of all housewives with children has not occurred.  Did you forget to make, buy, or just can't find the right costume for you or your children?   I can certainly see where that nightmare might occur. And if it has, I can only hope to offer you some DIY costume hope.  I am also asking for our readers to link up to this post and show off your 2012 Halloween costumes! Inquiring housewives want to know.

My son: Greg Hefley the Wimpy Kid
My daughter: The Prissy Ghost
(All ideas inspired by where else?  Pinterest!)

Wimpy Kid

I originally got the idea for the Wimpy Kid from Living Locurto, but I just couldn't get the face to turn out the way I wanted. So then I moved on to actual Wimpy Kid sites and found these downloads! Score! Looks like we may all be a Wimpy Dad and Mom also! I just printed, glued it on black card stock and cut it out. I did not cut out the eyes. Then rather than put the mask on strings I duct taped it onto a Halloween pencil. His middle school is dressing up on Wednesday and he's not that into dressing up, so this was perfect for my almost 12 year old once paired with a white tee, black shorts and long white socks!

Prissy Ghost

This idea came from a pin that I pinned last year. It was off of an etsy shop, so it didn't come with directions. I just made it my own way. That's the fun thing about Pinterest. I made this costume for less than $5! Supplies needed: long sleeve white tee, one piece of 8x10 black felt, black ribbon and Liquid Stitch. Cut a template for your eye and mouth shape, pin it on before you Liquid Stitch and try it on the child, making sure its centered and looks right. Then Liquid stitch it on. In case you haven't figured out, Liquid Stitch is to me like butter is to the Pioneer Woman. Then make a bow and sew or Liquid Stitch it on. Pair it up with a cute white tutu and you have a prissy ghost! Now my daughter has a fun costume, one she can wear to school, and a shirt she can wear again next October! 

These are just a few ideas. 

I have an entire board dedicated to ALL THINGS HALLOWEEN if you would like to browse for other nightmare ending solutions. 

Now I know there are going to be lots of posts this week showing off your princesses, ballerinas, pumpkins, ninjas, and even a few of you will be sporting your own creative adult costumes. I've seen a few and I know our readers would love to see them. I also know that the BIG reveal is not until tomorrow night for some, so this link up will be open until next Monday!

♥Mrs. Hart♥

Wishing you all a safe and creative Halloween like

The Interview

One of my favorite things to do is to interview my children.  It is unfortunate that I haven't remembered to do this annually like I intended.  Bummer.

To solve this problem, I am putting this on my calendar as an annual event.  This way I will never forget! I live by my calendar - don't you?When my boys grow up, I might make them a little book of memories.  I'll put all of their cute little answers in it and some of their pictures, too.  
Maybe they will love it, maybe they won't.But... they'd better love it.
For those of you who are still parenting, I thought I would pass the idea along.  You might want to do this or some version of it with your own spawn.
If you have an idea to go with it or different questions to add, please let me know in the comments!  The silly questions are my favorites. I would usually ask things like: "If you were an animal, what kind would you be?" or "When you grow up what kind of parent will you be?"  Sure, they are deeper thinking questions, but for the older ones it creates another element of fun!
Here is this year's interview.  I'm going to change up the questions a bit for next year.  I was a tad lazy this year.

Jacob (my little interviewee)

The Interview - 2012
What is your name? JacobHow old are you? 8What is your mom’s name? JonniWhat does your mom do during the day? (long pause) Have fun by herself.What is your dad’s name? RandyWhat does your dad do during the day? WorkWhat is your favorite color? PurpleWhat is your favorite thing to eat? Chicken nuggets What don’t you like to eat? Meat (ironic isn't it?)Who are your friends? Preston, Parker, TrevorWhat is your favorite song? Gummy Bear (we even dance to it!) Can you sing it for me? Yes (and he didn't)What is your sister’s name?  I don't have a sister!What is your favorite place to go? McDonald'sWhat is your favorite thing to do? Play legosWhat do you like about your Mom? She makes food for me. What do you like about your Dad?  (long pause) He cooks for me too. What do you like about your brother - Uh... he's weird.What do you want to be when you grow up? An artistWhat is your favorite book? No! That's Wrong!What does (sister/brother) like to do? Play video games
And there you have it. I will file this away on my computer with the others and save it for someday when I need to remember all of the adorable things my kids said and did.
Your turn!

Mrs. Priss

Having fun by herself like...

RHOK'n the Correspondence

You've probably seen the someecards all over Facebook or Pinterest.
They're pretty darn funny!
See?

Peeps.  Not just a breakfast treat.

There's a few...

I think that second one might have been written for me.
I got on their website today to see if they had a card for people sharing their political opinions on Facebook.  If there was one, I didn't see it.
What I did see for the first time was that I could create my own card.
AHA!
I should have seen this before.  Did you know? Have you been holding out on me?

I do not have the hilarious wit of the authors of the actual cards, but I did have a little fun with it.

I didn't know how much I would appreciate Doc's love of math until this year...

Sadly, this is what many families do to avoid the judgement and staring.

I'm always shocked when girls show off their tatas then pretend men will notice anything else about them.

Have you seen our RHOK'n karaoke videos?

If you can't sing, you should at least look hot.

Please stop posting about who you hate and why.
It's stupid and creates barriers between you and your "friends."
Besides, your political opinions mean nothing to me.

Ironic, eh?

Once upon a time, in a house of only us girls, I lived this fairy tale.

And since there weren't any serious ones about Easter, I wanted to be sure to tell you this.
Know what I love about this Easter?  We aren't so caught up in Easter clothes and the Easter Bunny.  Oh sure, the bunny is coming to our house -- but over the years these things have become less important for our family.
My boys have had a lot of questions for me about the real reason for Easter this year.  I love it!

Have you made any cards?
If you do, post them on our Facebook wall so we can see them!  
I would LOVE to see what you create.


~ Mrs. Priss

Addicted to ecards like...

Fashion Plates 2011 with Polyvore

Do you remember Fashion Plates?

I know, I know I'm dating myself. My mother bought them for me when I was VERY young.
Have you checked out  Polyvore? I am loving it. This is my new digital fashion plates.
It is bringing out the stylist in me. You can find all sorts of ideas for fashion, interior design.
If you are on Polyvore friend me.
Here are a few "sets" I have created...

Summer Brunch by 6 Happy Hearts featuring beading necklaces

 

Summer Biz Casual by 6 Happy Hearts featuring a turquoise bangle bracelet

My Living Room Style by 6 Happy Hearts featuring aviator sunglasses

How do you stay creative?
What sites are you using lately that you just love?
Share your ideas, links so we can check them out.

Happy Monday! xoxo

Mrs. Montgomery
Designing in my Mind like...

Baby it's HOT Outside! So I Make a Snow Family of Gourds!

When I'm HOT, I dream about cooler weather. I dream of eating sno-cones or eating lime ices. A lime ice must be a southern Okie thing from my hometown drugstore, it involves squeezing limes over the likes of Sonic ice and then adding about 1/4 cup of  salt and eating it with a spoon. Too bad Randall retired and Wilson doesn't have a licensed druggist anymore!

I also start thinking about Winter. July is when I usually get my craft on for Christmas ideas. Could be because An Affair of the Heart in Tulsa is this month.

Wonder how many SnowGourd Families will be present next weekend? Probably none like mine?

Meet The 4-SnowGo Family. What do you think?

Did you think I was going to show you this cute family and not tell you how to make them?

1. Collect bottle neck gourds. I got mine at the pumpkin patch. Let them dry out. To be honest mine have been in the garage for two years. You can look around on ebay, at some craft stores, produce markets and they may already have some dried out for you. They do dry out fairly quickly. I believe the Farmers Almanac!

2. Wash your gourds well to rid of dirt.

3. Take a light sandpaper to rid of any rough edges.

4. Cut off any stems that might still be on the gourds.

5. Spray paint with a matte white. Follow the temperature requirements on the can!

6. Use acrylic paints to paint on buttons, hats, decorations.

7. Use paint pens or sharpies to decorate face.

8. Spruce your it up w/ ribbons, felt, bows or whatever else you want to make it your own special artwork!

9. You might want to use a clear coat of glitter spray once done to make them shine.

10. If your snowgourd doesn't stand by itself well, use a small grapevine wreath to help it. Don't forget to date and initial your creation. This will be a creation to cherish for years to come!

If you are out there chillin' around and doing some craftin' you best be sharing your creations!

Leave us a link in your comment. We want to see!

♥Mrs. Hart♥

Trying to stay cool by being crafty like...

Wordle- It's A Frameable Art

I love word clouds, subway art or whatever you call it these days. I just thought it was the cutest and most personalized gift ever when one of my very close friends made one for my daughter on her 4th birthday. It contained my daughter's name, her likes, her fave foods, nicknames everything there was to know about my little princess at age 4!  Of course I am the type that when I find something I like I figure out how to do it and do it myself. And boy is this fun! Look at a few of the examples I have made so far...

What do you think? Do you like? Won't they be uber cute in a frame. I can't wait to give the very last one to my niece for her birthday in May. Oh, and I think I may just frame and give away the other two at our next RHOK Out as door prizes. Which stay tuned, because in a few short days we will be announcing a RHOK Out that will knock your socks off!

Now you are probably wanting to know my secret on how to make these wonderful pieces of art. Right? Well, I hope so. It's . You can either type in your own words, type in a blog URL, or a del.icio.us user name and the cloud will form for you.  You can change it around, change colors, and change fonts. A few words to the wise though. When you hit print, its not going to print in an 8x10 format so my advice is download CutePDFWriter. When you hit print, it will give you the option to use your own printer or the CutePDFWriter. Select CutePDFWriter and save the document to your computer as a PDF. Then go in and print it as an 8x10 from your documents.

Now you know how to create something fun, personal and easy! You are guaranteed to be a RHOK star with this craft idea. It's up to you if you tell them how you did it or not! Just like the disclosures say on the  website, "You may take a Wordle, put it on your book cover, your t-shirt, your campaign poster, what have you. You may get rich off it. Keep in mind that if you save a Wordle to the public Gallery, then you can't control how other people use it. If you want to give credit to Wordle, feel free! But it's not required." Aren't they nice people? Now, what are you going to go create? Send us pictures...

♥Mrs. Hart♥

Sharing my creativity like a...

A Colorful Melting: A Useful Craft

If you are anything like me, you have long since disposed of the many many paper boxes of crayons and have resorted to something bigger to keep the many waxy colored sticks in. Mine is a plastic diaper wipe box. I am now on child numero dos and I noticed that she has been coloring with a lot of hand me downs along with a few new crayons. What do you do with the used up or broken crayons? Throw them away and just by new ones? Well don't. Enlist them into your next rainy day or snow day or try four days, boredom buster. Seriously. These also can be wrapped up into cellophane paper with a pretty little bow and be given away as a creative gift!

1. Make your kids collect all the broken crayons around the house- this can take a little while, just because you think they are all in that wipe box, they are not.

2. Sit the kids down at the table and have them start peeling the paper off of the crayons. Finally the kids get to make a mess! Or you may have a few gripers, like my dear son about how stupid he thought this was, but like any good mother I assured him we were having quality family time and if he wanted to play his iPod later he would smile and really would be surprised of the end result of this project.

3.While the kids are peeling away grab your cooking spray, any shaped silicone or baking pans you have and spray them down. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.

4. Once all the paper is off divide the crayons by color families, i.e. reds with pinks,  browns with blacks, greens with other shades of greens, blues with turquoises. You can even try to experiment with different colors and make some rainbow crayons.

5.  Once divided place the crayons into the oven until melted. Take them out of the oven very carefully-hot liquid wax. They will harden quickly, then they will pop right out of the pans- at least they did out of my metal muffin pans! Then start coloring. They can be broke if needed!

My kids ended up thinking these new "chunky" crayons were the neatest thing ever! My daughter started coloring as soon as possible, before I could even get my camera out again. And, the fact that they could stack, well that was a double bonus of activity for our snow day!

♥Mrs. Hart♥

Halloween Helpfuls

With Halloween only 16 days away, it's time to think about costumes, decorations, parties, and food. As I recently shared, I've been doing a lot of blog hopping the past couple of weeks. Wow! There are some extremely creative women out there in the blog-o-sphere. I am in awe of more than a few of them.

So, I've put together some links showcasing everything Halloween. Believe me, if money were no object, I'd be throwing one heck of a Halloween party using some, if not all, of the following!

Cocktails, anyone? Check out these very cool concoctions on The Hostess with the Mostess.

Since you're already at The Hostess with the Mostess go ahead and check out this BOO-tifully decorated dessert table.

Look at these adorable FREE printables from The Paper Cupcake. (If you click on the picture it will take you to more printables.)

For even more printables check out Tatertots and Jello. OMG! Ca-UTE!

Check out My Many Colored Days for a very creative use of the above printable.

Here are FREE printables for some darling Halloween paper dolls from Gweeny Penny.

One more site for even MORE Halloween printables - You don't want to miss out on this deal! Look what Gwynn Wasson Designs has come up with....

And the last cool printables I found are these over at How She Does?.

What would Halloween be without Jack-O-Lanterns? Tip Junkie has 32 ways to decorate your pumpkins.

Over at Fireflies and Family you can learn how to make a very Spooktacular Silhouette. Silhouettes are timeless.

Jenn, at Redberry Barn, actually framed a napkin and it turned out just darling! Where can I buy me some this kind of creativity?!? I mean, I can do THIS!

Now for some frighteningly delicious food, check out these talented ladies:

My Cake School gives step-by-step PICTURE instructions on how to creat decorative Halloween cupcakes.

Our Best Bites shares a Caramel Toffee Fruit Dip in a pumpkin!

Also on Our Best Bites you can find some easy party foods. Like this one.

Tidy Mom shares the recipe for The Perfect Cupcake (using a mix) with butter cream frosting.

Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet by The Whimsical Princess.

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I hope you enjoyed all of the Halloween links. I sure had fun doing the research. If you end up making any Halloween treats be sure to let me know because I'd love to see what you did.

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~Mrs. Albright