A pumpkin man army

I really wanted to title this post "sometimes I question my own sanity", but google and pinterest prefer proper titles.

 

 My craft for the swap are pumpkin men. An entire army of pumpkin men. This photo is only HALF the army of these things I made. Whew. While I was making them Sammi said,  "mommy, you are making orange snowmen!" just before she realized they were pumpkin men. :-)

 Here is the Jennifer Murphy video on Martha which will tell you how to make your own.

 Just in case you are also insane.

 Mine are slightly different because (and this should be no surprise to any crafter who has ever attempted a Martha Stewart craft) of the impossibility of finding some of the supplies.

 Also, should you ever need to pull pipe cleaners through excelsior stuffing (never use excelsior stuffing, just trust me), you need a HUGE UPHOLSTERY needle, not a doll needle like the video says. A 10 inch needle to be exact.

 They are super cute and I am quite charmed by them. Only one has a flag because I cannot make the flags consistently stand up. And let's be honest - I am over these things after spending about 40 hours making them.

 I put a ribbon on top of mine so he can hang on the tree.

And that, my friends, is how I made myself crazy last week. :-)

This week I plan to make myself crazy starting a quilt for craft hope. :-)

Off to watch a princess movie with me!

End of the Halloween Swap

The last group of swap ornaments!
A super sweet little witch from Sara.

A bright and fun pumpkin banner from Courtney (which is obviously gracing our coat rack!).
Amazing eggs from Lee , I hope they arrived in one piece! (I saw that in Martha many years ago and just never got around to doing it. Now I am spared!)
Cute little birdhouses (crow houses perhaps? I have crows on the brain) from Shannon.
Meow! Kitty wreaths from Alexandra (welcome to the swap!).
I chose an owl from Desi , but there were other designs too!
Vampire bats from Jamie (I debated how to spell your name for awhile, but I would have to log out to check and time is creeping up on me, apologies if I chose the wrong way!). Mine lost an eye and a certain little someone has made off with it.

And a very quick photo of them all on the tree.

Better photos of the tree later next week.

This coming week holds parent teacher conferences, two days off school, Jack's birthday, doctor visits for both kids, two days with my dad, and one big cowboy party.

I am exhausted already!

More Halloween swap

Time for more Halloween ornaments!
Lisa and I share a love of papercutting, but papercutting with felt? Awesome. (And hard? It seems like it would have been hard!)
Look how crafty Shanna got with paint! I can only paint solid colors on furniture. :-)
Rachel found a super cool use for the kind of fabric I always put in my give away pile. (Sammi is in love with his button eyes!) Perhaps I should rethink that plan...
Stephanie made super cute glittery bats. (Does anyone else remember "warm fuzzies" from grade school? He reminds me of a wonderful Halloween version of a warm fuzzy!)
Renee , well, Renee is super crafter extraordinaire. TEN of these houses? I bow to you.
And
Hope ! These birds were so fantastic. (Hope also writes fantastic children's books. Jack and I have been revisiting one her of her books recently and I am thinking that What do you do when a monster says boo would be fun for Halloween, but whoa nelly! @ the price tag!)


The ornaments are fun huh?

Last batch tomorrow!

Halloween Swap

It is so gray today. We had wicked storms last night and I have been up all night with Jack. He is coughing a lot (again) so I took away his beloved "vent", aka very old hepa filter that needs new expensive filters. He has always slept with that on as his white noise and he freaked out over my taking it away. I suspect that the dirty filters might be aggravating an allergy. But then again, he probably just has another cold from school. Either way, he cried and cried over needing that noise. So I tried a different fan, but it wasn't very loud. And then it stormed and stormed and woke the whole house up at 4 am.

And that was after I spent the whole day yesterday washing curtains and rugs and dust ruffles. I am not nearly done with that job. Damn curtains. LOL

But! Halloween is creeping ever so close.

The time has come to start unveiling the ornaments from the swap or I will run out of time.
Mikey sent these wonderful cats with vintage chenille pumpkins on them. I am crazy over those pumpkins. He generously sent enough pumpkins for the second group to get a pumpkin too. Thank you Mikey!
Saucy sent these wonderful Edgar Allen Poe ornaments. That Saucy is always thinking outside of the box. I love them.
Kim always makes us something fabulously cute and this was no exception. That witch! Her little broom! Darling.
Michaele is a paper queen. I love her sparkly bats.
Shara sent these fantastic kitties. I wanted to hoard them all for myself. Being the swap hostess is hard I tell you.

Rebecca made us fantastic vixens. I had a hard time choosing which one to keep for myself.

Back with more wonderful ornaments tomorrow!

Halloween Swap madness

I made little witch hats for the Halloween swap.
20 fiddly little witch hats. (I made 20 so I could keep one of each ornament the swappers sent from each group. The other swappers made 10.)

And they are super cute.

Even if my damn cat keeps eating them and I have to keep repairing them.

And the Martha Stewart stickers won't stick.

Still, much love.
And I have just spent three exhausting long hours turning this...

into this.

Wait a minute Mr Postman!

What Sammi is wearing, the Friday version

This is not my favorite dress/background combo. But cheeks is sick and wasn't feeling up to her photo shoot this morning.

And if you look too closely you will see how snotty she is.

Oy.

If you signed up (or think you signed up) for the Halloween swap, you should have a swap email. If you don't see it, please email me asap so I can figure out what happened. We have a larger than usual number of folks interested, so it's possible I have made a mistake somewhere while juggling the children and the cats. LOL