Thanksgiving Craft: Turkey Garland

I saw this cute place setting craft at my favorite paper store

Source: paper-source.com via Claudia on Pinterest

and I'd been thinking of making a garland with my oldest, so I decided to make a variation of this cute turkey. I had all the materials except the eyes, so that was $1.99 spent.

First I punched out the body out of brown construction paper and cut tan triangles for the beaks:


Then my boy added googly eyes - we thought that would be a lot more fun! I asked him to go crazy coloring with oranges and reds on yellow paper, for the plumage.


Some of them looked silly, and my son said he wanted to make them all different because people are all different :D


Then we taped the turkeys onto orange curling ribbon:


Et voila! Here is our beautiful, fun, and very silly turkey garland!!!


I love walking into my house and seeing this fun garland that my son and I made together. He loves doing crafts with me and I am planning more Thanksgiving fun - hope you enjoyed our Turkey Garland!

Pinterest challenge - mason jar gifts!

First let me tell ya that I will be moving to Wordpress! Yay! And you know what? You can add this link to your reader feed: http://casadeberry.wordpress.com/feed/
I will be here for a few more weeks and I'll keep reminding y'all so all my sweet followers can, uh, follow me in my new online home.

Okay, NOW we continue our regularly scheduled post.

Yeah, I am a few days late, but seeing this challenge pop up in some of my favorite sites got my butt in gear. That, and the fact that the pears on the tree were finally turning a gorgeous golden yellow.

I got plenty of canning and packaging inspiration from Pinterest:

Source: tipnut.com via Amy on Pinterest

I would LOVE to have a pantry filled with canned goods!

Source: google.com via Michelle on Pinterest

These are ADORABLE all packaged up for Christmas!

Source: canningacrossamerica.com via Denise on Pinterest

Okay, seriously. WOW. If I ever manage half of this, I will be so proud of myself!

Source: squidoo.com via Kristin on Pinterest

I started to think up ideas for the extra jars I had - scrubs would be great, don't you think?

Source: tipjunkie.com via Kelly on Pinterest

How cute are these with their color-coordinated tags?


I was lucky that my mother-in-law came over to can pears with me because I sliced up my finger with a fruit corer and she had to take over - no worries, we cleaned the corer and threw away the pear I'd been working on - but we had a good morning, chatting as we processed the fruit, and me planning in my head how I'd package up the finished goods.

This is what we picked from the tree the night before, my oldest was a super helper:


Soaking in their Fruit Fresh so they'll keep their pretty color:


Cooking down - we did some in sugar and some in Splenda. We did lots of tasting and they were yummy!


The smaller jars in front are pear butter, so good!


I also made some sugar scrubs - there are lots of great recipes at Tip Junkie.

I chose to go with a simple label I made in Photoshop, some ribbon/yarn and bits of a Christmas (fake) branch we had from last year's decor.



While I don't have an entire pantry full of canned goods, I do have a couple of small shelves full of these, and they make me happy. Maybe next year I'll get many more tomatoes and I'll be able to can lots of yummy sauce!

Hope you enjoyed my Pinterest Challenge!

Godzilla a finalist in SFGate's contest!

I just saw that the Godzilla costume my husband made for our youngest was one of the finalists in SFGate's Super Crafty Costume Contest!



Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Fashion Friday: Family Pics

As the days of Thanksgiving and Christmas approach, there is another event that we honor every year - Family Picture Day.

This year I am considering a very neutral theme:

Special friends such as my oldest's Soft Elephant and my youngest's Zebra & Rabbit are always welcome - they are part of the family ;D

Do you take annual pics?

Holidays a deux

Something my husband and I have always made sure of is spending time together, even during the madness of the holidays.


Even if it is just for a few minutes while the kids are (gasp!) watching a video, it is very important to us to have some time to chill and talk about what's going on in our lives, what our plans are for the next few days, to make sure we're in sync and not forget anything in our busy schedule.


We don't have fancy china or a lot of heirloom pieces but I like to set a table for two with items that mean a lot to us:

The runner on top of the off-white tablecloth was made by my mom. The yellow napkin underneath the leaf and mug on the right is part of a set made by me. Yep, I sewed a set of 16 napkins because I loved the color of the fabric I found. The three little pumpkins in front were purchased at my youngest's pumpkin patch field trip, and then the boys and I painted them with a clear glaze, then sprinkled glitter on top. They look so sweet and remind me of the fun I had with my boy that day. The ORB-painted candlestick is my on of my beloved fleur-de-lis candlesticks, which I found on sale at Goodwill. The little ceramic holder (you can see it better in the second pic) was gifted to us full of yummy almonds last year, after we ate the almonds I couldn't part with it :D

Some hot chocolate and good conversation makes for a nice break - we are lucky that my mother-in-law watches the boys often for us, and we get to spend some quality time together.

Happy Halloween!

I've been posting about the costume my husband made for our little one.


I was very surprised that my youngest chose this, as the one who had loved this character to begin with, was my oldest (he even had his latest birthday party with this theme), but he's moved onto superheroes.

Thank goodness our oldest went with a store-bought, because my husband needed every last minute to get our youngest's costume done.

The Saturday before Halloween, our cousin needed help for his costume, so most of that day was spent working on that. His costume was (luckily for my husband) just the headgear to become DeadMau5. Yeah, I'm old, because I was seriously creeped out and had no clue who that was. My oldest, though, had no problem sitting on DeadMau5's lap for a pic.

Sunday was the deadline, then, and my husband went to work, the level of detail in this costume blew me away.

The base of the costume itself was carpet foam that he got for free just by asking carpet installers. The spikes were cut from foam, primed, then spray painted. The texture all over the "skin" is small stripes of silicone. The teeth were cut from foam, then painted and attached to the upper and lower jaws, same with the foot claws. The feet are cut to go over our son's shoes. We decided to not make claws for the hands in case our little man got overenthusiastic and scratched one of his classmates.

Here is the head, almost done:


My husband helping our little man right before his parade:


Waving to one of the people taking his pic. Kids and grown ups wanted to have their pic taken with him, people were filming him, it was hilarious!



After his parade was over, my husband and I and my in-laws (who joined us for the morning) had breakfast, then headed over to my oldest's school.

A quick wave from a busy Captain America:


His good friend S. was Wolverine so there was lots of superhero talk :D


So this was our morning, now we get a few hours of quiet before the madness of "candy extortion" as my husband calls it. And oh yeah, Godzilla was made for under $35.

Happy Halloween from Captain America and Godzilla! Be safe and have a great time!