Peas In A Pod

Halloween Cookie Suckers | How Does She...

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If you liked the pretzel treats Sweet Pea and I made, check out these fun treats! These are more fun ideas and also look fairly simple. I saw them on Janice's blog, and she just used other little candies for they eye, and they were equally cute. (If you don't have the time now to order the eyes.) I love Oreos covered with white chocolate. I only treat myself to them at Christmas, but here's a good way to have another treat!

MiaMoo Designs: Cute Clutch!

via miamoodesigns.blogspot.com

Look at this adorable little clutch purse that Katie of Mia Moo Designs (click link above to go to her blog) made and is selling. She said she made it from a pattern from Keyka Lou on Etsy. She notes this would be a fun little purse to grab when you're going to the gym or running a quick errand. I love that idea. This would make a super Christmas present for someone! Probably quick and easy to make...Katie's only asking for $15 to buy an already made one from her. Very reasonable, and so cute. I really like this. Hope on over to Katie's blog and check it out. She makes tons of other cute things, like kids clothes, headbands, hair clips, etc.

Halloween Treats

Sweet Pea and I made some Halloween treats for her class, which we took to school today.  I thought you might like to see them.  They were so easy and fun to do.  Sweet Pea could really do a lot of it independently, and it held her attention for about 2 hours!  So, if you have a child around 6 years old, this might be a fun project for you.

We melted some of those white chocolate drops you can find in the candy making aisle.  We added purple food color (for candy making to it).  It's easy to melt in the microwave.  Even Sweet Pea did that with instruction from me (a few times, then she had it down and did it herself).  I put it in a bowl of hot water to keep it warm while we worked.  Then, we used a paint brush just for candy, and she painted the fingernail portion of the mold.

See how just the fingernail is painted?  You can see we did some orange, too.  Put the chocolate on pretty thick for this phase.  We're going to pour another color in after this sets up.  So, you don't want it showing through.  Sometimes Sweet Pea got it outside of the fingernail...no worries.  I just used my clean finger to wipe it off.

After the fingernails set up, we melted more of the chips and tinted them green.  I melted them in a bowl and spooned it into the pastry bag with a big, round tip on it.  I squirted some green into the mold.  Fill it about half full.  Then, Sweet Pea put the pretzel in and spun it around a little to coat the pretzel.

Then I finished filling them up to completely cover the pretzel.  After a while, Sweet Pea wanted to help squirt.  I just put her hand right under mine, and we did it together.

Put them in the refridgerater for a little while.  Let them set up and get hard.  They should just pop out when you twist the tray a little.

We bagged them up in a cute Halloween bag.  They turned out cute.
We brought them to school today for he rclass to have as a treat.  I also put one in each of those tiny treat bags I showed you the other day.  (Sorry, I forgot to take photos of them filled up so I could show you.)

You can see they aren't perfect, but it doesn't matter.  It was fun, and they still look great!

The molds are really inexpensive.  I think I got them at JoAnn's for a few bucks.  I think they were even on sale 40% off when I got them, as were the chips to melt and the molds.  I know you can get this stuff at most craft stores.  They also have Christmas molds, etc.  So if it's too late for Halloween, think about the upcoming holidays.  Sweet Pea wants to do it again for the holidays.

Enjoy.  Happy Halloween!

Until next time,

Mama Pea

Tiny Halloween Bags

Hang on a second while I get the hair out of my eyes...whew!  The wind is still blowing like crazy here!  Amazing that the strong winds have persisted for so long!

Oh, I have to tell you something...I've been holding out on you with some news.  I didn't want to jinx it (no, I'm really not superstitious, but...), so I didn't say anything.  We FINALLY sold our house in Idaho!  Yippee!  It has been on the market 18 painful months.  I am so happy to be out from under it.  I didn't want to say anything because buyers are pretty fickle right now.  I wasn't sure the guy wouldn't back out.  But, everything's a done deal today!  Check is in the mail to us.  Thank goodness there's a check in the mail TO us instead of FROM us.  It's not much (Dad said, "Don't spend it all in one place," and I'm thinking, "Well, buying a beer will about take care of it..."), but it's better than paying in.  We really took it in the shorts and pretty much lost everything we had for equity.  Such a huge bummer.  But we are just grateful that it is sold and we are okay financially.  Big.  Huge.  Sigh.  Of.  Relief.

Here's another little aside...The other day coming home, I had a cute conversation with Sweet Pea.  It went like this:

Sweet Pea: "Mom, tonight I'm going to pray to God."

Me:  "Oh?!  What about?"

Sweet Pea:  "I want to tell him thanks for all the nice things that happen to me."

Me:  "That's nice."

Sweet Pea:  "Yes.  I want him to do that again tomorrow." 

Me to myself:  hee hee.  Too cute. (And today I'm thinking, "Maybe I should follow her lead.  He did some pretty nice things for us lately---selling our house.  I'd like Him to do more things like that for me, too.  But I think I owe Him a few....")

Although I was raised Catholic and still have some strong beliefs, I don't really practice anymore.  Long story.   Mom and Dad are fairly disappointed in me about this (sorry, Mom and Dad), but it would feel hypocritical for me to act more "religious" than I feel.  But I am happy that Sweet Pea  seems to have her head on straight despite strong religious upbringing.  I thought this was just so cute, I had to share.  Thanks for your tolerance.

Now, onto some quilting/sewing goodness!  Remember that post I made last week about the tiny Halloween bags?

Well, I just HAD to make some.  I know...I have so many other things I should be working on, but I couldn't resist these.

I stopped at my LQS last weekend, and all the Halloween fabric was 20 or 30% off (can't remember which).  I really like the novelty Halloween fabrics, but can never figure out what to do with them.  When I saw them on sale, I thought, "I'm going to grab a few fat quarters and make some of those bags."  I bought 6 fat quarters (so maybe $10 total when you calculated the sale price) and brought them home.

And I made these:

The pattern called for 5/8" ribbon, I think.  But my orange ribbon was 1" wide.  I used it anyway.  Turned out fine.  Sweet Pea LOVED the one with the cats and immediately absconded with it.

Here are two with the right size of ribbon.  Definitely cuter.  I already had a ton of ribbon, so no extra cost there.

Each bag is lined and has a box bottom.  So cute.  Each pair of fat quarters produced 4 bags.  Two of each variety I've shown...so this one has stripes as the main part on the outside and spiders on the inside (2 of these), and the other (pair) has stripes for the lining and spiders for the main piece outside.

These were my favorites.  Don't you love the witch with the spiderweb wings?  I like the big orange moon, too.  The polkadots are awesome.  I love everything about this pair of fabrics...especially together.

So, I made 12 bags in a few hours for $10.  It was too fun.  Highly recommend this project.  Fun, easy, inexpensive.

AFTERTHOUGHT:  Here is a direct link to the project instructions (so you don't have to click around to find them):  http://www.allpeoplequilt.com/projects-ideas/bags-pillows/small-treat-tote_1.html

Sweet Pea had so much fun helping me stuff them.  We are giving three to her little friends Kylie, Patrick, and Jordan (he's a baby, so he gets Goldfish crackers and those Gerber baby treats in his instead of candy).  And, of course, Sweet Pea absconded with hers.

I gave one to my work study at work, and the rest to my graduate students today.  They were so funny.  They were all over them like a bunch of kids.  And you know the first thing they all started doing, don't you???   Yep.  Trading candy.  ("Ewww...I hate Smarties.  I'll trade you my Smarties for your Whoppers!"  "Deal!  I love Smarties and can't stand Whoppers!")

Tomorrow, I'll show you some filled bags and the awesome treats we made to add to the inside.

Until next time,

Mama Pea

Home "Remodeling" Update

Whew!  We about blew away yesterday!  We had a tornado warning at work and had to go to the basement.  First time that's happened to me in a LONG time.  Sort of weird for this time of year, too!

Last night, Sweet Pea was watching her Winnie the Pooh DVD.  When it got to the story about the blustery day, Sweet Pea said, "Mom, that's what we had today!  A blustery day!"  You ain't kiddin', I told her.  Sometimes she's so stinking cute, I can hardly stand it.

Well, last weekend, we did some more minor decorating for the holidays.

Papa Pea brought me some straw bales to put by the front door.  We put all the pumpkins on them.  He said, "There, now the mice will have a really good hiding place, right by the front door."  Ha ha.  Very funny.  And the cats keep attacking the poor little scarecrow.  It's quite funny.  When Thanksgiving is over, we'll remove the straw bales, and Papa Pea can have them to support his archery targets and can practice with his bow.

I think Maggie was right.  Papa Pea just likes to get outside to do something.  This past weekend, he asked a friend to come over to help him get the mower off the John Deere riding mower and to mount the snowblower on the front.  They got that done right away, and Shawn (our friend), said, "Let's get rid of those big bushes you guys want to pull out.  I'm in the mood for some physical labor."  So, I'm down in my sewing room and I hear the chainsaw running.  I thought they were just trimming a few branches off the trees, but the chainsaw kept running and running.  I finally went outside to see what was going on.  I was so excited to see the huge, overgrown bushes going "buh-bye!"

Here's a reminder of the before situation.  See that huge overgrown bush on the left?  We HATE it, because it's so big.  See how it's taller than the sliding glass door?  It just needs to go and we need to replant.  Same is true for the bush on the right of the deck.  (The decks also need to go, but that's far down the road.)

Here's a shot from a different angle.  Notice all the built in benches on the lower deck?  They make the deck so crowded you can't put anything else on it.

Here's work in progress.  This is what I saw when I first came outside to see what was going on.  (Sorry about my hand at the top of the photo.  The glare was so bad, I had to sheild the camera from the sun a bit.)

Papa Pea cut.  Shawn loaded on the trailer.  Shawn drove it off and put it in the burn pile.  I think Shawn just liked driving the 4-wheeler around.  hee hee.

There was a pretty big hole under part of the bush.  Something fairly large used to live there.  Not any more!

Here it is about half gone.  Nasty!

And all cleaned up.  Notice both bushes are gone.  (And now you can see how badly the back garage door needs painting!)  For the bush on the left, there were actually about 5 stumps...so, it used to be 5 small bushes that all grew together. The bus actually covered up about half of those steps, too.  So, you could barely walk on them...there was hardly any room.

Notice we also cut the benches off the lower deck and put our patio set on it instead.  The whole thing is opened up more.  (That's my sewing room where the window is behind the patio set.)  You can see the cat house behind the garage there.  It's still a bit of a mess on the back patio.  But it felt really good to get those two overgrown bushes out of there.  We'll do some new landscaping at some point.  This is the part of the house we'd like to put an addition on.  We'd like to extend the back of this house out about 12 feet (both the lower and upper story).   So, we aren't in a hurry to do the landscaping now.  Right now, this just feels like "Ahhhhh...."  It felt so crowded with those bushes in place.  (Hope we can get that big monster TV antenna down in the spring, too.)

If you scroll back up to the top, you can see the workshop building is off to the left.  I am thinking that between the workshop and garage, it would be cute to have a little wrought iron café table and chairs set up under the tree.  We'd like to make a path from the back garage door to the workshop and from the workshop over to the patio area (or after the addition, up to a deck we'd like to build).  I can dream about it all, right?  Someday....

Big thanks to Shawn for helping to get rid of the nasty bushes. "The Dude abides..."  (If you like the movie The Big Lebowski, like we do, you might get that.  We watched that movie with Shawn later that evening...)

Now, if we could finish getting rid of the ones in the front of the house.  I'd like to relandscape that area this coming spring....

Until next time,

Mama Pea