This year I did a lot of sewing for the boys’ costumes. And thanks to my procrastination they got to change who they wanted to be at the last minute.

Meet Ash Ketchum:

This costume was really fun to put together and I was thankful that Perrin picked somebody who only required a jacket and hat to be made. In the beginning I thought it was a vest and was all set to sew it up when I did one last Google for images and noticed that it was indeed a jacket, like Perrin had been telling me all morning! D’oh! But seeing as I did his costume second, I was already comfortable with adding sleeves and a collar, so it wasn’t too much more stress. (heh) I used a pajama top pattern from Simplicity 3935 and altered it to have short sleeves, a collar, a zipper, and white blanket binding around the bottom.

The hat was really getting me worried since I couldn’t find a red baseball cap anywhere. Then at our last stop at Michaels we found a blank red cap! Score! I used Liquid Stitches to attach the black fleece to the front of the cap and for the blue fleece to create the symbol. I love how the hat turned out! It really completed the costume. The final detail was the fingerless gloves. Bought the bargain two-pack for $1.00 at Target (came with one black and one blue - exactly what I needed), cut the fingers off and used Fray Check to keep it from unraveling.

Perrin had a lot of fun with his costume and was recognized by a few people, which he thought was fun.

Meet Dan Kuso:

This one took a lot of work, but Owen loves it so much, it was worth it. After a lot of Google image searches and absolutely NO red sweats to be found anywhere, I ended up making his costume by using the pajama bottom pattern from Simplicity 3935 and the soldier top pattern from Simplicity 0533. Patches were added to the pajama pants - a note on this: I sewed the patches on after completing the pants which made it a little bit of a chore to fit the leg holes around the arm of my sewing machine, but in hindsight I think it was the right move for me. If I had sewed the patches on as an additional step during the process before sewing the legs closed, I would have had a harder time lining them up. The jacket used a little more alteration. I added pockets that would close to match Dan’s jacket more accurately, along with the black blanket binding - using the images as a guide, and cutting the collar to have double points instead of one so it would stand up correctly.

Owen had a lot of fun with his accessories. He picked up a Bakugan kit from Toys R Us that had the belt and Bakugan holder/clip. As you can tell by the photos, he had the Dan pose down! LOL! His gloves are the second pair from the $1.00 bargain with the same alterations - cut fingers off and use Fray Check.

I don’t think any recognized who he was, but he was a good sport about telling everyone who he was - along with everything else in his Trick-or-Treat bag, especially the Skelanimal gummies from Uncle Levi. LOL!! He’s also on day three of wearing his costume.

We ended up Trick-or-Treating around my parents’ neighborhood, where I grew up. It’s fun to take them around the same streets my Grandma used to take us.

When we were finished, Grandpa (my Dad) had brought out the telescope so we could look at Jupiter and the Moon. I remember he did this last year and the boys really enjoy looking thru the telescope.

We took some silly pictures as we waited for our turns:

Then we headed home.

As a side note, Sammy had fun on Halloween, too.

Here he is in his crate in the van as we were getting ready to drive to my parents’ home. He did not have a costume but enjoyed getting petted by various Trick-or-Treaters and had fun meeting new doggie friends during his night time walk.

Maybe next year he’ll have a costume ….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iypUpv9xelg

 Wishing you all a fun and safe Halloween! I still <3 Oingo Boingo. I can’t have Halloween without listening to them!I have to hit the sewing machine and finish up some costumes. 

Sorry about the rotten pictures. It was late, I had just finished making 54 of them and still had to pack for an early flight to spend a few days in D.C. (more on that later).

This year, because of year-round school, I needed to get the Halloween treats for the boys to pass out to classmates done a week earlier since we’re off-track and not in school this week.

Once I decided on what set to use, these went together rather quickly! And I used everything that I had on-hand. Didn’t have to purchase anything extra to make the treat bags! It always makes me feel good to use up what I already have stashed away.

The white sacks I bought at Smart and Final several years ago and they are the perfect size for classroom treats. I used the PaperTrey set Spooky Sweets. I love the way their sets are designed. It was so easy to get the pumpkin stamped in three colors because of the two-step stamping set up found in most of their stamp sets. And that pumpkin image is just lovely!

I wanted to make the most out of my paper, so I opted for ATC sized focal images. I cut the white to 2″ x 3″ and stamped the images. I used Palette black for the face and sentiment, Versa Magic Pumpkin Spice for the pumpkin, and Versa Magic Tea Leaves for the stem. Then I cut the black to 2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ for the matt. This gave me 10 per page. You can find a great template for cutting your paper here: Mirkwood Designs.

I needed to somehow easily ground the white bag, so I dug thru my 12×12 papers and found that cute orange polka-dot print. I cut 1″ x 4 1/4″ strips and adhered them to the bag, trimming when necessary.

Then the bags were stuffed with SpongeBob Halloween Fruit Snacks, a Halloween Kazoo and Halloween bubbles. The top was folded down, then folded in half again because the flap was too big and I didn’t want to trim the bags.

Gingham ribbon was attached with a staple then the focal image was stapled to the bag.

All done!

Because I’ve learned in my 12 years of being a Gunnell, that in some language it translates to “takes pictures of birds.”

At least I haven’t gone completely over the edge. My sanity thrives on not actually knowing what bird this is. I leave that up to my husband, Father-in-Law, and Brothers-in-Law.

I only know this is a bird of prey because of the shape of the beak, and that’s where I draw the line.

My brother’s birthday was this past Sunday, and instead of making a card to hold his “universal gift card” I decided to make a Money Monster.

The idea came to me Saturday night and I spent Sunday creating the pattern and sewing the first of these Money Monsters.

It was fun! He stands about 8 1/2 inches high and is made out of fleece, which I really like because it’s so soft and fun to cut the spikes out of.

His mouth is where you put the money, and you push it down his throat. Makes it fun to see how quickly the recipient discovers that it’s not just a monster plush, but actually holds their birthday dough inside.

I learned that I stuffed this one a little too much, as it was a little hard to get the money out (but it might also have something to do with Don thinking he was funny and shoving the money down as far as it would go). So next time I’ll make his throat a little wider on the inside and not stuff him as much.

I was glad I had these cat safety-eyes in my stash. I had forgotten about them and it’s my first time using them. They make perfect monster eyes!

Now if only I could freeze time and crank a bunch of these out before I have to start on Halloween costumes! LOL!

Last Saturday I started my two day Beginning Quilting class at a local fabric shop.

It’s fun!

I learned a lot in that first class and I’m really looking forward to the second class this Saturday.

So this week I am cutting, subcutting and piecing my stars together. Then we’re going to learn how to do the sashing and combine the rows to complete the quilt top.

I can’t wait to have this finished, the fabrics are so delicious! I picked tones that go with our home and added some pink in there for me!

I’m outnumbered over here, ya know!

Yesterday, during a homework recess, the boys we out back and blew bubbles. It became more entertaining once Sammy joined in and I grabbed my camera to catch the fun.

When I was going thru the pictures today they made me laaaaaaaugh! I love his determination to jump and pop the bubble. He’s actually quite good at getting them before they pop.

We got lots of funny shots. I like to call this one “the shark”.

I like his eyes in this one. On his way to pop one bubble and looking for the one that’s going to get it next.

Can you imagine how much fun he must have thought this one was? All those bubbles coming at him at once?

Ah, the life of a dog.

This week’s challenge at I Heart Faces is Blue. You must have the color blue in your photo. I’m hoping you can tell that Owen’s got on a navy blue sweatshirt, which makes his eyes stand out. He was pretty “blue” himself when this was taken during our Easter Egg Roll tradition. He wasn’t very happy when he realized that his decorated egg that he spent a long time on would get damaged during the event.

You can check out all the other wonderful entries at I Heart Faces!

What you need:

Chicken WITH the skin and the bone! Seriously! DO NOT try this with boneless/skinless. It won’t taste as good, I promise you!
One blulb of garlic
One package of rosemary - you can find fresh herbs in your produce area, don’t use dried!!!
At least 6 lemons
Kosher Salt - table salt is EVIL!
Pepper

Preheat oven to 450.

First you rinse and put your chicken in the dish. You can’t see it here, but I always make two dishes of this when I’m making it for dinner. That way I have left overs! I tend to just buy whatever chicken pieces are on sale that week, it really doesn’t matter which ones you use. You just want it to be on the bone and with the skin.

Next, you salt and pepper your chicken, and rub it into the meat. I looooooooooves a crispy chicken, so I tend to put more salt on it than pepper. And the Kosher salt is such a nice size with a totally different taste than table salt. Seriously, don’t use table salt! I’m not a fan of it, and reserve it for baking recipes.

Then you’ll want to slice your lemons in half, reserving one or two, and juice them. You can also use the lemon concentrate for a stronger lemony taste.

Then you just pour the lemon juice over the chicken.

Now for the reserved lemons. I like to add lemon slices to the tops of the chicken but I don’t like the bitter taste that the peel can leave behind. I like to cut off the peel before cutting the slices. To do this I just slice the top and bottom off so I have a flat surface to keep the lemon from rolling around.

Then I simply slice off the peel, rotating the lemon after each slice until it looks like that.

Then I slice the lemon! Two lemons is ideal, but if you’ve only got one left over (like I did this day), then all you need to do is cut the slices in half. This will give you plenty of slices to lay on top of the chicken.

Just like that!

This next step is my favorite! I learned this garlic trick from an Alton Brown episode, back when we had TV and I used to watch his show religiously!

You’re going to use a whole bulb of garlic. Don’t worry! It’s not going to make the chicken spicy! What I love so much about this recipe is how light all the flavoring is. Oh, that’s my little garlic peeler tube thing I got years ago with my Sister-in-Law Julie. We went to a fabulous kitchen store (I can’t remember what the name was, but it’s no longer there) and I walked out with this and a Silpat. I’ve had then for about 10 years and haven’t had to replace them. Another bonus, Don thinks this is fun, so I often get him to peel my garlic! Every little bit helps!

All you so is put the garlic clove in the tube.

Then you smash it and roll it. And you ignore my dry hands.

When you’re done, you just plop it out and the skin with either already be off or you just have to “unwrap” it.

Do this to the whole bulb, then add the WHOLE cloves to the baking pan. You do not chop them up in any way! The secret is that when you use whole cloves, it makes the chicken moist. When you chop up the garlic, it makes your food spicy and that’s not what we’re going for with this dish. What we do want is a moist chicken, so we leave the garlic whole.

Next you take your fresh Rosemary, rinse and add it to the baking pan. I currently don’t have an herb garden of any sort, so I just purchase my fresh herbs from the grocery store. They are usually packaged and in the produce section.

This is what your baking pan will look like at this point! Now it’s ready to be put in the oven.

I bake it at 450 for about 30 min, then check and add more baking time, if needed.

When it’s all done it’s this lovely brown with a crispy skin! And your kitchen will smell SOOOOO yummy!

Mmmmmm!! Our favorite way to eat it is with some sticky rice and some veggies. Broccoli is the veggie of choice around here these days. We add soy sauce to the rice. Another side that goes really well with this is red potatoes. I’ll have to share that another time!

And now I know at least one dish I’m making for dinner this week! And kinda sad that it isn’t for today! LOL!

Enjoy!

Easily the best toy we’ve bought, and a big favorite with Sam, is his wubba! If you have a dog, you’ve probably seen these everywhere! They are easily found in pet supply stores as well as online and in retail chains.

I love them! Easy to play tug of war with and to toss for Sammy to chase and catch. He likes to squeak it as he’s running back to bring it to me to toss again - which I think is cute!

Anyway, my brother’s dalmatian turned one yesterday and we had a little “paw-ty” for her! LOL! Sammy wore a tie, I’ll have to share a picture of that later - after I download them from my camera and stop giggling!