BFF Open House Link Party #27 and BFF Days of Chalk and Chocolate

Welcome to the first BFF Open House link party of NOVEMBER! Less than three weeks til Thanksgiving and then….OK I won’t say it. Hopefully everyone’s recovered from Halloween.

This week, I’d like to introduce you to Jenny from the blog Days of Chalk and Chocolate, another blogger whose crafty creativity is fueled by her love of chocolate. She’s also a wife, mom, and part time elementary school teacher. And if that doesn’t keep her busy enough, she’s recently been through a move! Here are just a few peeks into Jenny’s wonderful creations:

Love the chocolatey brown of this table runner which is made from napkins!

Or this gorgeous ruffled wreath:

And even though one of her little ones thinks she makes too many pillows, I think she should keep making them if they’re as fantastic as this one:

But where’s the chocolate you ask? Right here I answer. How perfect are these for the holiday season? Hot cocoa cupcakes!!

Aren’t they wonderful? I hope you’ll go visit Jenny and check out some of her other creations!

Now, let’s see what everyone’s been up to this week! Party On!

These Turkeys Were Screaming For a Makeover

I was wandering through JoAnn’s ( I swear, the car just goes there by itself) and even though I’m a crafter and thus a season ahead, it wasn’t even Halloween yet and the Fall and Thanksgiving stuff was already 70% off. Who am I to argue? Had to peek!

I stumbled upon a pair of these poor turkeys who’d been left behind when all the other Thanksgiving stuff went home with people. They were sitting there,  kinda pitiful looking. Just staring at me.

The were covered in some sort of foil but these poor birds were molting. I mean this stuff was coming off:

I picked them up. I put them down. They kept staring at me. I walked away. I came back. OMG, they brought friends! Now there were two pairs of them. I figured I better just get them for a whopping $1.19 each before they multiplied. Again.

Once I got them home I started picking off the foil but that got tedious fast. So I figured what the heck. I’ll just paint over them. I gave them a coat of a satin finish acrylic paint, let that dry, then went over with a similar color glitter paint. They were better after the first coat, but here they are after two coats of glitter paint. What do you think?

I’m thinking they’re much happier with their new look. And I’m happy with my $5 investment!  They’re either going on my dining table or mantle. Haven’t decided yet.

Linking Up At: 

GLUESTICKS Get Your Brag On

All That Glitters Thanksgiving Wreath

Can you believe it’s November?! Me either. I’m very excited because it’s exactly three weeks until our son comes home from college for Thanksgiving. Not that I’m counting the 21 days until then or anything.

I don’t even try to fight my paper addiction. I know who will lose. I found this superfantasticawesomewonderful glitter cardstock at JoAnn’s. I don’t even know the brand, but it came in metallic gold, silver, and bronze. MUST HAVE (and yes, I got all of the colors)! Then of course the question was what to do with it.

I decided on a wreath but I also decided I wanted one to hang from a mirror above our fireplace. I wanted one that was not too bulky or heavy. I was wandering around Michaels (they’re going to start charging me rent) and found these in the floral aisle:

Perfect! Headed home and cut out a bajillion oak leaves on my Cricut Expression ( Doodlecharms cart)  from my glittered cardstock in gold and bronze ( actually about 36 ) and sat down with my hot glue gun.  My leaves are 4” and 3 1/2 “. I alternated the colors of the larger leaves around the wreath form and then took one of each color of the smaller leaves, glued them together and then stuck them on using foam dots because I wanted some depth. Finished off with these glittered turkey embellishments by Recollections that matched the brown cardstock perfectly!

Haven’t hung it on my mirror yet because Halloween’s still up!

Linking Up At:

Happy Halloween! BFF Open House Wrap Up and Features!

Happy BOO Day everyone! I hope you have a fun filled day with treats and no tricks. Low key for us with our empty pumpkin patch,  but Chocolate Chip had fun over “Halloweekend” at college.

Another great party with fantastic ideas. I was drawn to several food ideas ( and they’re not even chocolate!) . I think it’s because these can all easily bridge over to Thanksgiving. So here we go!

Take this amazing looking Apple Tart from Jenny at Days of Chalk and Chocolate:

Wouldn’t this be a wonderful addition to your Thanksgiving dessert table?

Brandy, over at her blog Gluesticks, shared these scrumptious looking homemade pretzel bites. I can see these as a pre-Thanksgiving meal nibble, or packaged up to share with neighbors etc. :

Got pumpkin seeds? Suzy from Suzy’s Artsy Craftsy Sitcom has a different twist on them. I’ve only had them done in a savory way with salt,  but she’s CANDIED them!

Makes perfect sense! Bag these up as a take home favor for guests!

And these I’m totally making for my son when he comes home for Thanksgiving. He’s a huge fan of AMCs “The Walking Dead” as is Lesley from the blog Freaking Craft:

The Walking Ginger Dead! 

Thanks again everyone new and returning for linking up and hope to see you all again on Friday. Have a creative week!

BOO Box of Cookie Pops

I work from home and I love it. For some people it’s too solitary but it’s perfect for me. Mr. Chocolate works in a traditional office setting, and even though I don’t miss going to that environment every day, I do miss the kind of holiday celebrations that offices usually have. So I kinda have the best of both worlds because I get to make stuff for him to take to his office ( even though he pretends he’s the holiday Scrooge meister) . For Halloween , I made him a “BOO” box of Oreo pops.

The basic ingredients:

• Halloween Oreos
• Wilton Candy Melts
• Wilton Decorative Icing
• Wilton Candy Skulls
• Lollipop Sticks

Melted the candy melts using a double boiler. Inserted a stick in each cookie. For some reason the consistency was thicker than usual so rather than dip the cookies, I ended up glopping and smearing ( that’s a technical cooking term) the melted candy on the cookies. Glop a plop on with a spoon and smear with the back of the spoon. Wasn’t going for precision here. Placed these on wax paper to set . When they were set but not totally dry, put one of the skulls in the center.

Michaels didn’t have enough of the skulls so I got some black icing and made Jack Skellington-ish faces on the rest. Once they were all dry, I wrapped each in a cello bag and tied with Halloween themed ribbon.

Grabbed a shoe box and covered with DCWV’s Ghosts and Goblins paper and KandCo Halloween adhesive scrapbook borders and used some of this weird packing material I’d saved to re-use because it was so funky and recyclable.

This is the packing stuff that I thought was perfect for this box:

BOO !

Linking Up At: 

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BOO! BFF Link Party #26 and BFF Alderberry Hill

Happy Halloween Weekend and TGIF all! Stocked up on candy? Costumes decided and done? Ready for the parade of trick or treaters? Let me really scare you. It’s now officially less than two months til CHRISTMAS! Told you I’d scare you.

Let’s see what everyone’s been up to this week and meet this week’s BFF, Sarah from Alderberry Hill. If you need any last minute Halloween inspiration, Sarah’s your gal. She has been whipping up some of the cutest Halloween ideas around. Here are a few:

Look at this amazing centerpiece:

Or this positively smashing cupcake liner wreath:

Or this fantabulous Witch hat:

And this candy dish!

Sarah’s talents go well beyond Halloween but I thought I’d do a themed post. She’s also an amazing scrapbooker, DIYer, cardmaker, mom, you name it! And she’s a sweetheart. I hope you’ll go and visit!
Now time to party. You know the rules. If it was made by you, link it up. Paper crafts, jewelry, décor, upcycle, roadside rescue, recipe ( especially chocolate!) you name it. Just link to your specific blog post and not your main blog page and don’t forget to go trick or treat at at least one other person’s blog. OK Party On!

Fall Décor: Canvas Corp Chalkboard Paper and Canvas

I had the chance to play with some more of the pieces from the wonderful giveaway I won from Canvas Corp. Included in my goodies were these:

A 10x10 canvas and a 12x12 sheet of chalkboard paper. I’m itching to get some Thanksgiving décor up. Not that I don’t love Halloween but I think sometimes as artsy craftsy decoratsy peeps, we get ahead of the season and by the time the actual holiday rolls around we’re on to the next.

I wasn’t really sure where I was going with this. Sometimes I know. Sometimes I don’t.  But I decided that I wanted these two to go together. Here’s where I ended up:

I used extra strong double sided tape to stick the chalkboard paper to the canvas. Then I got the idea to frame the edges with leaves so I cut a bunch of oak leaves on my Cricut from metallic silver cardstock.

If you can’t take a straight picture, tilt it in Windows Live Writer!
Looked around for something to add and my eyes fell upon my jute twine. Made some spirals and ran the twine around the edges. I’m going for a sparkly Thanksgiving and am in love with tinsel glitter so I covered more leaves with “Champagne” tinsel glitter by Recollections  (Michaels).  Finished up with some rolled paper roses made from a chocolate brown metallic paper and went around those lightly with chocolate brown glitter glue.

Wrote the year in the middle with a chalkboard marker so I can update it again in the years to come.

Not a great pic, but you can see the glitter glue sparkling on the edges of the flower.

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