I’ve been busy decking the halls for Halloween this week and I can’t wait to show you what I’ve been up to.
I’ve made a few trips to Goodwill and found a few treasures this week including some great old apothecary style jars. As soon as I saw them I knew what I wanted to do with them. I recently became the proud owner of a new Silhouette Cameo and it has been so fun!
Silhouette sent me some of their great new printable gold and silver foil as well as white sticker paper. I decided to create some labels for my new “old” Halloween Potion Bottles. I purchased the label designs from the Silhouette store and then using the Print and Cut feature of the Silhouette I printed them onto the sticker paper using my printer. Then fed them through the Silhouette Cameo which cut them out! I was a little nervous about figuring all this out but Silhouette has lots of great video tutorials.
I also found several helpful ones on YouTube.
Then all I had to do was add the labels to the bottles.
I filled some of them with candy and the others I will be filling with colored waters as well as some herbs and spices.
How fun and easy!
For more fun ideas on how to use the new printable foil and labels check out the Silhouette Blog.
Here’s a sneak peek at a few others things I’ve been doing with the Cameo – this time I used vinyl.
I’ll be back on Monday with more photos and more details of my Halloween decor.
Of all the Wedding Carnival posts I have done this one is the most important because it is about who the party was for – the Bride and Groom! It was an evening to honor them and to celebrate the beginning of their life as a married couple. It was such a fun celebration!
My friend Meg got some wonderful shots of the bride and groom that I wanted to share with you along with some fun family photos. I think we will definitely be having a Wedding Carnival Christmas card this year!!
Such a beautiful bride and handsome groom. They just ooze happiness!! I loved the backdrop that the ribbon curtain provided for photos.
And then along the woodland path in the garden. Reminds me of a secret garden. Such a beautiful bride! Our dance floor was also a great place for some photos of our new and improved family. Then the crazy siblings! And the cute new sisters. And the happy mom and dad!
Two of my favorite things – lemon and frosting. I actually am not a huge cake fan, I am a frosting fan. I eat cake so I can eat frosting and I have been known to skip the cake and just eat the frosting. Lemony Lemon Cake includes two of my favorite things – lemon and frosting.
If you are a lemon lover you will love this lemony lemon cake!
Today’s Lemony Lemon Cake recipe is one that has been in my binder of family favorites for years and originally came from my friend Cathy. We had dinner guests last week and I was stumped as what to fix for dessert and I was having a bit of a lemon craving despite the fact that it is almost fall and I should be craving apples and cinnamon. I think my taste buds are confused. That is what happens when the calendar says September but the temperature is in the 80’s!
I was in the mood for lemon frosting -ooops – I mean lemon cake with lemon frosting.
I was hoping my dinner guests were in the mood for lemon cake too. This lemon cake recipe is an easy one. It uses a lemon cake mix and I just doctor it up a bit by adding in an extra egg and instead of water I use buttermilk. Like I said, the reason you make this cake is not for the cake it is for the frosting. But the cake is nice and lemony and moist too.
The frosting makes a lot so if you eat cake because you like cake and not the frosting you could probably get away with cutting the frosting recipe in half but if you are like me you will want to make it just the way it is.
With lots of frosting! It is a fairly simple cake. You just make it in a 9 x 13 pan and then load on the frosting. It is easy and quick to make but don’t be deceived by it’s simplicity and its unassuming appearance .
So if your taste buds are a bit confused and think it is still spring and lemon season like mine you are going to love this cake. Even if your taste buds aren’t confused and they are craving apples and cinnamon give it a try – refresh your taste buds with some lemony lemon cake goodness.
Mix together cake mix according to directions on back but add in one additional egg and substitute buttermilk for water.
Bake according to directions in a 9 x 13 pan.
Cool.
Frosting
Beat together butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla, lemon peel and lemon juice until fluffy and spreading consistency. If necessary add some additional lemon juice to get the right consistency.
As I mentioned in my original Wedding Carnival post some of the best money we spent was to have live music at our Wedding Carnival. We knew all along we wanted music but I had originally planned on having a DJ but one Saturday we were at the Farmer’s Market where they have live music each week and we were listening to a band we just loved.
My husband surprised me by saying we should go ask them if they were available to play at our Wedding Carnival. I thought it was a great idea too but unfortunately they weren’t available. They did give us the name of another band, 24/7, whose musical style was the same. I looked them up online, listened to a few of their songs and emailed them to see if they were available. Lucky for us they were and we booked them – they were awesome. My friends are still talking about how great the music was. They played both current music as well as a lot of the good oldies that are so great to dance too. Having live music at the Wedding Carnival just made the atmosphere perfect! Live music adds another dimension to things that taped music doesn’t do. Also, the interaction of the band with the audience is great.
They even got me to participate with them!!
If we were going to have music though I thought we should have a dance floor. My husband didn’t agree. He thought dancing on the grass was just fine. I didn’t.
So I decided I was going to find someway to have a dance floor with or without his help. I first started with the party rental places but soon discovered it was really expensive to rent a dance floor. Not in the budget.
Next, not to be discouraged I went to Craig’s List and actually found a gal that rents a dance floor from her home. Unfortunately it wasn’t available. But I did find a smaller dance floor for sale on Craig’s List that would be perfect for the band as they needed a hard surface to play on. We negotiated a bit with the owner and loaded it up into our Suburban. (Cost $80.00)
I then started doing some research on line about building your own dance floor. I found some info and instructions but my husband still wasn’t on board.
I was excited when the gal who rents a floor from her home emailed to say she was buying a second dance floor and we could rent that one. We were going to have a dance floor.
Unfortunately, the Sunday before the Wedding Carnival she called to say the dance floor was in too bad of shape to use and she was going to return it. So I had no dance floor, yet!
I then enlisted the help of my daughter Cali who was home for a few weeks and her good friend Hannah and asked them if they would build me a dance floor. I think by this time I had worn Jim down and he agreed to go to Home Depot and buy the supplies to build a dance floor. The cost ended up being under $200.00 and Cali and Hannah spent the next two days building me an amazing dance floor!! I’ll be providing a How to Build a Dance Floor tutorial next week!
It was the perfect addition to our Wedding Carnival and people danced and danced all night!
The dancing was enjoyed by all ages!
The dance floor also provided a great place to start a flash mob.
Cali, Hannah and Tessa came up with the idea to have a flash mob at the Wedding Carnival. For those of you unfamiliar with a flash mob, according to Wikipedia it is:
A flash mob (or flashmob) is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression.
Not sure ours was a pointless act but it was for the purposes of entertainment!
The girls chose the song “Call Me Maybe” for the flash mob and did all the choreography. They enlisted the help of friends, family and neighbors and we were all sworn to secrecy so the bride and groom didn’t know about it nor did the Wedding Carnival guests!
We had several practices in our backyard before the real thing.
When the band took one of their breaks Cali got on stage and told the crowd that she, Tessa and Hannah were going to do a dance to a song that was about what Jessica had said to Clark the first time they met.
Hey, I just met you,And this is crazy,But here’s my number,So call me, maybe?
During the chorus to the song, neighbors who were scattered throughout the crowd would begin joining into the dance!
The crowd loved it and so did the Bride and Groom!!
At the end we formed a dance line and took turns dancing down the middle – encouraging the crowd to join in.
We even got the bride and groom to join the fun! It was a total highlight of the evening. I can now cross “Participate in a Flash Mob” off my bucket list but it was so much fun I would do it again in a heartbeat – maybe the next Wilkes wedding!!!
Saturday morning I hosted what has become our annual Back to School Breakfast. Since I no longer have children living at home that will be starting school, they are all away at college, I invite my neighbor kids.
Tomorrow is the first day of school here in Portland.
For this year’s breakfast I decided to do my own home version of a fun restaurant here in Portland called Slappy Cakes. You sit around a table that has a griddle built into it and you make your own pancakes. It is so fun!
Since I don’t have a table with a griddle built into it (maybe I could get Jim to build me one?!) I just used electric griddles. I set up the table with all kinds of fun toppings to add into your pancakes. We had three different types of pancake batter – Buttermilk, Peanut Butter and Whole Grain. Buttermilk is already on the blog and I’ll be sharing the other two in the coming weeks.
We had a fun array of toppings which included mini M & M’s, mini chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, sprinkles, lemon curd, whip cream, almonds, pecans, bacon, blueberries, bananas, peanut butter, honey and maple syrup.
The kids filled a little bowl with the different toppings they wanted.
Then they went over to the griddles and picked their pancake batter and made their pancakes. They came up with some pretty fun combinations!
Even the grownups had fun with it. Here is Jim’s combination – bluberries, pecans and bacon! We had chocolate milk (always the favorite) juice and some yummy flavored water one of my neighbors brought.
We drank out of my fun little milk bottles with a straw.
We also had bacon and little sausages as well as a delicious baked french toast from Pioneer Women that another neighbor brought.
I decorated the table with some of my collection of stuff – a couple of chalk boards with some school themed quotes as well as piles of books, apples and my globe I recently made thanks to the idea from No Biggie.
After breakfast we had to have our Back to School Photos taken. Here’s the group shot of my cute neighbors kids. I have known several of them since the day they were born!
And here are the Cul de Sac moms! Here’s to a great start to a new school year for all you kiddos starting school!!
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