Charisa Darling

Archive for October 2013

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Happy Halloween!

happy halloween!

Crossing our fingers and hoping for no rain tonight! (I may or not may be secretly hoping rain. An indoor, stormy Halloween with tons of candles and spooky movies sounds perfecto.)

Since I don't have any pictures of the kids in costume yet, here are our pumpkins!

Below is Vaughn's pumpkin. She drew it and carved the majority of it on her own and came out with only one bandaid! Success!

Vance and I were unscathed during the carving process. I know. Boring!

Have fun tonight!

Boo!

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Quick Halloween Headband How-To

I'll never excel at craft blogging because of my timing. I do most crafts the day before whatever we are celebrating, never weeks nor months (ha!) ahead.

Being that today is the day before Halloween it's time to get crafty.

I just finished (literally minutes ago) a quick Halloween headband for my daughter to wear to school tomorrow using materials I found around the house.

I hot glued tule trim and ribbon around a small witch hat and glued it onto an old headband.

I cut strips of black felt and glued them over the headband to help secure the hat to the headband.

Cute but not quite done yet. On another pass through the house looking for stuff I found black and white bakers twine and a sparkly spider and glued those on as well.

Might be the quickest craft I've ever done! Not the best but Vaughn will love it.

Bonus! Another quick idea to up the spookiness: I picked up 2 of the carving kit's that I mentioned last week and used one for a hostess gift for the Halloween party we went to. I simply tied twine around it and glued a fake spider onto the tag.

It took longer putting this post together than making the actual headband itself. That means there's still time for you too! Get to it!

Happy Halloween Eve!

Monday, October 28, 2013

Halloween 2013: Our Costumes

Halloween is for adults too, right? Right! This past weekend my husband and I attended our first ever adult costume party and it was a blast!

There were other costume contenders but we ultimately decided on being Caroline and Farmer Ted from Sixteen Candles.

Remember them?

Source

Without further ado, here's how we pulled it off.

I bought a blond wig and used scissors to chop pieces off. The only issue I ran into was that my cheapo wig was not thick enough to really hack into to look just like Caroline's. (I Googled and found other pictures of what her hair looked like.) If too much was cut off it would show the cap underneath so I carefully cut and made the best of it.

The dress was actually my freshman year homecoming dress. (Was actually my sister's freshman homecoming dress as well. How bout that for longevity! It's not totally like Caroline's but it was a short purple dress and was free so it worked in my book.

Justin's was pretty easy and self explanatory from the picture. I bought the headgear online.

We tied for 2nd place so next year we will have to step up our game! I'm already plotting!

There were a lot of great costumes at the party and was great seeing adults cut loose and wear silly costumes for a night.

Are you dressing up this year?

Friday, October 25, 2013

Friday 5: Celebrating Simplicity

5 noteworthy and toast worthy simple happenings from the week.

Here's to the never ending energy levels of 8 year old boys.

After a long day of school one would think they would like to lay low before soccer practice. Nope! They prefer to jump back and forth between rows and then do a little seat surfing. (We were parked.)

Here's to the leaves. Again.

They have changed so much since last week and looked especially pretty when a storm was rolling in a few days ago.

Here's to crying in the library.

Instant tears when I saw this book on the shelf. This was one of our favorites to read to baby Vance but had to throw it away due to an unfortunate nap time/book ripping up event when he was 2. I have not seen a copy since.

Here's to a free app.

I am pretty cheap when in comes to buying apps so I was especially excited to get this free one through Sephora. The arrows! The bubbles! The cool fonts! You can look forward to even more overdone Instagram pics until the newness wears off!

Here's to camera phones.

I have waaay too many pictures on my camera roll because of things of this nature. My time was up with this book from the library but the illustrations were so great that I wanted to keep a few of them for future inspiration. Do you use your camera to help remind you of things also?

Cheers!

What are you toasting to tonight?

(The majority of these pictures are from my Instagram. Follow the fun @charisadee if you'd like!)

(Also if you're up for even more fun: Follow my blog with Bloglovin )

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Halloween: The little things that excite me...

I headed into Williams-Sonoma yesterday to pick up more vanilla and my eyes perked open when I saw these cute little boxes. I had no idea what they even where but I'm a sucker for cute packaging.

Heavy duty pumpkin carving tools! No way!

I was especially excited about the scraper tool. Every year I use a big metal spoon to scrape the inside of the pumpkin but the handle always gets in the way.

So excited to get carving!

Have a great day!

By the way, it's hump day!

Monday, October 21, 2013

Weekend Update: Pretending to be Runners

Over the weekend we ran our first 5K. I feel the need to mention that the last time I ran over 3 miles was 3.5 years ago and I was on a treadmill. I have ran outside a total of 2 times before this day.

Vance and I separated from Vaughn and Justin a little after starting. Vance loves to run and prefers to sprint. He got frustrated with me because I needed to stop and walk a few times and he may or may not have told me that I was "ruining his time". We had a brief chat and he was good for the rest of the run. He started to tire out around the 2 mile mark and stopping to walk for a minute seemed like a welcome idea. I snapped this picture of us right after we finished. Our time was 38 minutes.

This was a lot to ask of Vaughn. She's used to leisurely walks, occasional hikes, and was a champ at Disney, never complaining about her legs being tired, but a fast paced 3.2 miles? She did awesome. The Girls on The Run group cheered her on at mile 2 which was really helpful. Justin was great with her, giving her pep talks along their way. Their time was 49 minutes.

So proud of my family!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Friday, October 18, 2013

Friday Five: Celebrating Simplicity

5 noteworthy and toast worthy happenings from the week.

Here's to picking up our numbers for tomorrow's run!

Here's to the leaves.

Here's to Vaughn and the end of another gymnastics session.

Here's to having fun.

Here's to nightly phone calls from Mémé.

Cheers!

What are you toasting to tonight?

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Spook your Space

Today I thought I'd share some of my spooky surroundings.

(Look Ma! I finally found a use for that Medium Sized Cloche)

Just 15 days left until Halloween! Have you Spooked your Space yet?

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Make Life Easier: Cut Box Tops Off!

Inanimate objects are often the source of my frustration.

All I want is to reach into the cabinet and grab a straw. I don't want to take the box out, open the lid, take out the straw, fold down the tabs, close the box, and set it back in the cabinet. Who has time for such ridiculousness?

After countless times of reaching in and trying to open the box quickly without taking it out of the cabinet and knocking it over it came to me: cut the stinking top off!

I now use this philosophy to wherever it can be applied and life is easier.

I also hacked the top off the Stevia packets. Look out, granola bars, I'm coming for you next!

I hope this simple idea helps make pantry life less frustrating for you!

Sharing with these parties this week:

Monday

skip to my lou

homemaker on a dime

making the world cuter

sew can do

be colorful

the diy home sweet home project

sumo's sweet stuff

Tuesday

show me what you got

not just a housewife

bebetsy.com

Wednesday

cherished bliss

ginger snap crafts

Thursday

52 mantels

Seven Alive

Friday, October 11, 2013

Friday 5: Celebrating Simplicity

It's time for the Friday 5 which is how I sum up all the great simple things from the week that are often overlooked. I believe in small victories and in celebrating the everyday.

Here's to taking advantage of a half-day of school and great weather with a little Urban Hiking with the kids.

Here's to Vaughn learning how to pump her legs and swing without being pushed.

Here's to being silly with the kids lunches this week.

Here's to deciding on making soup on an already busy day. This is why I fail at certain things and excel at others.

Here's to signing up for our first family 5K.

Now it's your turn! What happenings have been noteworthy and toast worthy for you this week?

Cheers!

Sunday, October 06, 2013

Spooky Halloween Birds: Give them a job.

Spooky bird decorations for Halloween? Love them. Can't get enough of them. I have more than a few sitting around and it hit me that they should be doing something.

Just look at this guy standing there. He needs a job.

I think he and his buddies are dying for some action. Here's how I fixed this problem.

Use an Exacto knife to carefully cut a slit into their beaks. Follow the line in the plastic to "open" their mouths by separating the top from the bottom. Warning! It's very easy to slip and cut yourself - be careful!!! I chose not to post process pictures because every one looks like I was, well, cutting into a bird. Even though it's fake it just doesn't look good.

Once you have a slit in their beak the limits are endless. Here, three of the birds are holding up a sign in my dining room.