Guest Post Over at Serenity Now!

Today I am over at Amanda's place as part of her holiday blog series "A Season of Serenity at Home".

I'm sharing a fun, easy, and yummy recipe for these SUPER cute edible Popcorn Snowballs:

Click on over and check out the step by step so you can make these yummy snowballs for your kiddos this winter!

Pre-Thanksgiving Roadtrip: Fall Creek Falls State Park, TN

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we had plans to go see the Mississippi State Bulldogs play football one last time this season. Since the boys were out of school the whole week of Thanksgiving, we decided to extend our weekend football trip by a few days and take a short trip to Tennessee. I did a little research and found a wonderful State Park about an hour north of Chattanooga {and only about a 6 hour drive from Starkville}. So after the Bulldogs won against the Arkansas Razorbacks, we loaded up the Airstream and headed to Fall Creek Falls State Park.

The namesake falls from the top:

All of us after the hike down to the bottom of the falls:

 The boys had a great time hiking, biking, and exploring all over the beautiful park and campground.

 Two of our favorite places in the whole park were the suspension bridges that crossed over the creeks. I was a little nervous about them, but the boys LOVED them! And they were the perfect setting for some cute group pictures too:)

 This was my normal view for most of the hikes that we took...bringing up the rear and making sure that Eli stayed with the group!

**We had a wonderful time at Fall Creek Falls State Park**

The campground was wonderful {and pretty sparsely occupied since it's off season for camping}.

We saw a ton of deer everywhere.

We had a campfire every night with yummy s'mores & campfire cones.

The boys got slingshots for souvenirs and learned how to shoot acorns with them:)

I managed to get a couple photos of my wild boys so we will always remember our first camping trip in Tennessee!

Silhouette Black Friday Deals

I am SUPER excited to let y'all know about a couple of awesome Black Friday deals over at Silhouette America! If you don't already have a Silhouette, now is a great time to buy one! And if you do have a Silhouette you can also get some great deals on supplies and accessories! Head on over to the Silhouette America Black Friday page and use the code SUPERMOM to take advantage of these awesome offers:

THE FINE PRINT:
Offer only valid at silhouetteamerica.com. Expires November 30, 2012. Rain checks not available.

% discount excludes Silhouette CAMEO®, Silhouette Portrait™, downloads, download cards, subscriptions, and gift cards.

I am Thankful For Printable

Last year I shared these really cute I am Thankful for printables that I made. I actually loved them so much that they stayed up all year!

Now that Thanksgiving has rolled around again, I thought it would be fun to use the same printable again and just update the picture and let the kiddos update what they are thankful for! So I searched through my pictures from last year and found a couple cute ones of the boys and printed them out again using THIS printable and Photoshop. I thought since it was such a big hit here last year, I would work on making it a printable so you could print it out too:)

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You can right click and save or open up THIS link and head over to Google documents to download it.

After you download the file, just open it up in Photoshop {or whatever photo editing software you use} and place your picture on top of the gray square. If you don't want to deal with photo editing software, you can always just print it out and tape your picture right to the page!

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I'm still working on getting the boys to finish up their drawings and getting them hung up, but when I do I will share a picture with you! And if you use this printable, I would love to see what your kiddos are thankful for too!

Sugar Cone Cornucopia

I saw these SUPER cute Thanksgiving treats floating around the blog world last year. And I have to admit that when I first saw them, I was pretty skeptical that they would work....that's probably why I didn't attempt them last year. But earlier this week when our preschool choir director asked if I could come up with a snack for the kiddos, this was the first thing I thought of. I searched Pinterest and found a couple different versions all with different directions {I never did find what looked like the original inspiration. If you know where it is let me know and I'll credit them!}, so I grabbed a couple of sugar cones and tried out a few techniques. After a failed attempts, I came up with the perfect way to make and fill these cute Sugar Cone Cornucopias!

Start by gathering your supplies:

sugar cones

chocolate 

fall sprinkles

Cool Whip

Reese's Pieces or M&M's

Take a couple of paper towels, fold them up into a square, wet them, and then ring out most of the water. You want them to be damp, but not dripping. Place your wet paper towels on a microwave safe plate, then place the bottom half of the ice cream cones on the paper towels and cover them up. I found that two at a time worked the best because you only have a little bit of time to work with them after they come out of the microwave.

Microwave the cones for around 30 seconds depending on the strength of your microwave. You want the ends of the cones to be soft enough to mold without burning the part that isn't in the paper towel. You also need to re-wet the paper towel after two 30 seconds runs in the microwave.

Remove the plate from the microwave and pull back the paper towel carefully. They will be hot! Pick up your cones, and working quickly bend the end of the cone using your hands, the counter top, or even a clean pencil. You will have to hold the ends in place for a few seconds until they cool enough to keep their shape. 

This is a great projects for kiddos to help with, but they don't need to help with the cone making step because it can be really hot! So let them start helping after all the cones are made:) I actually made all the cones at home and then took them with all the other supplies to church and the kiddos all got to decorate and fill their own cornucopias! 

After you finishing forming all your cones, melt a little bit of chocolate in a coffee cup or small bowl. I used almond bark and I just put one square in my cup and microwaved it until it was melted. 

Then dip just the very end of the cone in the chocolate...

...and place your dipped cone in a small plate of fall colored sprinkles.

Set the cones aside so the chocolate can harden. While you wait on the cones, put your Cool Whip in a small plastic bag and clip off one of the corners.

Use the plastic bag to fill the cone up with Cool Whip...

...then place a couple of Reece's Pieces or M&M's in the Cool Whip. 

Now you have a SUPER cute Sugar Cone Cornucopia that kids and adults will love!

Linking up here..

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Gobble, Gobble: Turkey Waffles (Again)

I truly can't believe that Thanksgiving is only a little more than a week away! It feels like we just got through Halloween, and I really haven't had much time to think about Thanksgiving...so I'm re-posting these fun Thanksgiving waffles that I made for my boys last year!

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I have been brainstorming Thanksgiving ideas for a while now. It's amazing how hard it is to come up with a good waffle idea for a holiday based around food:) I tried to make Cornucopia Waffles with an abundance of M&M's, but all that did was make a huge mess of the waffle iron. So I decided to give Turkey Waffles a try instead. Now I know the name makes them sound kind of gross because seriously who wants savory turkey hiding in their waffles! Don't let the name scare you off...there is not a trace of real turkey in these fun and colorful Thanksgiving waffles:)

I started with the usual suspects...and my usual helper:) 

**waffle mix, food coloring, and Eli**

 Mix up your waffles according to the directions. You will need four waffles total to make two turkeys. By the way, these are sharing waffles...two people per turkey:)
*Start by making one plain waffle.*
*While that waffle is cooking divide your remaining batter into three bowls.*
*Add green, yellow, and orange food coloring each into one of the bowls and stir to combine.* 

*Cook the three colored waffles and then get ready to assemble.*

Start by cutting the plain waffle in half and the colored waffles into quarters.

Lay out the colored waffles in a turkey tail pattern starting with the outside ones{green here} and working your way in. Lay the half plain waffle on top of the turkey tail and adjust as needed. Use one of the leftover yellow quarter waffles to make a beak for your waffle. I simply cut off the pointed edge and added it on top of the plain waffle. 

What kind of fun foods are you making to celebrate Thanksgiving this year?

DIY Disney Shirts for Girls

As soon as I finished making Halloween costumes last week, I got started on these cute {and oh so girly} diy Disney shirts for a friend's little girl who is going to Disney World for the first time! If you've been around here long, you know that I don't often have the opportunity to make cute/pink/girly things since I live in a house full of boys....so I may have gone a little overboard with the pink! I don't think Taylor will be complaining though, specially since this trip to Disney is a surprise and she isn't going to find out until they are getting ready to head to Orlando! Anyway, I had a ton of fun coming up with some fun color combos and different girly things to make for her. I probably could have gone a lot girlier with more ribbon and ruffles, but that just doesn't seem to come natural to me after 8 years of nothing but boy stuff!

This first shirt is just a plain pink shirt with a Mickey head appliqued from some cute fabric left over from a Valentine's craft a few years ago.

This shirt is my favorite for sure! It is a pink felt Mickey head with a gray and white chevron Mickey head on top with a lower case pink felt "t" appliqued on top of that.

The color on this one didn't show up great in the picture, but it is a black shirt with Taylor's name appliqued on from some cute red and white heart fabric {again left over from a Valentine craft}. My favorite part of this shirt is the Mickey head instead of the "O" in her name:)

And you just can't make girly Disney shirts without including Tinkerbell. I made this one with some Silhouette heat transfer material. I found the Tinkerbell shape online and used my Silhouette to cut out Tink. I also cut Taylor's name using the font Waltograph. Then all I did was iron it all onto the shirt! 

This was my last shirt to make, because I really wanted to include a Minnie in the mix but for some reason none of the other shirts seemed very Minnie-ish to me. The black and white chevron on this shirt is from a dishtowel that I picked up at Target a few months ago and I bet you can't guess where the pink and white polka dot fabric is from {yep, it's leftover Valentine's material}:)

All of these shirts were really easy to make. For the most part I printed out my template, cut the fabric out, and then used a zigzag stitch to applique the fabric to the shirts. I didn't include any step by step instructions because I've done that quite a few times {and I was kind of in a hurry to make these before their big trip}, but if you need help shoot me an email {kellibwilson@gmail.com} and I'll be happy to help out any way I can. You can also click HERE to see all the other crafty shirts I've made...I'm pretty sure there are a few step by step posts in the mix somewhere!

Linking up here..

Tatertots and Jello

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Charlotte's Web Spider Web Snack

I saw these really cute spider web snacks {from Sara at Mom Endeavors} around Halloween last year when they were making the rounds on Pinterest. I thought they were absolutely adorable, but with all the stuff that we had going on for Halloween {last year and this year} I never got around to making them. So when I got a note saying Henry's class was having a County Fair to celebrate reading the book Charlotte's Web, I knew this would be the perfect snack to make! They fit in perfectly with their celebration, and they were a big hit with the teachers and the kids!

One of the best things about my version of this snack is that it only takes two ingredients:

pretzels sticks and white chocolate/vanilla almond bark.

Start by melting your almond bark according to the directions on the package. Then add the melted mixture into a plastic squeeze bottle. I get mine at Walmart. They are Wilton brand and they usually run around $3 for 2 bottles.

Lay out a big sheet of parchment paper and put your pretzels down in a sort of snowflake design. My pretzel sticks were abnormally long so I broke mine in half to make the spider webs a more manageable size. I tried to have 7 to 8 pretzel pieces per spider web so there was plenty of pretzel for the almond bark to attach to.

Gather up some of those fun plastic spider rings.

Use your squeeze bottle to make the spider web onto of the pretzel sticks. Start in the middle and add a pretty big blob of the almond bark to make sure that all the pieces stay together, then work you way to the outside edge of the pretzel sticks in a circular motion.When I first got started I thought it was going to take forever, but it actually went pretty fast once I got the hang of it!

Before your almond bark sets too much, stick a spider ring in the middle making sure to get the ring part down in the almond bark so it attaches well. Then let them set up. Mine took about 30 minutes to be completely  set up and ready to be removed from the parchment paper. I found that the easiest way to lift them was to use an offset spatula and slowly slide it under the spider webs and lift.

When I finished making about 40 spider webs {I made some extras just in case they broke because they are kind of fragile and I didn't want any of the kiddos to have to get a broken spider web.} I used the almond bark that was left in my squeeze bottle to spell out a few of the words that Charlotte had written in her web in the story! It added a little bit more fun to the snack:)