Wordless Wednesday: An A-MAZE-ing Field Trip

Click here to see Henry's A-MAZE-ing field trip from last year:)

Jack O Lantern Waffles

What's more fun than colorful waffles? Colorful waffles that smile back at you of course! If you've been around my blog long you know that I have quite an obsession with FUN waffles, and today I'm sharing my newest fall waffle creation: 

To make these smiling waffles, all you need is a waffle mix of you choice, orange food coloring, and mini chocolate chips.

After you mix the batter according to the package directions, add a pretty good amount of orange food coloring {I always use Wilton gels because they make the color a lot more vibrant than liquid food coloring}.

Stir in the food coloring and add more as needed.... You want to make sure your jack o' lantern is a vibrant orange, not a pastel color.

After your batter is mixed up and you've got the perfect shade of orange, get your mini chocolate chips ready. I found it was easiest to pour them in a small bowl. That way I could scoop them up with a spoon and add them to my waffle batter quickly.

Pour the orange waffle batter onto your greased and heated waffle iron. Using a spoon {it gives you a little more control of the those crazy mini chips}, add the mini chocolate chips onto your waffle in the pattern of a jack o' lantern....eyes, nose, and big smiling mouth.

When your jack o' lantern waffle comes out of the waffle iron, it will be smiling back at you!

I had three hungry boys waiting for waffles so I didn't have a ton of time to decorate these after they came off the waffle iron, but you could add some green gummies to the top of the waffle as a stem and leaves to make them even more fun!

Tent Camping, Bulldogs, and Football

Twelve hours is probably the cap on the amount of time that I ever want to spend camping in a tent....and that is exactly what we did this weekend. After deciding {very last minute} to take the Henry and Grant to a Mississippi State football game, I got busy trying to find a hotel room. The only problem was that  there was NOTHING available within 100 miles of Starkville! Lucky for us, my grandparents were staying in their motor home at a campground about 30 minutes south of MS State....so we loaded up our tent and sleeping bags and headed out for a night of tent camping.

 We didn't get to the campground until almost 9 pm Friday night, so I don't have any pictures of the tent going up...but here are few of the boys helping Jason disassemble the tent the next morning:) We had a pretty good night in the tent, but I'm definitely bringing an air mattress if we ever tent camp again!

 After the tent and sleeping bags were loaded up and we had said our goodbyes {and thanks you for the free place to sleep} to my grandparents, we headed to see the Bulldogs. Henry and Grant got their picture taken with a statue of a bulldog...

 ...and a real one too!

 After our walking tour {aka we parked so far from the football field that we saw half the campus on the way to the stadium} of the campus, the boys got to play on some inflatable for a while and get their faces painted.

 Then we headed to our seats {decked out in maroon} to cheer on the MS State Bulldogs. The Bulldogs ended up losing in the last few minutes of the game 14-12...but it was a great game and the boys had a really great time!

We're hoping {okay mostly me because I don't want to sleep in a tent again any time soon} that our Airstream will be ready for football season next year, and maybe Eli will be old enough to join us for the game too:)

Wordless Wednesday: At the End of the Rainbow

Hey, What's That?

Yes, there is a sticky frog stuck to my ceiling.

Yes, it has been there since yesterday.

Yes, my house full of boys thinks that having a sticky frog stuck to the ceiling is hilarious.

Yes, I took pictures of the sticky frog to share on my blog.

Yes, I am low on good blogging material so instead of something interesting, you get multiple pictures of a sticky frog.

Have a great day! And try not to get any sticky frogs stuck to your ceiling:)

Friday Flashback: Food Edition

PUMPKIN JIGGLERS
**It's another Flashback Post! This is a fun recipe that I shared last year. We are definitely going to be making these again this year because they were a huge hit with my boys! Enjoy**


Jello Jigglers

& pumpkin cookie cutters

 make SUPER easy

and SUPER fun

fall treats

for everyone to eat!

What kind of fun Halloween/fall snacks have you been making?!?

I Gave Into the Missoni Hype...A Little Late!

I know I am way behind the curve here considering most people were storming the doors of Target more than 3 weeks ago, but after quite a few trips past the {very small selection} of Missoni merchandise at my local Target I finally gave in. I bought a candle and a journal. I know big spender, right?!? 

 Honestly I just wasn't really a big fan of the majority of the stuff that I saw. A lot of the pieces seemed either way too retro or way too Southwestern for my taste. I will say that I LOVE the zig-zag {aka chevron}, but some of the the color combos just don't fit my style....except for the black and white {which is what I ended up buying}. 

 I did LOVE this bike, and these fun boots that my friend Carrie bought are SUPER cute too. There were a few other pieces that probably would have considered buying {like a scarf, a pair of flats, or some cute socks}, but when I finally decided that I desperately needed to have a least one Missoni piece to buy something, the pickin' were slim and the black and white things were all I could talk myself into buying. I do think that a lot of the little girl's stuff was cute....but little girl's clothes are never on my shopping list for some reason:)

For now, I am SUPER happy with my cute zig-zag candle that blends pretty well into my living room decor. It is black and white so it pretty much matches anything:) 

What do you think of the Missoni for Target line...like it or loathe it?

Wordless Wednesday: Flying with Pan Am

Anybody want to take a guess at what his airplane is made from?

Caramel Apples

I've shared more than a few apple recipes on my blog over the years {Inside Out Caramel Apples, Apple Sandwiches, Sauteed Apples}. My apple recipes are sometimes created out of necessity because I buy way too many apples and then don't eat them before they start to get a little mushy. But last week I actually bought a ton of apples on purpose...to make caramel apples for Grant's entire 1st grade class! Yes, when his teacher asked us parents to send in a fun apple treat last week, I didn't take the easy route and send apple chips or even a store bought apple pie. Nope, I decided to make 30 {yummy, gooey, peanut covered} caramel apples instead:) Crazy? Maybe a little bit, but they were really fun to make and even more fun to eat! And yes I made a few extra to keep at home:) Here's my step by step just in case you want to make some of these yummy treats:

Wash, dry, and insert sticks into apples. I put the sticks in the bottom of the apples because I found that they are a little more steady upside down:)

Open a ton of caramel squares. I used 3 14 oz bags of caramels and it was just about perfect to make 30 small-ish caramel apples.

Heat the caramel according to the package instructions, and then dip the apples in the warm caramel.

Add chopped peanuts to the dipped apple.

Place the apples on wax paper to cool and then enjoy...or send 27 of them to school:)

Have you ever made caramel apples?

Pinterest Inspiration: Football Door Hangers

My craft {and recipe, decorating, photography, holiday, and party} to do list keeps getting longer and longer...mostly thanks to Pinterest! I am seriously pinning amazing ideas way faster than I can create them! A few weeks ago I pinned a really cute Football Door Hanger that I knew would be perfect on my front porch along with my Football Windsocks! I had all the supplies in my craft stash, I just kept putting off making them...until I finally convinced a few of my friends to come over for a craft day! We spent a few hours turning plain burlap into these adorable Football Door Hangers:

I don't have a step by step for you...mostly because I was dealing with Eli and trying to make four of these without getting too confused! {Check out Amanda's blog post to see her step by step.} They are actually really easy to make. We started by cutting out some plain burlap in the shape of a football, two footballs per door hanger. Then we spray painted one side of each burlap football with brown spray paint. After the paint was dry we added the fun painted embellishments to the piece that was going to be the front. You can also paint on two of the burlap footballs and make it reversible. My friend Tonya is apparently a great free-hand painter so she did the letters:) After the paint was dry, we layered two of the footballs together and then used a stapler to attach them to each other leaving one end open to stuff them. We added in a ribbon to the top to hang them with, stuffed them with plastic grocery bags, and closed up the hole using the stapler. Pretty easy and SUPER cute! That's one project I can mark off my {Pinterest} to do list!

Have you been working on any Pinterest inspired projects lately?