Halloween Tricks and Treats

It's been busybusybusy in the MonkeyFace household. School is in full swing, and I am dividing my time between working, house renovating (not mine, sadly), and crafting. (Notice the utter lack of "working out?" Because, so have my jeans. *sigh*)

I so totally love this time of year. The cooler weather, the fun harvest-y things, the apple picking, the pumpkin bread, the Halloween excitement.

Trin was assigned "snack" for her class today. And while I completely understand her teacher's "no sweets for snack" policy, it did make me a little sad. What good is being snack mom if I can't go crazy making spider-oreo-topped cupcakes with green goo filling? *sigh* Schools these days, I tell ya!

So, we went a healthier route, and made "pumpkin pinwheels" and "witchy brooms."

The pumpkin pinwheels are sundried tomato wraps filled with cream cheese, cheddar, monterey jack, and a smidge of GarlicGarlic, then rolled, sliced into the "pinwheels," and festooned with a party-pick "stem." Both girls were skeptical at first, but after a taste of the filling, spent the remainder of the assembly process strategically angling for the scrap end-pieces.

The brooms are pretzel rods with strategically sliced fruit roll-ups rolled around the bottom. They were pronounced "really awesome" by the six-year-old. I was also informed that "I rock" and "I make the best snacks and all the kids love them." Not bad for the ol' mom-ego, that kid.

After the kiddos were bathed and booked and put to bed, I turned my attention to finishing up my Halloween craft exchange project.

I stayed up WAAAAY too late finishing it, but I am pretty pleased with how it turned out, overall.

Here's a shot of it all pieced together, before I started quilting. The little witchie-poo in the middle is embroidered (which, WOW are those skills RUSTY), and then the four squares are horribly wonky log-cabin, but, I kind of like the overall imperfect effect. It's certainly not going to win any blue ribbons at the county fair, but for a dollar-limited craft exchange, I think it fills the bill alright.

This is my favorite part of the embroidery. I just love the little French-knot spider! The embroidery design was inspired by Quixotic Pixels. I didn't use her pattern, but I loved the cute li'l witch with crazy hair and stripey stockings.

I have kind of a freakish love for French knots. I think it might be because I was never able to do them until, oh, the last six months or so? I think I finally learned from a link off of the Alabama Stitch Book flickr set -- one of the women in the group knots off the end of her thread with French knots. Her explanation just clicked for me, and voila! Now I can do the knots!


I'll try to get a good picture of the finished product before I send it off later today, but since I finished after 1:00 this morning, I kind of just fell into bed and figured I'd let the pictures take care of themselves later.