Happy Thanksgiving!!

Wishing each and every one of you a very happy and blessed Thanksgiving!  The turkey is already in the oven and I just got back from Meijers with three new Cricut cartridges!!!  I was able to snag Birthday Bash, Paper Lace and Wrap it Up this morning!  Now all I need is Nifty Fifties from M's later today before hitting Wal-Mart up tonight at midnight to spend all my birthday gift cards I received on Cricut Lites!!!  I hope you all have a wonderful day with your family and friends.  One of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving is hearing my boys tell what they are thankful for at the dinner table.  Can't wait to hear what Tanner comes up with this year!  lol  Enjoy!

WOW! This just might be the motherload of giveaways!

Dawn's Craft Place is giving away a Mini Netbook plus more goodies as her followers grow!  Be sure to stop by and check it out!  A winner is being drawn tomorrow!  Now that would make it a super Happy Thanksgiving to win that prize package!!!

A Big Shot giveaway!!!

Stop everything you are doing and head over to 4 Fern's Frills !!!  She is giving away a Big Shot as a "thank you" to her followers and a quest to get more followers!  Be sure to tell her that I sent you!  :)

Wahoo!!!

I just realized I passed 20,000 hits on my blog!  I know that isn't much compared to a lot of other blogs, but it's a huge milestone for me!  I am also only about 40 followers away from 400!  I see some celebratory blog candy being posted in the very near future!  Thanks to all of you who keep stopping by even when I've been MIA!  I really appreciate it! 

Sick...exhausted...overwhelmed...and soooooo looking forward to 3:35 PM today!

Before I get into where I've been...I wanted to share another great blog giveaway going on! 

Alma is trying to reach 300 followers and with a little help from her blogging friends it shouldn't take her long!  As a "thank you", Alma is giving away a Martha Stewart All Occasions Cake Art Cricut cartridge on her blog.  Be sure to stop by Alma's blog and leave a comment for a chance to win!  Good luck!

Okay, so....I feel like I've been hauling this cold around for weeks now.  I haven't been sleeping well at all (not that I ever really do!) because every time I lay down the coughing takes over.  Things at the boys school have been crazy busy and I really don't see things letting up until our Christmas break begins.  Just finished parent teacher conferences last night where we (the PTO) was in charge of dinner for all the teachers both nights and had our many tables set up including our Giving Tree and can food drive along with selling our school Spirit Wear and Gold Fish crackers to help support our newest endeavor to bring a salt water Touch Tank to our school for our kids!  Now it is into high gear to get organized and planning and purchasing for our Santa Breakfast and Christmas party and assembly for the entire school.  I love being able to be so involved at the school, but there are times that I feel like I'm there as much...if not more than the teachers! lol  I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to today at 3:35 PM when we walk out of the school for FIVE DAYS!!!!!  I even cancelled our plans to go up north to be with the rest of our family. We've never stayed home for Thanksgiving, but I just felt that some much needed down time was in order for us.  Not to mention the fact that my house looks like a bomb exploded in it!  Things have been a little neglected lately.

So...plans are to do a little housework tomorrow and make a path to the kitchen so I can at least make my family a turkey on Thursday!  :)  Seeing Tangled (the new Disney movie) is at the top of our list for tomorrow as well!  I have a few pictures of recent creations trapped inside my camera that need to come out...and of course...BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING!!!!!  I have some Wal-Mart gift cards that I received for my birthday burning a hole in my wallet...screaming to be spent on some Cricut Lite cartridges!!!!  :)  Need to help Parker finish a 3 part book report and most importantly....have some down time to just enjoy my kids and my husband and not have a calendar of scheduled events setting off alarms on my phone every 5 minutes!  What are your plans for the Thanksgiving holiday?  I hope you all have safe travels if you are venturing out and enjoy your family and friends.  I am thankful for each and every one of you! 

Royal Things giveaway!

Royal Things blog is giving away a Winter Frolic Cricut cartridge!  Stop by and check out her blog, become a follower and leave her a comment for a chance to win!  I would love to add this cartridge to my Gypsy library!  Good luck to all that enter!

I am battling a bit of a head cold as well as taking care of Tanner who is battling the same.  His is worse than mine at the moment and I'm just hoping that the other two humans in the household stay healthy.  I certainly do not want the husband getting sick...that's worse than having 10 sick children!!! 

Have a wonderful Tuesday everyone!

Jamie has some very sweet blog candy!

You need to stop by Jamie's blog because she's giving away a Scrap 'n Tote!  I would love to have one of these (actually...I'll need two!) so that I could keep all my cartridges, overlays and handbooks together instead of having them all in different places like I do now.  Good luck for all that enter! 

I am hoping to finish a few projects today.  Sorry for being MIA this past week.  It was a very busy week for us helping out at the school.  Yesterday I spent A LOT of time blog hopping!  I couldn't believe how many blog hops were going on and the OWH (Operation Write Home) blog hop had ONE HUNDRED participants!  YES!!!  100!!!!!! 

Amy is giving away a birthday present!

Amy is celebrating her birthday by giving us a chance to win an awesome present!  Stop by Amy's Blog Scrapping Mommy for a chance to win a Cricut Cake Birthday Cakes cartridge!!!  I would LOVE to have this cartridge!   Good luck everyone!

Paper Dolls used to celebrate diversity!

It's been another busy week around here!  Yesterday and last night we had a Diversity Festival at our elementary school.  This is the second time we've held an event like this and I have to say that this year was even bigger and better than the last!

We were all so tired by the time we finally made it home after clean up last night, but I wanted to share just a few of the pictures that were taken before the crowds started to arrive.  We used both of the Paper Dolls cartridges to create all these adorable little people to put around the globe as you entered the main hallway.  Of course we had It's a Small World playing in the background...gotta have my Disney touch added whenever I can!  :)  The monkeys hanging in the African exhibit hallway were also cut from Paper Dolls and they turned out so stinkin' cute that I just had to share those as well! 

The exhibit booths, experiences, food and performances were all AMAZING!!!  I am proud to be just a little part of making this event come to fruition at our school.  We have an amazing family that spearheads this event and does all the major planning, scheduling and booking.  We are very lucky and blessed to have the Kakuda family as part of our school family!  

Of course as always...you can click on the photos if you would like to view them in more detail.  I appreciate you taking the time to stop by and leave a comment.  Your comments truly do brighten my day!  Now I am off to check my blogger roll and see what fantastic creations you all may have posted on your blogs this morning and crossing my fingers that I'll stumble upon a blog hop or two!  Hope you all have a glorious weekend! 

Heaven has gained a Hall of Fame angel...

Detroit and the world has lost an amazing man.  Sparky Anderson who coached our Detroit Tigers to become the 1984 World Champions sadly passed away yesterday.  I had the great fortune to meet this gentleman (gentle and kind in every sense of the word) many years ago and it is an experience that I will never forget. 

I'd like to think that his good friend and former Tiger's broadcaster Ernie Harwell was there to announce Sparky as he walked through the pearly gates.  RIP Sparky...you will be missed.  

Mummy Candy Bars!

I ended up making 72 of these... 36 Milky Ways and 36 Three Musketeers!!!  I forgot to take pictures of the ones that I had in Tanner's classroom, but they were all basically the same, just different googly eye and beetle placements! 

I ran across these on Jin's blog Under a Cherry Tree a few weeks ago and decided to make these for Parker's classroom instead of treat bags.  Well...then Tanner saw them and decided he wanted them for his classroom too!  I made extras for the teaching and administrative staff at the school as well as a few friends.  I tweaked my version a bit from Jin's by adding cobwebs and puffy beetle stickers to them.  The kids LOVED them, but I cringed as they ripped them open to eat the candy bars after the HOURS I spent wrapping them all! lol

Items used:
Full size candy bars
white crepe paper
Sticky back googly eyes
brown ink
cobweb

I cut the strips of crepe paper at about 65 inches each.  I would wrap my first wrap length wise and then start wrapping around the candy bar to give the mummy look.  After I wrapped them I would just tuck the ending part in the back and then ink to give it the dirty old look.  Googly eyes were added next and it was much easier using the sticky back ones rather than having to glue them down individually.  After putting the cobwebs on I added the beetle stickers for the finishing touch.  I probably would have used spiders instead, but I found these cool beetle stickers at the $1 store that was enough to do all of the candy bars!

This was definitely a time consuming project, but well worth it when I saw the kids faces!  I was thinking about trying something similar for Christmas.  You could simply wrap them in red crepe paper and use batting for Santa's beard and cut a little triangle for his hat.  Stay tuned for the results of that idea! 

Sheryl is trying to reach 225 followers!

If you help her reach her goal she is giving away some candy!  You can win a Basketball Solutions Cricut cartridge!!!  Just stop by Sheryl's Crafting Corner , become a follower and leave a comment on her post!  Easy as that!  Be sure to tell her that I sent you her way!  Good luck! 

Finally some Halloween photos!

Here are some photos of my boys from their Halloween parade at school as well as trick or treating on Sunday night at our friend Diane's house.  It could have been a little warmer out for my liking, but at least it wasn't raining or snowing! 

Tanner had a few friends dress up as Mario and Luigi as well! 

My little poser! 

             

...and here is the 15 POUNDS of candy they ended up with!

I will be posting the pictures of the mummy candy bars I made for their classrooms tomorrow!  Hope you all have a wonderful day! 

Enfys is Going Buggy and giving away 148 Promarkers!

Hurry over to Enfys blog Going Buggy to sign up for her HUGE giveaway!  Look at all these beautiful colors!