Twilight Freak

Despite my original thought that I would NEVER get hooked on Twilight, I absolutely have. So when my friend Kim announced she was having a Twilight inspired party for the New Moon Premiere, of course I offered to make the invitations! I can’t wait for the party!

 

This started out as the back but we agreed that we loved it so much it should be the front. =)

 

I wanted to get all crazy and make the back a corset tie but I’m too impatient.

 Personal info naturally masked to avoid any unwanted vampires or werewolves.

UPDATE:

Kim is a much better photographer than I am so I MUST post her photos too!

 

 

 

What do you think? Are you as obsessed as we are? Share your New Moon party plans!

Fall Festival Party

The Meckley’s threw a Fall Festival/Wine Tasting/Halloween Party last weekend. Andy went all out with a fog machine, strobe light and a great Halloween playlist. The fog machine was awesome, but we had to disable the smoke alarms all through the house!

 

Only a few of us dressed in costume, but it was a fun night anyhow. I told Andy you know you’re getting old when everyone tells you that you threw an awesome party, you feel like you threw a good party, when everyone leaves you get things picked up and then get settled into bed and when look over at the clock you see that it’s not even midnight! Oh well, we all had a good time and I prefer that to our previous knock-down-drag-out-nights followed by a 2-day hangover. The party pretty much died down quickly after watching the Hawkeyes add another notch to their helmets after the nail-biting game against the Spartans. (Yay Iowa!)

Here’s a little run down of our menu and other fun photos:

Caramel Peanut Butter Apple Dip

 

A bag of caramels
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
Splash of milk
Splash of vanilla creamer

Cheese & Fruit for the wine

Cheese Dip
1 box of Velveeta cheese
2 lbs. of browned breakfast sausage

Everyone’s favorite Buffalo Chicken Dip

Apple & Pear Crisp Fake Out
Thanks to Kimba’s recipe
on A Soft Place to Land
Sadly, I don’t think anyone ate any of it! I had a bite later but need to
make it again because I know it’s super delicious.

Harvest Snack Mix
I adapted a recipe I found somewhere online. (Sorry, can’t remember
where!)
This is what I *think* I did:
Mix 4 tablespoons melted butter with 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves. (P.S. Note to self, DO NOT try to ground your own whole cloves in your Magic Bullet. You will ruin the plastic cup. Those suckers must be pretty rough or something. Not sure how or why, but I really messed up the cup and I had to toss it.) Then add a bag of popped microwave popcorn and 2 cups of pretzel sticks. Mix well, put in cake pan and toss in oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove from oven, let cool, then add in however much you want of candy corn (or pumpkins as you can see), chocolate stars, I threw in some kind of Ritz mini-bites that had frosting, and a cup of Banana Nut Cheerios because I knew they’d never get eaten otherwise. Then again, nobody but me ate this mix. I kinda like it. 

And, last but not least on the menu, my favorite food item of
the night:

This was really fun. Not really easy to eat, and no one really ate much, but it was a great addition. Find a plastic (or in this case styrofoam) skull. Wash well. You could add plastic wrap as someone mentioned at the party but I did not. Mix 2 blocks of cream cheese with whatever seasonings, I used garlic salt & onion powder. Spread on skull and cover with torn pieces of
lunchmeat. I left the eye sockets, nose, and teeth uncovered and popped two
large olives in the eye sockets. Dave decided the head needed a little more so
he added a festive knife:

 

Andy added dry ice to the punch:

  

And to drinks (P.S. we learned you should not add to beer!)

 

I forced my tall blonde babe to dress up like Fred so I could
be Daphne. I pretended for a moment Tiger was Scrappy. Our wigs were terrible, looked nothing like the photo on the front of the package, but oh well, you get the idea, right?!

Of course I had to dress up the boys:

 

The Willetts were super cute all dressed up. Karen even made
Lena’s costume!

 The Duitsmans were great sports. They came from a wedding and
added accessories to their outfits to be in costume, though Tom almost
immediately took off all his cop gear. Amber made a great Flapper girl.

 

Demitrios decided to don my wig:

 And The Elliotts and I had a good time hogging Andy’s remote later in the night so we could kick some old school tunes and reminisce back to our Junior High and High School days. :::singing::: One, Two, Three and To Tha Four…Because I’m Real…Meet Met at the Alter in Your White Dress…

 

And speaking of back in the day, Schmeed even brought us a
bottle of Mad Dog. Funny! That brought back some memories. I never knew it was a form of wine!

All in all, a great night with great friends – some old, some new…Love you all!

A Good Marriage

Okay, so I’m guilty of posting this late and back dating it, but I’m trying to stick with my weekly schedule of Thankful Thursday one way or another.

This week I am thankful for having a good marriage. No, a GREAT marriage and a wonderful partner. On November 1 Andy & I will be celebrating our 1-year anniversary and I couldn’t be happier. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had so many consecutive days of being happy. And as he always says, “we’ve got a lot of life to live.” I can only hope so.

To celebrate we will be headed to the beautiful little town of Galena this weekend to walk downtown, maybe do some shopping, tour a mansion, enjoy a little wine tasting, maybe catch the Halloween Parade and I cannot believe it,  but Andy agreed to a Haunted Dinner & Ghost Tour! =) See, I told you he’s the best!

What are you thankful for today?

Out of Town Bridesmaid Gift

What do you do when your out of town bridesmaid can’t attend a party? 

YOU SEND THE PARTY TO HER!

I sent a package to Veronica so she & her family can celebrate while we have our shower/housewarming party tomorrow night:

• Bridal Shower Word Scramble

• Secret Key to the Word Scramble

• Party Favors

• Snack Cakes

• Drink Mix

• Plates & Napkins

 

And More Fun Stuff

Do you remember making Fortunte Tellers as a kid? (Also called Cootie Catchers – why I don’t know…) I thought they might be a fun addition to the reception. But I need your help. I haven’t figured out what to put inside them! This is what I have so far:

Outside: Laura, Andy, Meckley, Wedding

Inside 1: 1 Love, 2 People, 3 Dogs, 4 Ever
Inside 2: Pink, Orange, Black, White

Fortunes:
BLANK!!! AGH!
Please comment below and help me write some fun fortunes!
I need 4-8 fortunes. Thanks!!

Lookin’ Good So Far!

Aside from the fact I will be marrying my Prince Charming,
this may very well be the best part about our wedding day.

I had a craving for a bit of chocolate yesterday so I ran downstairs and dug into our candy buffet supplies. Out of the 60+ pounds of candy I thought we could spare a few pieces. I poked around awhile looking at all the fun candy we had. It was still mostly boxed up so I began to organize and assemble a mock candy table. It appears I need to get some more containers because there’s quite a bit left and I ran out of room!

Putter ran down to check on me so the two of us sampled the Sour Patch Kids and Bit ‘o Honey. Then I sampled some of the chocolates. And a few more chocolate. (And took a couple pieces back upstairs with me when I left.) I really wanted to tear open the Fun Dip but I didn’t. And I couldn’t keep my hands of the giant whirly pops. I don’t even want to eat them. I just like looking at ‘em. For the first time in my life I think I felt a true sugar high…and it gave me a headache.   But it sure tasted good!

For all you other brides who are having or had a candy buffet (a/k/a a “candy bar”), did you dip in your stash or were you able to contain yourself? (And if so….HOW???)

Doghouse Remodel

Andy was bored this afternoon so while I was busy crafting these fun things:

Andy decided he was going to remodel the dog house. If you recall, the dogs had a pretty swell dwelling before:

  Read more

Change of Plans

If you recall, Andy was helping me awhile back to create a really neat rotating photo card box. I got the idea from another member of The Knot and it was supposed to look something like this, only black:

 

 
Photo Credit: Knottie Anirahc

 

Well, let’s just say ours did NOT turn out quite so nice. I was trying to “Fun” it up with some crazy fabric and embellishments and that turned out to be not such a good idea. I had been planning on tearing it apart and redoing it. That is, until I walked in to JoAnn Crafts the other day, turned the corner and saw this lovely box that practically sang out my name:

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Hellooo Beautiful!

 

 I love stripes and polk-a-dots so my eyes were immediately drawn to it. YES!!! This was it. THIS was going to be our new card box. To add to my delight, when they rang it up it was on sale; marked down from $12.99 to $9.99!!! I love a sale! It completely made my day. I could not stop talking about my fabulous find for the rest of the day.

 

Nevermind that I probably spent more than three times the amount on my unfinished mess of a card box project…but oh well. Whatever. I am in so love with this box. Task complete, check it off the list.