Christmas Craftiness

I know. No post for months and now 3 in a row. I can't even explain it myself.

So, we (me) are in charge of the McCarrel Family Christmas Party this year. I have been thinking about it since midnight October 31st. I would like to have it all planned and ready by the end of this month. I have visions of how it will all be, and while it probably won't turn out as I picture it in my head, I am getting a good start. My first vision was of a dessert and hot chocolate bar with a cute banner hanging over the tables. I finished the banner today and couldn't wait to show it off!

Thank you mother for my Cricut machine and thanks to my sweet neighbor Emily for the use of her cute cartiridges. Bonus, I can hang it in my house until the night of the party!

Happy Halloween!

May I present to you, in no particular order, our 2011 Halloween. It includes a Smartie Pants, a Jack Skellington pumpkin, a zombie hunter, a deer pumpkin, a polka dot pumpkin and an adorable Dorothy. Now, would you people kindly stop complaining that I never post!

Easter

This year we were invited to my cousins house in Nibley for some Easter fun. We headed up early Saturday morning, stopping in Perry to drop Josh off so he could ride his bike through Sardine Canyon for training purposes. We had a great time with The Quiggles! There was karaoke, a visit to the cheese factory, and the Logan zoo!

St. Patrick's Day

Heather, this is just for you!

If you haven't realized by now, or just don't know us well enough, St. Patrick's Day is HUGE in Josh's family. It really is a fun tradition that goes way beyond just wearing green. I like to think of it as Thanksgiving part 2. This year my food assignment was jell-o and cupcakes. Molly helped me and we made some lovely treats.

Rainbow chip cupcakes with vanilla frosting and chocolate cupcakes with mint chocolate chip frosting. There were good, weren't they Heather???

On the menu this year: Corned Beef, turkey, ham, potatoes, colcannon

potatoes, green bean casserole, veggies and dip, chocolate covered kiwi and strawberries, broccoli salad, green rolls, mint brownies, Irish soda bread, cupcakes, and key lime pie. I am pretty sure I ate a little bit of everything and can't wait until next year!

Happy Halloween

From: Quasimodo, Esmeralda, a Phantom, Elvis and Tinkerbell!

Easter Clothes

A Few of My Favorite Things (Irish Edition)

Hope you all had a LUCKY day!!!!

Give Thanks

Our computer was out sick with a nasty virus, so I'm a little late with all this. But this blog is like my journal, so here goes.

Dear Journal,

I am super thankful for crafts. Just Kidding, I'm no TAMN.

Okay on a serious note, I really am thankful for a bit of craftiness. I am no professional, but I do good enough to get by. I have a plate rack in my kitchen that rarely has a plate in it. After I took down my super cute BOO sign, I was sad that I didn't have anything Thanksgivingish to put up. However, I do have a plethora of cute paper, so I went to work on this:

I am really good at cutting rectangles and then pasting them in a line. Really good.

Speaking of really good, the desserts I made for our Thanksgiving dinner were REALLY GOOD!

I am not really a pie person, so I signed up for a pumpkin cheesecake and accompanied that with white chocolate-raspberry cheesecake bars. 5 packages of cream cheese. Yum. Plus they made super leftovers to eat while I watched The Biggest Loser. Not kidding about that.

Here are the recipes:

PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE

WHITE CHOCOLATE-RASPBERRY CHEESECAKE BARS

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!!

Halloween '09

Carving Pumpkins

Trick~or~Treating

Owen

Gavin

Molly the Cat

Have I mentioned that Molly the Cat, was the crankiest cat in the history of cranky cats?

I decided she would be a cat when she started meowing. Yes, meowing. She would answer questions with a "meow". Pretty cute, right? Well after the thousandth meow, it's not so cute. But Grandma Billie bought her some cute cat ears, so how could we not dress her up for Halloween as a cat. The first party we went to she screamed when it was time to get dressed, never got her hand made tail pinned on, didn't wear her ears, and never even came close to getting her whiskers painted on. She had also decided she wanted to be a butterfly after she saw Josh's angel wings. (Still waiting for our family picture to get emailed to me. Becky if your reading this, email it to me, THANKS!!!) I did not have high hopes for Halloween night. But Molly the Cat surprised me. She willing got dressed, let me paint her face (which she was super proud of and kept saying "look at the three colors on my face!") and wore her ears and tail with out any fuss. Miracle beyond miracles! The pictures with her mouth skewampus is when she is meowing. It is really hard to get a cranky cat to look AT the camera.

The next morning she did tell me, "thanks for my cat costume, mom" so I guess that totally makes up for all the bad "cat"titude! Ha, I crack myself up!!!

Jason & Frankie

Why were the kids out of school today???

In an effort to get a bargain and my kids out of the house, we ventured to Target. Torture, I know! On our way home, we noticed that Spirit Halloween (located in the old Sears/Kmart building) is NOW OPEN. I bet we could have wondered around for an hour or more, but someone had to go to the bathroom before the pee got scared out of him.
If you go, please note: no public bathroom.
My favorite thing there: Bubble Fogger Machine. It's SPOOKTACULAR!!!

4th of July

Happy 4th of July!!!!

We had a fun 4th this year. I just love it when holidays are on the weekend because I get work off. We did fireworks at our house on Friday night with Melissa's family. We enjoyed our first snowcones of the season, which should explain the mess on Molly's face. The kids did a million sparklers and even experimented with lighting a few of the fireworks.

Saturday we headed up to Park City to hang with my Aunt Sharon and The Quiggles. We did a little swimming, a little fireworking, a bunch of eating and then stepped out the back door of the condo to watch the city fireworks. It was a real fun time!

Hoppy Easter!!!

February 14th

My mom & dad take us out for breakfast on the Saturday closest to Valentines Day, this year Valentines just happened to be on Saturday. It is so nice not to have to cook and it's great to hang out with the family, whom we love dearly!

That afternoon Josh, Owen & I went to see The Dark Knight in IMAX. It was AWESOME! I wish we would have seen it that way when it first came out. Oh well, from now on we are saving all our pennies to see every movie we can in IMAX. Just think about Twilight in IMAX, wouldn't that be the greatest!?! I girl can dream!

Hope you had a HAPPY VALENTINES DAY filled with people and things you LOVE!