Happy Halloween!

Halloween is probably my favorite holiday to decorate for. (I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that my birthday is only a few days before). Someday I hope to have a beautiful mantel to decorate, but for now, I'll do what I can with what I've got.

My bats and garland were inspired by this post.  I love how they turned out!
(I had more photos, like of our Mr. Potato Head pumpkin, and the huge spider web, but I can't get blogger to load them. Maybe later)
We also had our anual kids Halloween party this past weekend. The kids were all adorable in their costumes. I look forward to this party every year.

 Isn't he the cutest puppy ever?

Collin wasn't happy about taking pictures.

Happy Halloween!

it's about to get random

A while back I joined a site called "Blogsvertise". This is a site in which they assign you blogging tasks and pay you for them. Some of the tasks are Guest Post tasks in which all I have to do is copy and past whatever this person has written and I get paid. Pretty easy and on my $0/year salary I figured, why not? So it's about to get random. I'll always tag my post with Guest Post when I post one, you can read them or not. It's my little way of contributing to the family budget and hopefully one day getting a bigger house!

date night

I'm always looking for a way to spend time with my husband without spending a lot of money. Being a stay-at-home mom living on a single (teacher's salary) income doesn't exactly leave a lot of room for fancy date nights out. A few weeks ago I came across a blog called The Dating Divas. The blog is dedicated to date nights and keeping the romance alive in your marriage, without having to leave the house and spend tons of money.
Last week they had several different ideas but the one that caught my eye was a Ghostbusters date night. I'm a huge fan of the 80's and Dan loves the Ghostbusters so it seemed like a fitting choice. I started off by sending Dan an "invitation" to our date in the form of a news article. It looked something like this:

BerryPage Fun Times 1 1 of 1 10/24/2011

Ghostbusters to Exterminate Local Residence

The Ghostbusters are scheduled to investigate a haunting at a local residence on Friday, October 21st. The investigation/extermination is set to take place around 8:30pm, after the children have gone to sleep. Home owners stated that the ghosts must not want to scare the children as they never make an appearance until after the children are in bed.

The team stated that the appointment could last anywhere from an hour and a half to 4 hours. “We have no doubt that we can take care of the problem” stated Dr. Raymond Stantz, a team member of the Ghostbusters.

The Ghostbusters encourage others to call immediately if there is any suspicious activity. The Ghostbusters can be reached at 1-800-GHOSTLY (1-800-446-7859).

So it's a little corny, but it was fun. The plan for the date was to watch the movie while snuggling and eating some not-so-spooky snacks. I didn't really want to eat lots of junk food so the first snack I prepared was veggies and dip.

The carrots are supposed to look like fingers in the dip with fingernails made out of slice almonds.

Next I made some swamp juice which was simply a green soda (watermelon kiwi) that I found for $0.89 with some gummy fish and gummy worms in it. I don't reccomend eating the fish and worms after they have st in the soda for too long. They got all bloated and the texture made me gag!

We also had some candy and loaded potato bites.

The date was simple, cheap and fun. It was nice to spend some quality time with my husband without worrying about whether or not the kids were behaving and if we should really be spending the money.



Aunt Sue's Sugar Cookies

Last week the boys and I made a batch of my Aunt Sue's Famous Sugar Cookies. For as long as I can remember she has made these cookies for basically every family get together, and they are amazing! When I got married for a wedding gift she gave me a cookie sheet, cookie cutters, a rolling pin and her cookie recipe. I've made them before, but this last time they turned out extra delicious. I don't know if it was because I mixed the dough differently, or if it was my extra sweet helpers.

Dylan and Ronan helped me mix the dough while Collin was at school and after lunch that day the 2 older boys helped me roll the dough and cut out the fun shapes. Once they were all baked and cooled we gathered around the table to frost them with our homemade glaze (another Aunt Sue classic).

We had a lot of fun frosting the cookies...

but the best part was getting to eat them!

I hope to make this a regular tradition with my boys around the holidays.

Vote for me!

A few weeks ago I started participating in a Croceht Along over at one of my favorite blogs, Maybe Matilda. We've now finished up our cowls and have displayed them for everyone to see! Head over here, scroll towards the bottom of the post and vote for #69 (that's mine)! The top 4 win crochet patterns from some awesome sponsers. Hurry! Go vote!