Skeleton Costume Trophies

It’s only two days to Halloween!!  Which means we better be finishing up our Halloween party decorations and prizes.  This year I finally got around to making a set of those cute skeleton trophies that you can find in stores and on Pinterest.  They are so easy, cheap and most importantly, fun to make!  And fun to receive I hope! :)

Basically you buy these tiny skeleton garlands from the Dollar store and spray paint them gold and mount on a trophy base in a specific pose.  Add a title for the prize and you are done.  I decided to spray mine silver because I don’t think gold is a Halloween color and also because I didn’t have any gold spray paint.  :)  I bought little oval wood cutouts from Michael’s to stand my figures on.  Note:  these are 20 cents cheaper at Joann’s.  Coulda saved a dollar!! :)  Plus they have round ones in case that is more your jive.  Mine are all oval except the couple’s award because I thought they needed more room, but really they would fit on the oval, too. :)

I started by painting the bases black with gloss craft paint.  While those were drying, I sprayed the front and back of my skeletons with silver spray paint.  Then I had to decide what awards I was going to give.  This year I am awarding the Best Dressed, Cutest Couple, Scariest, Funniest, and Most Original costumes.  I could have gone on and on but everyone can’t get a prize! :)

There is a lot of inspiration for these trophy poses online, so I used those as my guide and picked poses and props and costume details that would be colorful and fun.  My favorites were the ones with lots of personality and colorful accessories.  You can easily break the plastic skeletons and repose them and glue them into place.  Most tutorials suggest you use a wooden dowel as a support to stand your skeleton.  I found all you had to do was hot glue the hip joints and he would stand right up.  That way there is no ugly stick in his back. :)

For Best Dressed (which is a superlative I regular award  in my party recaps) I posed my skeleton with a tiny black mask with a feather and a shiny purple and black boa.  The mask is cut from black velvet flocked scrapbook paper and glued to a toothpick.  The boa I made with a tiny strip of mesh gathered up and twisted around the skeleton neck and shoulder.  She is clearly rocking that boa!  I broke her elbow and glued her hand to her hip.  Just reinforce any joints you break with more glue.  Then I glued her hips in place and glued the feet to the base.  I printed a little banner with her superlative and glued it on the front.  Voila!

Cutest couple was the most fun to pose.  I found so many good ideas for this one.  But isn’t this just the sweetest?  They have their arms around each others backs and hands together in front.  Her leg is kicked up behind and their heads are just touching.  Awww!  To unify their look I accessorized them with a purple bow for her and a matching purple necktie for him.  So cute!

The Scariest Costume award has donned a witch costume complete with tiny pointed hat and cape and even a little wooden broom.  The hat is made from the velvet flocked paper and glued together.  The cape is just a piece of fabric with a ribbon glued to the top and tied around his neck.  The broom is a wooden skewer with some straw from an actual broom bundled and glued on the bottom.  Not the scariest pose, but this was my first one and I was afraid to break stuff.  I got over that! :)

The Funniest Costume guy is sporting a tiny black pointed hat and a matching pleated ruff.  He has hot pink buttons on his chest and one on his hat.  He is the master of silly walks.  :)  He’s funny and he knows it!

For the Most Original costume, I was at a loss for what to do.  It’s got to be original, right?  So I made him a sash and a top hat.  He’s shrugging nonchalantly about his original costume, but he’s clearly top of the pack because he’s propping up his foot with a fellow skeleton’s head.

I had so much fun with these, I’m already coming up with great ideas for next year.  And to ensure I don’t forget them:  Best Execution, which will be for the costume that is the most well-executed.  And the trophy will be getting the best execution.  Firing squad?  Guillotine?  Then, Cutest Costume with an adorable tutu and wings perhaps?  And luckily, I have 367 days to come up with some more! 

Stay tuned for more details from this weekend’s soiree.  Have a Happy Halloween!

For more Halloween inspiration check out our party recaps of yore: 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010.

A New Lawn

We spent the summer clearing and cultivating our new garden lot at the back of our property.  Once Fall came around, it was time to plant grass for our new lawn!  We envisioned a big yard for throwing the frisbee, playing catch with Riley and having friends over for a firepit or cornhole.  Now that the grass has come in, that’s exactly what we have!

We planted in early September and after reseeding a bit in early October, check out the transformation:

The edges are still a little patchy, but I’ll give them some TLC come Spring and hopefully they will rebound and look as good as the center section.

I love mowing down here because it’s all in straight lines! :)

Mama was here last weekend to till the garden and plant rye for the winter.  It’s all pretty now framed by green grass!

We also planted a couple of purple fountain grasses on the creekbank bed.

And Mama did some more clearing on the actual bank.  We have plans to fill this in with non-weed specimens next year! :)

So pretty, I want to play frisbee!!!  It’s really nice not to have a mud yard anymore.  Riley loves to come romp around down here (with supervision since there is no fence around it) and she can do so without getting all muddy now!  Yay puppy play zone!

So there you have it, a new yard! :)

Now back to Halloween projects!  Only 3 days til Halloween!  Eek!

A Black and White Raven Themed Halloween Mantel

Hey! Long time no see!  I’m back and I have a Halloween mantel to share!  Yippee, Halloween time is here!   

I’ve been busy at my parents’ house in a decorating frenzy over the past weekend. I set to work decorating every square inch that I could get my hands on.  I still have a lot of things to add, but most of those will go on at the last minute.  :)

First things first, my favorite, the Halloween mantel.

I used basically the same scheme as last year but I decided to limit myself to black and white this year with a couple of purple glittery things thrown in, as usual.  The living room is a purple and black theme so I have to coordinate.  I also wanted to incorporate a raven theme, so I went to the Dollar Tree and bought a bunch more ravens, we have so many now! :)  It’s an infestation… I love it!

I started with creepy cloth on the whole thing and my spooky lighted trees on either end.  Then I filled in with stacks of books turned with the pages out to keep the neutral theme.  I added some silver candlesticks and white candles, a white pumpkin, black and silver skulls and a flock of ravens perched on every surface. 

I love how the neutral book pages tie in with the gold mirror. 

My mom added these puck lights behind all the décor to uplight it with a ghostly glow!  I love it! I’ll be adding votive candles to the display for the party, too.

On the stove, I finished off the scene with our giant purple pumpkin and a purple skeleton perched on top.  He must be buddies with that crow, too. :)  I wrapped the pumpkin in purple LED lights for a little glow.

Our party is starting earlier this year so there will be more daylight and everything will be more visible.  The added ambient lighting will come in later when darkness falls. 

Since we are in here, I will show you the stairway decorations and the bookcase, which continue the purple and black theme.

The bookcase is almost the same as last year, but I added these silver branches to the front and switched up the stuff on top.  The buffet table goes in front, and it will complement the scene. 

The stairwell is the same as last year.  I made the garland out of garbage bag strips tied on a length of twine.  I still love it!

And on the wall behind the couch is our graveyard scene and spooky branches hanging above.  It’s the best!  I still have to add bats to the walls, but we are almost done in this room!

I just made a purple and black wreath that would look awesome in here, but I’m not sure where it will end up. 

I bought a purple and black tinsel garland, a tinsel spider and the boo sign from ACMoore then added in the spiderweb decoration (from Party City) and some purple feathery picks from Michaels.  I love it!  It was so fun and so easy to make just by wrapping the tinsel on a wreath frame and then wiring on the decorations.

I’ll be back to share more decorations from the Guthrie Estate soon!  Stay tuned!  Only 17 days to go!

A Cookie Monster Cake, Cupcake, and Cookie Tutorial

Last weekend was my nephew’s second birthday.  I told you all about our Cookie Monster party in my last post.  This time I am going to show you how I made the cookie monster treats… hold on, here we go!

First things first, you need a good cake recipe.  I have been searching for one that is fluffy and moist like boxed cake mix, and after careful consideration, this year we decided to go with the Fluffy Vanilla Cake from Sweetapolita.  It did not disappoint! :)  So, I wanted to make cookie monster’s head in an oval/round shape with a couple big eyes at the top.  Following the lead of Julia at Great Food Fun Places, I made large cupcakes (in a deli muffin pan) for the eyes and a big oval cake.  I used my oval corningware pan which actually made a fine cake, despite my trepidation.  :)  It took a while longer to bake this cake because it was so thick, so if you wanted to ensure that it stayed moist, you could bake two thinner oval layers.

After baking the cakes, I flipped them on to my cooling rack for a bit to finish cooling.

While they were cooling, I whipped up a batch of buttercream frosting.  For the frosting I used the Perfect Crusting Buttercream recipe from I am Baker.  The crusting part of that means that the frosting will form a crust as it dries.  This ensures that your final product will not be easily smeared and also allows you to use the Viva paper towel method to smooth the frosting.  (<—Watch that video, it will change how you frost cakes!)  I only smoothed the eyes in this cake, because the rest is piped with blue fur. :)

So after the cake was cool, I put it on my cake board (which was a plastic tray covered with a piece of polka dot giftwrap).  Then I started shaping the head.  I cut out a couple of half moons from the top to wedge the cupcake eyes in.  I stacked two cupcakes and layered frosting in between.  Then I cut the half moon pieces into little slivers and “glued” those onto the bottom of the cake with frosting to make his head a bit rounder… maybe I could have used a round cake pan after all and just cut out for the eyes?  Anyway, then I frosted over my seams and smoothed out the eyes with a layer of white frosting.

After the frosting had “crusted” a bit I smoothed out the eyes with a Viva paper towel.  They are a little lopsided, but cookie monster is kind of goofy so I figured, just go with it! :)

After all the white parts were frosted, I was ready to pipe the mouth and fur.  And of course, the cookie monster is blue, so after a bit of internet research I decided to use Americolor soft gel paste.  I used the whole bottle of color in two batches of frosting… needless to say, I had waaaaay too much frosting, and it was very blue!

I put the blue frosting in a piping bag fitted with the Wilton fur/grass tip number 233.  Then I set about making cookie monster furry.  That was pretty fun.  I started out doing pulling up motions and then transitioned into curving passes from bottom left, curving up to the top and ending down right.  I layered those up the side to cover the cake.  Then when I reached the top I went back to pulling up motion.  His fur should be kind of random looking.  Pull up and to the right and left and forward and back so it doesn’t look too uniform and neat. 

Once I got the sides and a bit of the top piped, it was time to think about the mouth.  You could do the mouth first, if you like, but I was too excited and almost forgot to fill in the mouth!  I had a paper template that I printed out of cookie monster’s face.  I cut out the mouth and put it on the cake.  Then I traced around it with a skewer, making dots at the edge for me to follow.

Then I started filling in the mouth with store-bought black icing and a star tip. 

I finished filling in the rest of the fur, making sure I got some of the fur over his mouth at the top.  He’s a fluffy guy!  Then I added black circles for the googly eyes.  I originally intended to add a bunch of cookies in his mouth, but I didn’t have any the right size, and once he got to the party (where the cookies were) we decided to just leave them out.  He’s still pretty cute. :)

Because we are party people who loves sweets (like cookie monster) we decided to make cupcakes, too.  For the cupcakes I just baked vanilla cake in black polka dot papers.  After they were cool, I piped on a black mouth shape with the star tip.  Then I filled in the fur with blue frosting.  After all the blue is done, fill in the mouth with half-eaten cookies.  If you wait too long the black icing will crust and then the cookies won’t stick as well… that’s what happened to me!  Cookie monster is a messy eater, so don’t be afraid to get crazy with your cookie placement.  After putting the cookies in his mouth, I added little blue furry hands at the bottom of some of the cookies so it looked like he was shoving cookies in his mouth with both hands!  :)  Next were two big blobs of white for the eyes (I used the open round tip #12).  Then I let the white frosting crust for a bit. 

After the eyes have crusted, I smushed the big white dots down with my finger so they looked like disks.  If the icing sticks to your finger you can dust your finger with cornstarch first.  Then I piped on a smaller dot of black for the eyes (using a regular round tip #4).  Make sure cookie monster’s eyes are properly googly… the crazier the better!  :) After the black dot has crusted, I smushed it flat so it was a small round disk as well.  (You can make a beautiful polka dot cake in this manner… make big dots, and smush them flat after they crust.) 

At the party, I garnished the trays with a bunch of leftover cookies.

And if you can’t stop baking and you simply must make cookies, do it!  It is a Cookie Monster party after all! 

I bought the sesame street cookie cutter set from Wilton that includes Cookie Monster and Elmo.  I made a batch of Deluxe Sugar Cookies which is the Betty Crocker recipe that my mom always used for rolled out sugar cookies.  After baking them, I outlined the blue part with cookie icing.  Some of them I made a squiggly furry edge and some I made smooth.  I like the furry ones best.  After the outline is dry, I flood filled the blue part.  Repeat the same steps for the white eyes.  I used store-bought Wilton cookie icing, which I had used two years ago for my sister’s baby shower owl cookies.  I had way more trouble with it this time.  I don’t think I will use it again, it was way too thin and just slid right off the cookie, which is why some of them are totally covered in icing all down the sides. Delicious, yes, pretty… not so much. :)  Next time, I’ll just make my own royal icing.

After the blue and white were dry, I added a black mouth and black dots for eyes with regular frosting.  While the black frosting is still fresh, add a tiny cookie to the mouth.  I used Chips Ahoy minis that come in the little to-go cup.  They were perfect!  After the black dots of the eyes are dry, smush them flat.

After the cookies dried overnight, I put them in clear cookie bags.  We wrapped ours individually so people could take them home as favors. 

Everyone, especially the birthday boy loved all the cookie monster treats.  And I had a fun time making them, too!