The girls and I had a wonderful day together today.  Scott was out doing work on one of the parks in our neighbourhood and the girls and I did a few fall projects around the house.  First we made Halloween cards together.  Here are Livie’s cards:

She’s a pretty good card maker!  Before we started I precut and scored 8 black card blanks and precut a whole bunch of 3.75X5 inch pieces of halloween patterned paper from the Special Occasions stack from K and Company (last year’s stack).  I also precut a few items from the Happy Hauntings Cricut cartridge. I had 2 border punches (I find the fiskars ones easier for the kids to use) on hand for them to use and a piece of purple core’dinations and a few embossing folders. They each chose their own pieces to emboss and used the cuttlebug themselves.  They had a blast sanding the embossed core’dinations paper to reveal the purple patterns! They cut up and glued together their own pieces of patterned paper and stamped their own images onto cream cardstock.  Then they chose to cut their images out.  I let them each make their cards however they liked and they really enjoyed it and were very nice to each other, complimenting one another’s work.  Here are Sophie’s cards:

I love how Sophie cut a fringe into her last card, and carried her embellishments outside the bounds of the card base on 2 cards.

After card making we made Halloween candy (using the Wilton melts and molds).  Then we watched the Littlest Hobo for awhile, after which we decorated the house for Halloween.  Finally, we made spooky tree paintings.  These we did with some left over canvas boards I had from another project.  We sprayed the background with autumn colours of Adirondack color washes (careful- these stain clothes, floors, and your skin), then swooshed it around with a baby wipe.  Then we used watered down black paint to paint a rough tree, then blew with a straw to make the branches.  It was so much fun and the kids are so proud to have their own real painting!  Here is Sophie’s:

And Livie’s:

Mercy Tiara

Mercy Tiara

You may be wondering who is Mercy Tiara, and why the name? MercyTiara is an anagram of my first and middle names, Tracy Marie. I discovered this name in the 90's in grad school when we were all coming up with alter egos for one another in a lab one day. I've used it ever since, but you can call me Tracy or MercyTiara, or anything you want... just don't call me late for supper!

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