Choctoberfest...

One of my good friends recently invited me to a Choctoberfest that she was hosting and gave me a challenge... she wanted me to make something with chocolate and bacon! I started to research on the internet to see what I could come up with. I saw that some people had dipped bacon in chocolate but I wanted to be a little bit sneaky with the addition of bacon. Then, I came across chocolate chip cookies with bacon! SOLD! 

I have a favorite cookie batter recipe that I use for... um... EVERYTHING! So, all I did was make my batter and add 12 cooked & chopped pieces of maple brown sugar bacon.

I know what you're thinking... Stop making that face! 

They were delicious!!!! The richness of the dark chocolate chips and sweet & salty taste of the bacon were awesome together! I got 2nd place for the most creative recipe!!! {I was beat out by a Chocolate Risotto... Boo}

I know that you are dying to try these AWESOME cookies for yourself... so, here is the recipe:

~CONFESSION~

I was a little over ambitious... AS ALWAYS... and decided to bring two dishes to Choctoberfest. I wanted to bring something else that was a different combination of flavors that I have not tried before & something that the guests would not turn their noses up to {like I was afraid they would... but they surprised me}.

 SO... I am a little bit obsessed with pumpkin... ok, a lot a bit... and had never tried pumpkin and chocolate together. I found a SUPER easy recipe that was not too involved to add to my to do list: PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE BROWNIES

ARE YOU SALIVATING? I AM!

I won Best Presentation with these little beauties! They were delicious! 

What is that, you say? Two great recipes in one post... You're welcome! 

Pumpkin Ring Toss...

For our Homeschool Group's Fall Festival each mom was asked to come up with a carnival game for the children to play and win prizes. I thought that I would make a pumpkin themed ring toss game...

Each child would get three rings to try to throw over a "pumpkin." For each ring that they got over a "pumpkin" I rang a bell and they received a prize. For getting 1 out of 3 rings on a pumpkin, they got to pick a piece of candy out of the pumpkin basket. For 2 out of 3 rings, they got to pick a Wendy's Free JR Frosty ticket from the trees on the table. For anyone that got all three rings on a pumpkin, they got a velvet print and markers that were a harvest theme.

We had four different age groups going around to each booth, so I came up with different distances for each group to stand away from the pumpkins. I had the 1-2 year olds I had stand pretty much right in front of the pumpkins, the 3-4 year olds stand 32 inches away, the 5-7 year olds stand 44 inches away, and the 8 and up stand 56 inches away. I think that it worked out perfectly!

The kids really enjoyed themselves! And I did too!

To make you own set of a Pumpkin Ring Toss game all you need to do is buy 6 large orange soda bottles, 3 glow in the dark necklaces, and some prizes! I took the labels off the bottles and painted the lids green. Then I took a green paint pen and drew vines and leaves on the bottles.

Presto... You have a SUPER cute fall themed ring toss! ENJOY! 

MOPS Craft... Game Board Name Tags

I am the Creative Activities Leader for our MOPS group this year. The MOPS theme this year is MOMSENSE and they are treating it like a game that you are constantly change your strategy. All of our topics and tables are named after popular board games.  I was trying to come up with a really cute name tag to make that we could do as our first craft of the year and use at all of our meetings... And this is what I came up with!

They were pretty simple to make... All I did was go online and find images of the game boards that we were using as the centerpiece for each table and put them all on one sheet of paper. I made them all no wider than 3 in. I had them printed out on cardstock and cut them out with some help from my fellow Steering Team members! I also did the same with the Scrabble letter tiles. They were much more time consuming to cut out but the finished product is exactly what I had in my head. To attach the letters to the game boards, I bought the tiny foam mounting squares and it made them "POP" off the board! We then glued the boards to the craft foam backs. We made the craft foam backs a little bit bigger so that it would frame the boards.  To make them reusable all we did was hot glue a pin on the back... TaDa!  We had everything pre-cut for the meeting and in ziploc baggies for every mom to put together at our meeting. I love the way the turned out... and so did everyone else at MOPS! :)

Twister Table

Monopoly Table

Life Table

Scrabble Table

Chutes and Ladders

Candyland Table

Handmade Baby Shower Gifts...

I recently attended a baby shower for one of my friends. I wanted to give her something unique and handmade so I did some research and came up with these...

My Diaper Cake...

My Onesie Cupcakes...

and My Stork Bundle...

I think that they turned out pretty good! I had remembered seeing something like these online (I can't remember where) and tried to recreate them from my memory. They may not be exactly what I had seen but they are probably close! Hope that you like them as much as I do!