White Chocolate Mummy Pretzels

My oldest (4) is in soccer right now, and today was our turn to bring a small after-game snack + drink. Since he truly is obsessed with all things Halloween right now (and has been talking about it for the past 3 months, i swear), we decided to make a "spooky" treat to share with his teammates. I let him scroll through my Halloween board on Pinterest, and he chose this pin.  White chocolate mummy pretzels (reminds me of these ones we did last year). I was so happy because I knew these were fast, cheap, and doable. Something he could help with too. Win win win.

S U P P L I E S:

• pretzel rods
• white almond bark/melting chocolate (plain white chocolate chips work fine too)
• vegetable oil
• wax paper
• small handful of chocolate chips (for the eyes)
• toothpick

So it's not rocket science. And I feel silly even writing out steps, but here's what I did:

STEP 1: broke off some chunks of Almond Bark, put them in a bowl, and melted in the microwave
STEP 2: used a spoon to spread the white chocolate all over the pretzel rod (this is the step my kids helped a lot with)
STEP 3: placed dipped pretzel rod on wax paper to dry (doesn't take long!)
STEP 4: repeat steps 2 and 3 until you are out of chocolate or pretzels, or have your desired amount
STEP 5: warmed up some more Almond Bark, added in a small amount of vegetable oil (like a teaspoon-add more if needed. be careful you don't overdo it or the chocolate won't dry!), and mixed it up. i've found this makes drizzling the chocolate so much easier and smoother.
STEP 6: drizzle that white chocolate mixture over your pretzels, creating the desired "wrapped mummy" look, let dry
STEP 7: in a separate bowl, warm up the small handful of chocolate chips
STEP 8: using a toothpick, create chocolate mummy eyes on your "mummys", let dry
STEP 9: share and enjoy!

We wrapped ours in plastic wrap and tied them with an orange bow to hand out after the game. My son was way excited when his teammates came over to see what we were giving them, and kept saying: "It's a spoooooky treat!"

DIY Wood Slice Wreath

What do you do when your man brings you home a bunch of freshly cut wood slices? Make a wood slice wreath of course. Ever since I saw this one on Pinterest a few weeks ago, I have been bugging mine to go cut up a tree for me. Well, we finally got out and made it a family affair. We found this tree already chopped down/dead on some of my husband's grandparent's land.

What do you need to make your own?

S U P P L I E S

• wood slices (so obviously i enlisted my husband's help and made him do this part for me, but i also found that you can buy some here or here on Amazon!)
• wreath backer/flat frame (to connect your wood slices to. i used cardboard)
• hot glue gun + glue sticks
• any material for decorating it (i used burlap and cotton fabric)

Step 1: I first laid out my wood slices, and arranged them how i wanted them to look

Step 2: Grab your cardboard and re arrange your wood slices on top of the cardboard ( so technically, you don't have to even do step 1, but that's just what i did). Also, I at first didn't even use cardboard or anything to back my wreath (so dumb, what was i thinking!). I tried to glue the wood slices together with some Loctite that I had, and that was a big fat fail. Then one of my girlfriend's told me to try just using some plain cardboard as a backer....genius! I never would have thought of that!
Step 3: Take a pencil and trace around the wood slices
Step 4: Carefully remove your wood slices, and cut out your cardboard frame (you can see i cut in further, and rounded my frame, so that less of the cardboard showed from the front and it wasn't all "bumpy" looking...if that makes sense! haha)
Step 5: Hot glue your first layer of wood slices to the cardboard frame. then hot glue the second layer onto those. below is how the back of my wreath looks, just to give you an idea:

Step 6: Dress it up! I used some extra burlap and fabric I had to make a big bow

This is the best shot you're getting from me of my little kitchen. The lighting is killing me but oh well. So I had originally made this thinking it was going outside, but then I ended up hanging this one inside! But then the next day I took the leftover slices and made another that I hung on our back door:

I didn't have enough wood slices to layer over top, and  you can see the cardboard frame more on this one. But I still am happy how it turned out. And i literally just used a thumb-tack to attach the bow to the wreath, because I want to be able to change it up when Thanksgiving and Winter come around.

Another other small "fall" project i've done lately? I made that "FALL" banner hanging in my kitchen window. Super simple. Just cut up more burlap, painted the letters on, and hot glued the burlap to some twine.

Blog Design: Sunshine & Munchkins

Shani got referred to me through a mutual friend, and I'm so glad she trusted me to help her with the overhaul of her Blogger blog design! It was exciting to see this come together! Here's the mood board we started out with:

couch // chain link fence // lemons // alphabet print // mom and tot //

After the mood board was agreed upon, I started dishing out some header ideas for her to look over.

After the header design was decided upon, I was able to start putting together her blog design (aka i got to start the template coding). This part is so fun because things start feeling more "real" and it's exciting to see your thoughts come alive on the great big internet! Here is her final design board:

Always mobile responsive. Always. If you don't have a mobile responsive blog currently, I can't stress to you how important it is to have one! It like, shouldn't even be a question. Update that shiz! I promise you will be over-the-moon happy you finally did. Pinky swear.

Just like I did on my last blog design, I styled a fun drop down menu with images. Images just make things 10x more fun to look at! They draw your readers in and get them hooked with all your pretty content and posts.

Another one of my favorite parts of her blog design, was creating her background. I was super hesitant/nervous at how it would look and turn out, but I think it looks awesome and is so perfect for her blog's personality.

Go check out Shani's new design for yourself here!
You can see my latest designs in my portfolio here.
Or if you want, you can just search through allllll my past designs here.

October Desktop Calendars

Fall is officially here, and I think it's safe to say it's now the month of all things pumpkin and spice. Today I want to share two October calendar options you can use as backgrounds for your desktop!

TO DOWNLOAD:
» if viewing from your phone, simply click the image you want and save it. then transfer to your desktop. (i have found the fastest/easiest way to do this is through Dropbox)
» if viewing from your desktop, simply click the image, then right click and “save as”.
*for personal use only, thank you!


» view my other freebies here!