Posted on Friday, October 31, 2014

No Trick, Only Treat

We are the end of October! Can’t you believe that? Tomorrow is November already!!! Time flies so fast and one thing we can be thankful for is that God gives us enough time every day to enjoy His blessings.

One of those blessings we have in October is our little neighborhood. They have a fun tradition celebrating Halloween with Trick-or-Treating. This is our 5th Trick-or-Treat with friends. And this year, we had it on yesterday (it is almost always on the Thursday before Oct 31st, unless we get snow or rain then they will postpone it). It was fun day for the kids and super cold for me!

The Big Girl wanted to be a Cheer Leader once she saw that costume at TJMaxx about 3 weeks ago. We had another plant for the Little Girl, she fit perfectly in this princess costume we got 4 years ago for her big sister. This is a sweet memory to remember…

After going around our neighbors for Trick-or-Treating, our friends always held a little party at their house. They have potluck food and as always they cook yummy soups! Also, the kids can check what they got. The little girl kept showing me her stash on the way from one house to another. She was super excited to get CANDIES!

20141031-sous-diecut-treat-box

For them, I made some treat boxes for the kids at our friends’ Trick-or-Treating party at their house. I love this cute Jack-O-Lantern pillow box from Pebbles In My Pocket. I made 9 boxes in less than 10 minutes, including gluing and filling the boxes with candies. All you need for this project are Silhouette Cameo, cutting mat, blade, cardstocks, velum paper, glue, and candies. The machine cut 3 boxes at one time. I used Tombow Mono Liquid Glue to adhere the velum on the window and assembled these boxes. I made them simple and easy for the kids to open these boxes.

Stuck On U Sketches has a new Die Cut challenge today with theme: Trick-or-Treat. This boxes are perfect for this challenge 😀 Create a project using any kind of Die Cut machine with anything Halloween theme on your project. You have 14 days from today to link up your project here. Come and play with us this month with 3 challenges we have. See you there!

Posted on Wednesday, October 29, 2014

DIY Painted Pumpkins, Kids Can Do It!

A couple of weeks ago, we took the girls to a pumpkin patch where they picked their own sizes of pumpkins. It was an interesting thing to do as family for sure, especially now the little girl is walking and pretty much wanna do what her big sister does. We also thought that it would be fun for them to decorate it by themselves.

I asked the big girl how she wanted to decorate hers by giving her some clues like with stickers, or glitter, or gems, or markers, or paint. And she decided to paint her pumpkin. And I thought… That will be a messy one!

And of course the little girl also wants to do the same thing like her big sister. So we went with Painted pumpkins.

The big girl wanted a black car on her pumpkin. I thought would be easier for her to paint using stencil. So I got a cat shape at Silhouette Online Store for only $0.75 because Silhouette has 25% deal for all Halloween shapes until October 31. Scored!

I opened the shape on Silhouette Studio Designer Edition Software, resized it to about 4 inch tall and sent to cut the piece of cardstock.

Cat Silhouette (Sarah Hurley)

After that I used pushpins to hold the cat cutout on the pumpkin and traced it using a pencil.

Then she started to paint the cat using kids acrylic paint we had at home. You can use any kind of acrylic paint as long as it is safe for kids. Sometimes the fume from the paint is too strong for kids.

MAKE SURE you have enough scrap paper or old newspaper covering your table before you let the kids star painting.

The big girl took her pumpkin to her school Annual Fall Festival & Pumpkin show on Oct 18th, 2014.

And for the little girl, she used Crayola Finger Paint for kids (this a no mess paint, washable and in tubes). I put red, blue, green and yellow on a paper plate. Then I gave her a brush but she asked for two because her big sister had more than one. Once she had a brush on each hand, she just went ahead express her creativity on her pumpkin.

And she loves her arty pumpkin!

I was so afraid it could get super messy, but turned out both of them were so good with paints! And old newspaper surely helped to prevent the messiness 🙂

What did you do to decorate your pumpkin this year? Did you do it as a family?

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Link Up at:

Inspire Me Monday Week #147

Creative Spark Link Party #26

#SoMe2 Week #57

Posted on Tuesday, October 28, 2014

I am featured at #SoMe2 Week #57

I found out this fun Social Media link up party few weeks ago from one of my Silhouette crafty friends, Sarah V. (Creative Ramblings). So many inspirations you can find by linking up your blog and socia media links with them. And also, they will pick one of the link-ers to feature on their party every week. I am featured at their blog this week! So excited to share with you a little bit about me and my Social Media links that you can follow 😀

I tell you, it is a fun party 😀

Come join the Social Media Link Party!!!Welcome to #SoMe2 – Week #57

SOcial MEdia is all about ENGAGEMENT, and as bloggers, we want to do more than find new followers – we want to grow our engagement! At the #SoMe2 parties, we will link up a different Social Media platform and blog post from that platform each week.

This week we are growing and engaging with Google+!

For Google+, the more we +1 and comment on each other’s posts, the more engaged we become, and that makes the SOcial MEdia “algorithms” happy! So link up, and start commenting!!

It's time for the #SoMe2 #Google Party! Join us, link up your Google+ account, a blog post you've posted on Google+, and enter to win a featured blogger spot! #socialmedia #network #linkparty

The more you put in to this SOcial MEdia link party, the more you will get out!

Don’t link and run – follow, +1, comment – tell your friends!!

#SoMe2 is a SOcial MEdia link party where we link up 2 items every

Tuesday @ 7:00pm EST!

We are pleased to introduce our #SoMe2 featured blogger of the week…

Helen from Living My Given Life

Helen has shared this with us:
Hello! My name is Helen. I was born & raised in Indonesia. We have been living in Ohio since 2008 and every day we are living cross-culturally, joyfully, creatively. I am a wife to an awesome husband, a mom of 2 sweet daughters. I am working at home part-time as a translator, a blogger, a scrapbooker, a cardmaker and
a DIY-er. My blog is where I share my faith journey, family adventures, and craft projects.

Thanks, Helen!

Would you like to be a #SoMe2 featured blogger?

Everyone who enters the Rafflecopter each week will have a
chance to win a spot as our featured blogger. We will feature your blog,
and links to your social media. Your links will be inserted into the
Rafflecopter for that week – gaining you more followers.

THE RAFFLECOPTER WILL BE BACK NEXT WEEK!!

We picked two winners last week, one for last week and one for this week!

The rules are simple!

Please follow your hostesses and featured blogger.
Please add the #SoMe2 button (found at the bottom of the post) to your sidebar or link page.
Tweet about the party! More partiers = More followers! All you have to do is click the “tweet” button! Tweet
Use our hashtag #SoMe2 when tagging or posting so we can find each other!

You will automatically be entered into our email reminder list by entering a link. You may remove yourself from the list by using the un-subscribe option.

1) Link up your Blog’s Google+ Page

2) Follow your HOSTESSES and FEATURED BLOGGER

3) Follow 2 people before your link, if you already follow them, find 2 new people to follow

1) Link up 1 recent Google+ Post

(Go to your Blog’s Google+ posts page, hover the cursor in the right upper corner of a recent post until you see the “options menu” arrow, then click on “link to post”, copy the URL, and paste that URL into the link party.)

2) Like and comment on your HOSTESSES & FEATURED BLOGGER’S links

3) Like and comment on at least the 2 links in front of yours. This way everyone will get Google+ Love! One of hostesses will make sure the last two links get comments.

Thanks for joining our SOcial MEdia link party!

See you next week – same time, same place!

DeDe, Kim, Sarah V., Sarah C., & Susan

Posted on Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Tuesday Thought: Our First Parent – Teacher Meeting

Last Thursday was our first Parent-Teacher Conference (or Meeting) for our first daughter. It went great and it proofed me that all my worries were nothing.

We arrived about 20 minutes before our schedule to meet our daughter’s teacher. Since she started her Kindergarten, I have been worry about her being away from me. I worried about what would happen to her in the class, or what if she couldn’t make any friends, or what if she wouldn’t listen or even yelled at her teacher or friend, or what if she cried, and what if…

I just keep filling that “What if” blank with things that I could think of.

But that 10 minutes meeting with her teacher wiped all my worries away.

God has shown to me that all my worries are silly. I cannot be with her every day at school, but He is always with her there. I cannot tell what is going on there in that classroom, but God is just right there and sees everything.

Once she is out there, I have no control. This is a big lesson for me as a mom. Trusting my daughter in God’s care and hands at all time!

Her teacher told us that she is making a lot of progress with her social skills. And she is one of the 6 students who can read all the Word Wall Words and sight words. She will put her in a comprehension reading class in November with the other students at the same level.

Her teacher also shared couple funny stories that happened in the classroom that not a surprise for us… LOL!

I am so thankful to see how God has been working in her life. That just amazing to see how He provides a wonderful, sweet and patient teacher for her and her friends, who has been encouraging them. And His presence is real in her life.

He wants me to see all of these and wants me to keep trusting my children in His hands 100% just because He loves them!

Yes, Lord. I wanna trust you more.

Posted on Monday, October 27, 2014

5 Minutes Monday: Lintang People

The Lintang, or as they are more commonly known, Lintang Empat Lawang, which is a mixture of the Lintang and Empat Lawang people. The Lintang are also often called the Musi Ulu people and sometimes the abbreviation L4L, from Lintang Empat (four) Lawang, is used. The Lintang live along the left and right forks of the Lintang River in the Lahat regency of South Sumatra province. They primarily live in the Muara Pinang, Lintang Kanan, Pendopo, Tebing Tinggi and Ulu Musi districts. The Lintang can easily understand the Besemah and Semende dialects. They also understand the Lematang, Kikim and Enim dialects. They can understand Palembang Indonesian well. Some characteristic language features include the use of the words nedo, which means ‘no’ or ‘not yet’, ngapo (What is it?) and kelo (wait a minute). The Lintang can communicate well with the Kikim, Besemah and Lematang people but do not understand the Lembak or Saling people. (Source: Joshua Project)

There are about 203,000 people of Lintang population. They are one of those least-reached people groups, has less than 1 % of believers. Please pray that God will send more people to share the Good News with this people in this area. Thank You so much!