Fabulous Fall

Yes, I'm one of those people that loves fall. I love the cool temperatures, I love the colors of the leaves, and the general feeling in the air. I love back to school time, and Thanksgiving. It's just one of those seasons that I really enjoy.

Last weekend I had a Taste of Home Entertaining party with a chocolate theme. The girls came over and we checked out a bunch of cooking and entertaining products and had a LOT of chocolate. But being a rubber stamper, I couldn't resist the opportunity to use my stamps and papers to gussy up the table a bit. The place cards shown above told all the guests what kinds of food we had to go with our chocolate and were super simple to make. I folded pieces of green and brown 4 1/4" x 8 1/4" paper in half, cut pieces of 4" x 4" white paper and stamped leaves and pumpkins from our Mini Sampler set in one corner with black ink. The rest was coloring the leaves and pumpkins with watercolor pencils, blending quickly with a water brush and adding lines and hatch marks around the remaining edges with a black pen and a ruler. Then I just stuck the white paper to the colored folded pieces with double-sided tape. In some instances I tented them on the table next to the food, and for others I taped the folds shut over a wooden skewer that got stuck into the food. And voila! everyone knew what they were eating and had a nice table to look at. The whole process took about 30 minutes for 10 place cards. This idea could easily be converted to place settings for people at Thanksgiving, or name tags at a fall gathering or party.

Behavin' Like Five Year Olds

My husband and I are just back from our vacation. We went with my sister, brother-in-law and niece on a Disney Cruise. Disney excels at entertainment and kids, so it was no surprise that they would do a cruise well. We had an awesome time, and I would recommend a Disney Cruise to anyone that likes Disney or is traveling with kids. Since they know how to entertain kids, we only saw my niece when we went and pulled her out of Kids Club because we wanted to spend time with her. Most mornings we did breakfast, visited with characters and took pictures and then she went off to Kids Club and most of the time we didn't see her again until dinner. In fact, when we wanted to take her on excursions at our ports-of-call we had to tell her that Kids Club was closed so that kids could go ashore with the adults, otherwise she didn't want to come with us.

On our excursion in St. Thomas, we went on a snorkel trip. We took a catamaran to a shallow shipwreck about an hour from the port. We snorkeled around and were then plied with free rum punch all the way back. Most of my family (except the five year old) were pretty tipsy by the time we got to shore, and my sister was farther along than that. In order to keep my niece from noticing that my sister was a little drunker than may have been prudent, we asked for her help in finding our shoes when we got off the boat and gave her several other little chores for the three-block walk back to the boat. Then, my husband put my niece "in charge". That poor child didn't know what to do with a bunch of misbehaving adults so she he relied on the only reference she had - pre-school. She started cracking the whip, ordering everyone to get in line and follow her and tried to keep general order. The guys, decided this would be the perfect time to get a little revenge for times when she didn't listen, so they started wandering off, telling her that they were tired and wanted to be carried and dropping the bags they were holding proclaiming them "too heavy" and generally having a great time. We all laughed all the way back to the boat....well all the adults did. My niece was nothing but frustrated, telling my husband and brother-in-law that only Mommy and Auntie Meri were getting candy and "you boys can't have any, because YOU DON'T LISTEN". In fact, my husband says that was one of his favorite parts of the trip. Who'd have thought that behaving like a five year old would be so much fun?