Wine Tour 2011

This weekend I attended a Wine Tour in Erie, PA. The Lake Erie Wine Trail is so much fun. I have been there once before but did not know that there were so many wineries in one area! There are over 20 wineries going through Erie, PA into New York.
My mother, grandmother, aunt and best friend all traveled to my house and then we were going to tour the wineries. Come to find out... the Harvest Wine Festival was happening so we bought tickets.
I love putting together little momentos of our trips so I made these books to go with our tour.
I printed out the front cover matte and stamped grape vines on before attaching to the hard cover.

Inside conttained a pocket that I made and stamped "my wine". Inside the pocket I added stickers that I made (each with a different color and last name initial) so that when we bought a bottle of wine, we could label it with our sticker so we knew which ones were ours.

The stickers were made using my cricut and adhesive sticker cardstock.

The pages were put in by using my binding maching. I had a list of the wineries that were on the wine trail with the food/wine they were serving. Also inside were "wine tasting notes" so that we could remember where we bought each bottle of wine and how it tasted. It was fun making these and the girls LOVED them! We had a blast at the wineries and then went to a casino that we passed on our way there. It was so much fun and I am glad I got to spend quality time with family!

Halloween Birthday Surprise

After we got back from our honeymoon - I needed to do something crafty and creative. Lucky for me, my new husbands Birthday was only a couple days after we got back. I decided that I needed to do something special for him (and fun for me) so I planned a little Happy Birthday Halloween Themed Dinner for the 2 of us. I had a blast putting it together. But I was so busy putting it together I didn't get many great pictures.

I made cupcakes for dessert. Chocolate with chocolate icing. Added a few plastic spiders for some fun and put them on a pretty fall tray. Wala!



Please ignore all of the extra stuff! This was during set up!!!
The black candles have a bit of sparkle to them. I got them at Party City for only $5.00 for all 10 of them. (They came in packs of 2 and were on sale!)
I wish I could remember my original inspiration for my arrangement but I became obsessed with putting together a red and purple arrangement. I couldn't find any real purple flowers so I just bought a dozen roses and then went to Michael's and found a bushell of purple flowers for 70% off! Score! I then bought wet foam (with a 40% off coupon) and put the arrangement together myself.
The green was in the roses I bought. I already had the silver pot that I put the arrangement in.
Of course I had to creep it up a bit so I put some spider webbing over the arrangemet with some plastic spiders. (Both on clearance at Party City). I also added a couple of fake rats. I dimmed the lights and lit the candles right before hubby came home.

I'm not a great cook but I was pretty proud of the delicious dinner I made!!! We had:
- Italian Bread
- Spagetti
- Pesto Sauce
- Marinara Sauce
- Chicken Parmesian (The Parmesian Shake 'n' Bake was SOOOO good!)

I also made a pitcher of Sangria. I used 4 different bottles of wine, Sprite, 1/2 cup of Sugar and frozen berry assortment. It was DELICIOUS! We drank the whole thing! The great thing about Sangria is that you it is pretty fail-proof. Just keep dumping and tasting - eventually you come up with something delicious!

When Hubby came home, I had the lights off, the candles lit, and a cd playing of theme songs from some of the most famous horror movies of all time. It was a wonderful evening! I can't wait for my next surprise dinner!