Treats, a Mess, and a Halloween RAK from Lori!

Happy Friday and Happy Halloween! Who likes pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting?! I hope people at the school Trunk or Treat event do! The cheerleaders are manning a bake sale booth, so I whipped these up tonight for them. I made them for the scrapping retreat a few weeks ago, and they were a big hit. I'll come back and post the recipe if anybody is interested.

I made the tags out of SU Confetti White cardstock and the large tag punch (here's how you know you're tired: you look at the tags in the picture and panic and say "What are those spots all over the tags?!! Doh! Confetti cardstock!) and Pumpkin Pie cardstock with the Martha Stewart jack-o-lantern punch. Before I could make the tags, however, I had to walk into my stamp room and deal with this mess leftover from the previous night of failed stamping attempts:


Ugh! I could not get any mojo working last night while trying to do Kristina's Color Inspiration #28 challenge! You know when you're tired and feel like cr*p, but you don't want to give up?! (I'm also blaming Ashley, because I happened to see that awesome card and knew I couldn't come up with anything as cute! grrrr!) This has been a killer week for sinuses and allergies here in Dallas. I'm about ready to lop off my head entirely! And I know it's not just me, because my friend Lori told me she's going through the same thing.

Speaking of Lori, look at this adorable Halloween card she sent me! Don't you love the vintage feel and that tassel trim?! She knows I love the vintage! And I love this card, thank you and big, big hugs, Lori!!

Ummm, did anyone notice the fantastic job I did with smooth transitions between the above subjects?! That's not always easy to do, you know, as you can tell from most of my other posts! hee! hee! Well, off to school. Wish me luck, the kids have been WOUND UP all week and I think today is going to be the grand finale!

We are doing a cool thing today...a bunch of us are going to be mystery readers...we are dressing up like a character in a book and the students try to figure out who it is, then we read the book to the class. Fun, huh? We'll be going around to different classes all day doing this! I haven't dressed up for Halloween since, like college maybe, and of course I left it until 4:30 today to go to Border's and decide on a book, try to find a costume at the Halloween store (big mistake), go to the grocery store to get supplies for the baked goods (see above), go to Michael's to get packaging for the baked goods, come home to see if a costume will magically appear, prepare and package the baked goods, etc. Can you tell I'm a procrastinator?!

Okay, I've rambled on way tooooo long! Tell me about your big Halloween plans!

*Edited to add the recipe for easy and delicious pumpkin bars!

Pumpkin Bars

• 4 eggs
• 1 c. oil
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 c. brown sugar
• 1 can of pumpkin
• 1/2 t. salt
• 2 t. cinnamon
• 1 t. baking soda
• 2 c. flour
• 1 t. baking powder

• Beat eggs, oil, and sugars.
• Add remaining ingredients and mix.
  
• Grease & flour cookie sheet pan (sometimes I use 13 x 9 and it works great too).
• Bake at 350 degrees for 20 - 25 minutes.

Frosting

• 3 oz. cream cheese
• 6 T. butter
• 3 c. powdered sugar
• 1 t. vanilla
• 2 t. milk

Beat well and frost. I usually double the recipe for extra, extra frosting on the pumpkin bars!