Nutterbutter Ghosts

Alternate title: Things I'm Good At.  Things I'm Not

Because all holidays require a potluck at work, I whipped up my favorite Halloween treat.  Nutter Butter Ghosts!!! 

Nutter Butter ghosts fall firmly in the "Things I'm Good At" category.  They are super simple and you can still whip some up today!  And I can't ruin them so they are moron proof. 

These cute little guys are made of 3 ingredients: 

• 1 package Nutter Butter
• 1 package of some form of white chocolate.  I really like this CandiQuik brand. 
• Mini Chocolate Chips

All you do is melt the CandiQuik for about 1 min 30 seconds.  Dunk your Nutter Butter in the chocolate.  Use a fork to shake off excess chocolate.  Place them on wax paper.  Stick on two eye balls (mini chocolate chips). Let cool. Done-zo.   

That's my kind of treat. 

Now onto the "Things I'm Not Good At"

1.  Quickly adding a hover pin-it button to the blog.  I did it in Blogger but I hadn't done since my host change.  It really was ridiculously easy.  I just failed to type my blog address in correctly for like 45 minutes.   Oh my.  But there's a pin-it button now!!!

2.  Making Whoopie Pies.  I bought a $3 whoopie pie pan a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't wait to try it.  Man, did I fail the first two batches.  The first batch I managed to turn off the oven in the middle of baking (WHAT? WHO DOES THAT?).  The second I filled the pan too full.  My 3rd batch turned out darling.  I need some more whoopie pie practice.

Happy Halloween!  Are you dressing up today?  My place of employment dresses up every year.  I always enjoy trying to get an upset patient to take me seriously in costume.  The pharmacy always does a group costume.  This year we are doing a mad scientist lab theme.  (Check Instagram (decorandthedog) for pics! 

Do you have a costume this year?  Tell us all about it! 

Dining Room Chairs

It's blogger show and tell time.   With yelling.

We have new dining chairs! 

Nate and I had been looking for dining room chairs for a couple of months now.  We were looking for 8 chairs to go with our new farmhouse table that Nate is building.   That will hopefully be finished next week.  Or Christmas.  Whatever.

We browsed Craigslist.  We had one guy list the perfect set for $75.  I was in love but I was trying not to get my hopes up.  It is Craigslist after all.  Turns out his son listed them at the wrong price.  They should have been $475.  YOU CAN'T DO THAT!!!  I e-mailed on like 1000 others.  We spent 100 Saturday mornings at thrift stores trying to find our precious chairs.

The only chairs we could find were the 1990's Windsor style (which I don't hate but Nate does).  We were both iffy on having a mismatched set.  I've seen it look good. Nate wasn't buying it.  The mismatched didn't seem like a great fit for our style. 

I showed Nate the Crate and Barrel's Willa Side Chair.   He liked them and gave me permission (without nagging) to buy them.  Weird.  I'm still trying to figure out what the catch is.

I was headed to Naperville a few days later to pick them up.  The website said I wouldn't be able to pick them up for a few weeks.  Womp, womp.  I ended up using the customer chat thingy on their website and their lovely employee got me a pick up for the day I was headed to Naperville.  Thanks lovely employee whose name I don't remember.  Because I'm horrible with names. 

We loaded them up in my sister-in-law's van.  I am no longer allowed to make fun of mini-vans again.  But I will.  I mean, I can't. 

Anywho, long story short. Pretty chairs in my dining room.  Ike approves.  Well, sort of.  He wasn't into modeling this day. 

We only bought six chairs.  We did find two chairs at our local Restore (WHY COULDN'T THERE BE SIX???) and we think they will go nicely on the ends of the table.  Well, they will go nicely once they are cleaned and painted.   

Off to pester Nate about working on the dining table.  He has some sanding left to do and I have some finishing to do.  We're so close! 

DIY Suitcase Dog Bed

It's pretty clear that Ike is a deprived dog.  So deprived that he just now, at almost 7 years of age, got a dog bed.   

Of course, Ike couldn't have just any dog bed.  He needed a re-purposed suitcase dog bed.  Key word: needed

I've been spending a lot of time in my craft room lately.  Ike follows me wherever I go. (Bathroom and shower included.)  Ike likes to be comfortable.  The only spot for the dog to lay in the craft room is on the floor.  This puts him out.  He does this thing where he sighs when he doesn't get what he wants.  There was lots of sighing in the craft room.  It's funny and pathetic all at the same time.

I told Nate that we needed to get him a dog bed.  We decided that a suitcase one would be the most appropriate for a hipster dog like Ike.  We began our suitcase hunt.  Vintage suitcases are kind of expensive.  We found this one for ~$15.00.  Ike approved.

Nate unscrewed the top.  I shoved a pillow and some of Nate's old t-shirts into the bottom.  I then covered it with some material from my stash.  Hipster dog bed complete. 

Nate and I both assumed that we'd make this for him and then he wouldn't use it.  That would totally be an Ike thing to do.  But he loves it.  He crawls right on in.  

There is still some sighing over constantly wanting bones and not being able to go on walks 24/7.  At least we have the craft room covered.