A Happy Halloween

Raise your hand if you can't believe it's already November.  Mine is up high!  I had a mini freakout when I started receiving emails last week about what I want for Christmas.  It's time for that already?!  Suddenly I feel behind - I haven't even started my shopping yet!  Deep breaths.  We haven't even had Thanksgiving yet. Another successful halloween is in the books.  First, let's start with our kids.  I didn't get to see them in costumes in person, so Doc had to send me a picture.  Wyatt is a dementor (from Harry Potter but I have no idea what that really means) and Anna is a greek goddess, maybe Athena?  I asked Anna who Athena is but I don't think she really even knows...I'm pretty sure the costume was chosen for its cuteness.  Nothing wrong with that!

I have to confess that I was the Halloween scrooge Monday night.  I didn't think I would be at home during our neighborhood's trick-or-treating hours, so I didn't buy any candy.  Then I found myself at home alone with still an hour and a half left to go.  I turned off all the lights and hid in the bedroom.  Lolli barked her head off every time the doorbell rang.  I hate that I missed all the cute trick-or-treaters, but I didn't have anything to give them!

Our church had its annual Trunk or Treat event on Sunday night, so we were able to go see the niece and nephews all dressed up.  Just like on his birthday, Parker dressed up as Spiderman.  I asked him to give me a smile but this is the best I could get.  His lopsided spider eyes cracked me up all night.  I have no idea how he saw anything because they were never lined up with his eyes!

By the time I made it to the church, little Bren had already made the rounds filling up her bag, and parked it in her Mom's trunk to eat all her candy.  I tried every way possible to coax her out to play with me, but she was too busy.  I can't compete with a bag full of candy!  After changing her mind 1,284 times, she ended up as Pinkalicious.

It took me a while to find Jett.  He was off running from trunk to trunk, getting more candy and playing all the games.  Of course, the fact that he was camouflaged didn't make it any easier for me to spot him.

Speaking of games, here's Parker trying to play basketball like the bigger boys.

Ramer made an appearance at Trunk-or-Treat too.

I just now realized I never got a full shot of him in his monster get-up.  Darn.  It was really sunny that day, so most of my pictures look pretty bad.

Go figure that as soon as Ramer arrived, Bren finally hopped out of the car.  I'm not sure that she loved the idea of her Mom holding another baby.

Quick family photo of my brother Ben's family.  There may be more closed eyes than open ones, I can't really tell.

My parents with the youngest grandchildren.  And look, Ramer's waving to the camera!

The other two kids jumped in for a picture, too.

Doc was standing with my two brothers, so I told them to get together for a picture.  Typical guys, they stood about three feet away from each other.  I asked them to get closer - it was even ok if they touched - so I could fit them all in the frame.  So, of course, they gave me this.  I feel like it should be on some kind of awkward family photo website.

I let them have a re-do.  Cause I'm nice like that.

Got one of the girls too!  Except that I look like I need a nap.

And that wraps up our halloween!  How was yours?

A Day at the Park

October has been kinda crazy.  My husband has been on 11 planes this month and still has two more to go, which is to say I haven't seen him very much.  There was also a weekend road trip mixed in there too.  I don't remember the last time he was home for more than 2 days at a time.  He is doing great at his new job, though, so it's all been worthwhile.  I'm a proud wife.  Oh, and the good news is there's no travel planned for November.  Hooray! I'm really behind on posts, so for now I'm just going to catch up on some happenings from last weekend.  We had our kids and for a little while on Saturday, all six of my parents' grandchildren were at our house.

I know I'm biased, but those are some of the cutest kids I know, even if I can't get them all to smile for the camera at the same time.  (Sorry for the cutoffs on the edge, the real picture isn't like that.)

As you can tell, the little kids found a bag of balloons and needed them to be blown up.  Whatever it takes to keep them happy, I guess.  We took a walk to the park and the balloons had to come with us.

Thank goodness for Anna.  She was our resident balloon-blower-upper.

Look who decided to smile for my camera!

Parker couldn't be bothered for a smile.  He was too busy watching Jett and Wyatt throw the football and trying to figure out how to get them to let him play.

Once at the park, the big boys made up football obstacles like throwing from the tire swing or throwing over the whole playset.

This may come as a surprise to anyone who knows Bren, but she actually walked past the swings first and went straight for the slide.

Parker gave up on trying to play football with the big boys and climbed up to the fort.

In addition to being the resident balloon-blower-upper, Anna is also our resident monkey.  She is always hanging upside down from something.

Of course, Parker saw her flipping and needed to do that too.  It's hard to get up there when you're short, though.

It's good to have big cousins that will give you a little boost.

After hanging out for a minute, he decided the swings were more his thing.

I guess playgrounds get old after awhile, because before I knew it, we were having races rolling down the hill.

That was fun until we had a head-on collision.  Ouch!  Thankfully, everyone survived.

The girls had already gone home so we decided to join them.  It was getting dark anyway.  It was a good day at the park!

Pumpkin Treats

I'm back with yet another fall project.  This one was more than just fun and easy...it was tasty too! Saturday morning, I whipped up a batch of pumpkin rice krispie treats.  I've seen different versions of these all over the web, so I'm not sure where the idea originated (rice krispie website, maybe?).  I first saw them here.  I'm sure there are tons of different ways to do them, but here's my method (and I bet it's the easiest!).

I had generic crispy rice cereal on hand, so it's what I used.  I think they were called Krispy Rice, or something like that.  I also used a whole bag of jumbo marshmallows.  I like my rice krispie treats to be extra ooey, gooey, and marshmallow-y, so I went all in. :)  Here are my supplies.  Not pictured is the butter.

I melted less than a half a stick of butter on the stove, and added the bag of marshmallows to the pot.  Once they were mostly melted, I added some Wilton orange food coloring.  Red and yellow would work fine too.

It turned my mixture a nice shade of orange.  In hindsight, I could've probably gone a little oranger.

I don't know exactly how much of the crispy rice cereal I added - maybe 5 cups?  I just kept added until I was ok with the consistency.

Anna was my helper for the assembly process.  She unwrapped the tootsie rolls while I rolled the pumpkin balls.  The marshmallow mix was still pretty warm.

As I rolled the pumpkins, I used my finger to make a small indention for her to stick the tootsie roll.

I had a small can of frosting already, so I added some green food coloring to it to make a few leaves.  I didn't really try hard so they don't look exactly like leaves, but I think the extra color still helps.

My finished plate of pumpkins.  The best part was definitely eating them up!

Beach House Won'ts

  I'll admit that, with my southern accent, a lot of times my wants sound like won'ts and vice versa.  I can't help it, they just kinda come out the same.  When it comes to the beach house, I can talk about my wants all day long.  I want a vacation house (check!), I want plenty of bedrooms (check!), I want horizontal paneled walls (check!).  But by no means do I get everything I want.  I want a house on the beach (not in this lifetime!), I want a third floor (not with our budget!), I want dark hardware (vetoed by everyone else!).

But the wants aren't what this post is all about.  Today, I'm here to write about the won'ts...the things you won't see in our beach house (at least not as long as I have a say-so in the decorating!).  When Doc and I were in Florida last, the condo we stayed in had lots of things that won't be in our beach house, so I was able to snap pictures for examples.  The condo was perfectly fine and lovely for us to stay in, it's just very different from what we're planning.

Our bedding purchases have already been made, so I can tell you for certain, there won't be any beach-themed bedspreads.  This one, as you can see, was polka-dotted with palm trees, surfboards, flowers, and dune buggies.

We don't quite have all the artwork picked out or made, but I do know that there won't be any surfers hanging above any beds.

You won't be able to find palm trees on any of the lamps in our beach house.

In the living room, we won't decorate the top of the entertainment center with just two tiny knick-knacks.

We won't have any beach chair picture frames, and any picture frames that we do have won't be left empty.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty certain we won't stick seashells in any short, clear vases.

Any dish we set out on the coffee table won't be shaped like a Hawaiian shirt.

Sadly, in our house, we won't have any seashells-on-a-candlestick.

And finally, for the dining table, our centerpiece won't be an oversized margarita glass filled with seashells and faux grass.

I hope I haven't disappointed anyone too much.  Is there anything else we should add to the won't list?

My brother and his wife are going to check on the house this weekend.  They'll be giving our paint color choices, picking out tile for the bathrooms, and selecting our hardwood for the floors!  Hopefully I'll have updated pictures soon.

Fall-ified

I don't really consider myself to be a seasonal decorator.  I mean, I decorate for Christmas of course, but that's pretty much a given.  The only other time I really decorate for a season or holiday is if/when we're having a party of some sort.  That said, yesterday I brought home some pumpkins and added a touch of fall to our house. My mom helped host a couples' shower Saturday night and she was in charge of the table decorations.  Somehow that meant that I was also responsible for the table decorations.  Huh.  We procrastinated until the very last minute but finally settled on a pumpkin theme late Friday night.  That's how I ended up with decorations for our house - they're leftovers from the party.

Here's our newly fall-ified (fallized? falled?) dining table.

This is pretty much exactly how we decorated the tables for the party, minus a few votive candles.  The tables were outside and we had three of them to do (plus a food table inside) so we needed something that wouldn't get too expensive.  We bought our pumpkins from Home Depot for about $4 each.  The mini gourds came for the grocery store.  They were 3 for $1.

Like my dining table, each table at the party had three main pumpkins - one white one, one large orange one, and one funny shaped orange one that we laid on its side.  I didn't get a picture from that angle but this one kinda looks like two pumpkins stacked on top of each other with just one stem.  For the white pumpkins, I pulled out my Silhouette machine and and cut out a fancy G (the initial of the soon-to-be-married couple) out of black vinyl and just stuck them on.  While I had my machine out, I went ahead and cut out an E for me and an S for my mom so we could use them at our houses afterwards.

The big orange pumpkins all got carved.  My mom left me to do this part by myself and I thought my arm was going to fall off!  I had six pumpkins to empty and as I got my work area set up, I realized I've never really emptied a pumpkin by myself.  I had no idea what I was doing, but I guess I figured it out ok.  Getting all the guts out is hard work!  Then, once they were all finally empty (and I had broken a good sweat), I grabbed the drill and got to carving polka-dotting.  The drill bit went through the pumpkin really easily, so it wasn't hard to do at all.  My problem was that I was using a re-chargeable drill that had a heavy battery on it, and it seriously got heavy after a while!

It looks ok during the day, but it really looks cute at night when its lit up.  I tried to take a picture of it, but I couldn't really capture its cuteness.

I know my burlap needs a little fluffing.  It's not arranged very well yet, but I didn't feel like fixing it for the pictures.  I'm lazy like that.

I put another polka-dotted pumpkin on our kitchen table.  Much plainer, but it works I guess.

I did crank out one tiny craft project too.  After cutting out all the monograms for the pumpkins, I had a small strip of vinyl scrap leftover that I didn't want to just throw away.  So I cut out "give thanks."  I grabbed a scrap piece of wood and painted it brown then yellow and sanded it down.  The letters were easy to stick on and I just added a piece of wire we already had to hang my new little sign.  I didn't have the raffia bow on it at first, but I think it gives it a little something extra.  Total cost?  Zilch.

My new little sign is hanging on the china cabinet for now, but that could change.

The last fall decoration that I put out is my set of wooden pumpkins that I made last year.  I still love them.

I also have a bowl of candy corn sitting out on the coffee table but I didn't think I should take a picture of that.  I'd hate for someone to come over and expect to see it because it won't be around much longer...