Most Awesome Carved Pumpkin

I wish we could take credit for the idea for our pumpkin this year, but we can only take credit for the manual labor involved in making it. We LOVE how it turned out! Hope you had a spooky Halloween.

Halloween Decorations

I love Halloween and all the decorations that come with it. This year I made a lot of the decorations and that was a lot of fun, plus saved a lot of money! Here are a few pics of how it looks.

Welcome...or not?

I know it's hard to see, but it's a cauldron with dry ice and water and a glo stick....looks so cool! Even bubbles like it's a real brew...loved the effect.
This pic is so appropriate since it looks like a haunted house.

Front porch

Even the stuffed animals are in on it.
What a spooky looking chandelier.

21+10

Our friends got together and bought Shawn a "manly" tie because they still don't get his sharp looking style with his bright colors...but they did put the gift in a cute pink bag.

Cupcakes for the kids

It's hard to believe it's been 10 years since I met Shawn and helped him celebrate his 21st bday. Yesterday, Shawn turned 31 for those that aren't so good at math. We celebrated by having a few friends over for a Halloween birthday party. Everything turned out so well and the cake was D-LISH! I got the recipe out of Country Living. I have never made a cake from scratch before and now I know why...though the cake was so yummy, it took a good 3 hours to make and dirtied up just about every measuring cup, measuring spoon, bowl, spatula, and whisk I owned and I own quite a few of each! But, Shawn loved it and that's what matters.

Haunted Hayride and Carnival

Well, we managed to scar our children for life last night. We took them to a city-wide Halloween carnival and haunted hayride. It was a lot of fun. All the booths were 50 cents or less to play so Elle loved them. After we had played all the booths and it was getting crowded inside, we headed to the haunted hayride. Since this was advertised as an event for children we figured the hayride would not be really scary, maybe some strobe lites and white sheets hanging from trees....we were really wrong. After the 5th chainsaw guy came right up to our children screaming at the top of his lungs and doing the chainsaw, we decided that that would be our last time to do a Halloween event without really checking it out for kid-friendliness. About half way through Elle was sobbing loudly and saying really loud "I just want to go home." I had Elle clinging to me like fly to flypaper and of course the sound of the chainsaws scared Ava nearly to death, so I ended up holding her also. Ava was fine once I held her, but Elle cried all the way back to the entrance. But, there is a happy ending. To make her feel better we let her eat some of her candy and before we even left the parking lot, she was laughing , smiling and telling us how fun some of the haunted hayride was....kids bounce back quickly. Also, my highlight of the evening was being told by a 11 year old boy that "Man, you're face paint looks awesome. I wish my mom was more like you!" My proudest moment :) Lots of people commented on how cute Elle and I looked and lots of kids gave me a long glare....not too sure about me or Elle....my work is done.

Miscellaneous

Since I complain A LOT about the hot weather here, I thought it would be appropriate to also give thanks for the really nice almost cold weather we are having right now....so THANK YOU GOD! A cold front came through last night giving us our first cool spell....finally! The high is around 63 and the low is around 43 today. It should warm up some in the coming days, but I think this blast of cold air finally got rid of the last of the summer heat! HALLELUJAH! Elle was so excited to wear long pants and a long sleeve shirt today. Ava got to wear a long sleeve onesie for the first time since last winter! I even wore jogging pants and a long sleeve shirt. How exciting!

These are some sunflowers that Shawn got me the other day...is the color not amazing? They are yellow sunflowers that had been soaking up reddish/purple food coloring....gorgeous!

I kept seeing these cute vintage style halloween banners and most of them were pretty expensive. I went and bought $1 worth of orange felt and a package of black paper and found the font online for free and made my own halloween banner. I love how it turned out and it's even better because it's homemade! Yeah for homemade and saving money!

We also went to a birthday party this weekend. One of Elle's friends was turning 4 and Elle had a wonderful time!

Besides going to the birthday party, we also had another garage sale this weekend to finish getting rid of a lot of stuff. I did pretty good and will now be able to park my car in the garage....if we could just get the garage door to open! It hasn't really worked using the opener since we moved in and they have tried everything to correct the problem?? Oh well.

Twinkies

My mom bought Elle and Ava matching dresses for Ava's bday and they looked so so cute together. They wore them to church this past Sunday and what is funny is that 2 other moms did the same thing with their daughters. We had twinkies day at church I guess.

Ava loves...

...Stuffed animals, especially dogs and babies

... hats, anytime, any kind, anywhere

...her walker and boy can she get going in that thing!

Well, I think I can say she's officially walking. Not far and not too fast, but walking nonetheless. She is doing it all on her own even when we aren't encouraging her so that makes it official. She gets very excited when she stands herself up and takes a few steps. It is always amazing to watch when a child figures out how to walk. She's doing great and getting feistier every day. She will definitely be able to hold her own with Elle!

She's a Ham

Elle has got quite a sense of humor. Lately I have caught her doing funny things and have been able to snap her picture without her getting too annoyed. Maybe she is finally coming out of the camera-shy faze...I hope so!

Leading singing....sorry if this pic is inappropriate to you....at least it's not your kid!

Exercising...it was making me tired to watch because I was laughing so hard.

My thoughtful Hubbie

Shawn knew that I had nothing new to blog about lately so he decided to give me a story to write about. Yesterday, he had a wreck. He is fine, a little stiff, but fine. His truck on the other hand, is not so fine. Here's the story. A car about 3 cars up slammed on it's brakes to turn, not using his blinker and caused the cars behind him to slam on their brakes. Everyone was able to stop with hitting anyone, except you guessed it, Shawn. He slammed on his brakes but couldn't quite stop in time. He hit the guy in front of him who luckily had a trailer hitch on the back of his vehicle. So, the other guys' vehicle wasn't damaged at all. Shawn's truck doesn't have a large amount of body damage, but under the hood is the problem. The trailer hitch went through the bumper and killed the radiator and some cooling something for the A/C. We think it caused other damage too because the car won't even try to start up at all. So, it was towed to a car place and when we went to get it yesterday, because we didn't have a good feeling about the mechanics and owner of the place, our bill just for towing it was $200 and they were going to charge another $50 to tow it 2 miles to our house. No thanks. Shawn got a friend to chain it to his truck and tow it to our house. Our insurance will cover $80 of the towing bill, but we only had liability so if we decide to get the truck (which has almost 300,000 miles) fixed, then it will all come out of pocket. So now we are in a dilemma as to what to do. But, the positive part of all this is that I had something to blog about (FYI that last statement was dripping with sarcasm). Okay another positive, he wasn't hurt and that I'm not sarcastic about!

Lucky 13

Love this shot of her on her tippy toes.

Here I am!

REEEEACH!---the little ballerina (which is what she's going to be for Halloween)

I like to go against the flow so I have always loved the number 13. It could have something to do with it being my birthday, but now it's even more special because Ava's birthday in on the 13th also. Today she is 13 months old. I wanted to do a scrapbook page eventually entitled Lucky 13 and have it be pictures I took of her on the day she turned 13 months old. I took some really cute shots of her today which is getting harder and harder to do because she won't sit still for them! She took her first 2 steps yesterday and today she took 4 steps! So, I guess she is officially beginning to walk and maybe it had something to do with her turning 13 months on the 13th!

New Favorite Things

I found a new favorite store (right behind Michael's and Hob Lob) while we were exploring our new town the other day. It is an antique store that sells some truly old stuff and lots of stuff that just looks vintage. I immediately fell in love with the cutest Halloween figurines while there. I went back today and they happened to be 30% off so I controlled myself and only bought two. They have figurines for Halloween, Christmas, and just because. The artist is Lori Mitchell and you can find all of her stuff at http://www.bayberrycove.com/ . I will have all of them eventually, but for now, I'll have to be happy with my two newest pieces that can be added to my ever-growing Halloween decor. I'm happy to say that even Shawn said he really liked the look of them and he usually is neutral or mad I spent the money so that's a big deal!

One more thing on an unrelated note...in the last post I said "our" church had a pumpkin patch and I knew I was suppose to correct that before publishing but forgot....it wasn't our church, it was another local church here in town.

It may not feel like it, but it looks like it.

Fall is here, at least according to the calendar and people who live up north. But here in central Texas and most of the southern US we are still hot...with no end in sight. Regardless of the fact, we did something very fall-like today. Our church was having a HUGE pumpkin patch on their property here and of course you know I immediately thought...SCRAPBOOK PAGE! Okay I also thought, "What a great experience for the girls..." but mostly I thought SCRAPBOOK PAGE! I took 78 pictures in a matter of minutes. They turned out WONDERFUL!!! Here are a few of them..enjoy!