Halloween 2011

This year I was determine to make the kids their Halloween costumes. For some reason, the idea of making them cave kids had popped into my mind. I figured felt would be super easy to work with and I convinced Paul to buy me a sewing machine.

I started out with Addy's outfit. I traced the outline of a dress she had, cut it out, sewed up the sides and hot glued black triangles onto the dress. After I finished hers, I decided that we should all dress up as the flinestones. I bought the bone hair piece at a Halloween store to complete her "Pebbles" look. It was cold out, so she wore a turtle neck and leggings underneath.

After going through the list of characters on the Flintstones, we decided Ashleigh would be "Betty". 

  

Cooper was of course "Bam Bam".

 

Next came "Fred" .... 

Then "Wilma"....(my necklace was foil that I made into balls and wrapped with felt)

And we couldn't have the Flintstone's without Dino.... I made G's out of fleece (so she was nice and warm) and it was more stretchy than the felt, so she was able to move around easily. I added a zipper for easy access and hand sewed on the tail.



I made everyone go out to our annual festival, Hollyfest, even though it was freezing and wet. It was a huge mud hole and even though there were a TON of people there, I am pretty sure we were the only ones there in a costume. LOL At least we were awesome! 

We came home and headed over to our neighbors for an awesome Halloween Party. I made "witch's brew" and it was delicious. I'll post pics and the recipe later (I forgot pics today but am making again tomorrow).

This by far was our best Halloween and I am already looking forward to next year.

G's First year

Ancestry.com gave us a promo for a free photo book from Shutterfly. All we had to do was pay shipping and add the photos. Here is G's first year all wrapped up in a photo album for her. I am hoping to get this done for the older children as well.

The book arrived today and I love it! We will cherish it for years to come! Enjoy

Click here to view this photo book larger

Build your own high-quality photo books at Shutterfly.com.

Pumpkin Costume

This Friday, Cooper will be in a book character parade. Everytime I asked what charater he wanted to be, he would tell me Mario. Since we don't have any books with Mario in them, that wasn't going to work.

Since it is pumpkin time, we've been reading the book Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White and he has been learning about pumpkins in school. Even though it's not technically a "character" in the book, I figured a pumpkin would still represent the book and also go along with his current school theme.

Using some left over orange, I cut out the pumpkin shape and sewed it together. I left openings for the arms and the bottom open so he can just slip it on. We cut out green leaves and he told me what shapes he wanted the face. We just hot glued the face and leaves on to make it super easy.

Tada...a pumpkin costume in 20 minutes

 Paul thinks the face looks like Cooper LOL

Homemade Lawn Spider

I was really excited about decorating for Halloween thanks to Pinterest. I found these awesome spiders (at least I thought they looked cute) and was determined to make them. I couldn't find black 260 balloons anywhere, so I ordered them online. They arrived yesterday and I set out to make the spiders.

The directions say not to be timid, but the first 2 I tried busted :( The remaining ones were either too short or I had a leftover skinny section that just hung from bottom of one of the legs. Paul promised he would figure out something else, so we tossed a few ideas around today.We ended up buying some corrugated pipe from Lowe's and Paul figured out the rest as he went.

First, Paul cut the pipe to the size he wanted using a utility knife. Then he staked them into the yard (originally was suppose to be up on the roof, maybe next year)...

We had a black garbage can that we never used in our garage, so we used that for the body. Paul just placed the can directly on the tubes. We may secure it later, but for right now it's staying in place. He placed more tubing inside the can in a U shape for the eyes and placed white Christmas lights in the tube, then covered the tube with some orange felt scrapes (orange eyes). Then he added the insides of a green air filter we had hanging around to the lid opening to cover the tube eyes. Some white felt fangs were added for a finishing touch. 

Finished product...

It turned out super cute and wasn't hard (for the most part). We just used some random stuff we had around the house and the pipe.

SN: Our neighbor has agreed to allow everyone to believe that there were no frustrating moments/cursing and everything went as planned. That's her story and we are all sticking to it!  LOL;)

If anyone has some cool, fun decorations...feel free to share. I love making my husband do things! Thanks Babe!

Green level Gourd Farm

I finally convinced Paul to go to the pumpkin patch. It's something we love to do BUT they are always crowded and expensive (especially around here) so Paul was really trying to put it off. I found this cheap, little farm pretty close to us, so I was able to coerce him into going.

Are my kids the only ones that don't get the concept of putting their heads in the head holes? When I would get one kid in, another would leave their slot, so I just gave up and took a picture :/

Green Level Gourd Farm was only $4 a person and we really just wanted something low key this year with a tractor ride, which it included. They didn't really have a "pumpkin patch" but did have some really nice pumpkins for sale. They had some chickens, bunnies, goats, and 2 donkeys one of which was showing off more of their anatomy than I cared for.

I really liked this hen/chicken (it was super fluffy):

Some goats:

Everyone took their turn on the tractor:

The tractor ride was driver by a man that we think may have been "cajun" or super "country" because we couldn't understand a word he said, but he was extremely happy and friendly. He took us through the woods and the wagon had these clapper hands tied to the rails for the kids. We would stop by halloween decorations placed throughout the woods and the kids go clap the clappers to make the decorations move or make noise. The kids really enjoyed it!

There was a little play area with these ride on peddle tractors:

Some more pics:

We all had a great time! We'll see how next weekend pans out and maybe we'll try out another one;)



Genevieve's 1st Birthday Party

We celebrated Genevieve's 1st birthday this past Sunday on Oct 2nd! I can't believe she is already 1. Time has flown by so quickly.

Her outfit came just in time. I ordered her a tutu set from Etsy and was really worried that it wouldn't arrive in time. When it finally came on Friday, I couldn't have been happier. She wasn't too fond of all the tulle though LOL

Being that it's a preplanned party, of course Jenna wasn't feeling 100%. She had a rough night the night before and we just knew she was off. She was still happy, except when I made her wear the tutu LOL. I took this pic right before she sneezed...



We just had the party at our house since we didn't want to have to stress about the weather. Even though it was a beautiful day, it was pretty chilly out. We didn't go crazy with the decorations. I made some tulle pom poms, we hung a "Happy Birthday" sign, and I put out a matching table cloth. Woo hoo!

I wanted her to have a special cake for her first birthday, so I found someone that made speciality cakes. She has a facebook page in case anyone wants to check it out ( Coop des Cakes). I told her what the theme was and sent her the invite that I had made. I had no idea what the cake would look like, so I was really excited when it was delivered. 

The cake was perfect and matched the invitation exactly. It was yellow cake with chocolate buttercream in the middle, vanilla buttercream on the outside. So delicious! I should have taken a pic of the inside but totally didn't think of it at the time. I did sort of get a pic while Jenna was have a piece...

I made punch for the drinks. I got the recipe here while browsing pinterest. It was simple and I liked the colors.

Punch In a Punch Bowl Recipe – mix together the following: 1 – 2 liter bottle of Sprite or 7UP 2 cups of orange juice top with scoops of orange sherbet frozen raspberries .

After singing Happy Birthday, G got to smash into her own special cake. She seemed a little shy at first, but it didn't take her long to realize that that cake was pretty tasty!

After cake, she opened her gifts.

Group photo of us and the kids...

It was a fantastic day. Thanks so much to those of you that were able to stop by on her special day!

Mommy and Daddy love you baby girl!xoxo