Carving, Costumes and Candy

The Carving

Every year we pick our own pumpkins at Thompson's farm in Wisconsin (only about 30 minutes from home). You can fill a whole car with pumpkins for $60. We usually split the load with two other families and end up with more than enough pumpkins to decorate our porch for the month and carve for Halloween.

The Costumes

Oscar the Grouch, Captain Cody the Clone Trooper, and a Rubik's cubeThe Candy

The neighbor friends always get together to sort and trade after the first round of trick-or-treating. The "junk" or "free" pile was full of Charleston Chews...who hands out Charleston Chews?

The Compilation Collage

Our Cousin Charlie

It's been over a year since we've had cousins come to visit (hint, hint...anyone want to come visit :-) so we were excited to get a call from Charlie's mom saying she had last minute tickets to Oprah and was bringing Charlie along for a visit. We loved hanging out with Charlie on our turf. When he showed the boys how to make trampoline snowboards out of duct tape and cardboard boxes we knew they were kindred spirits. They constructed a blanket fort in the basement, visited the Kohl children's museum, and had lunch at McDonald's on the tollway oasis bridge (it's always a novelty to eat a Happy Meal while watching cars race by below). I'm surprised how much the boys look alike in these photos--there is definitely a family resemblance.

My New Favorite Photographer

Love, love, love this photographer, Brittany Cascio http://www.casciophoto.blogspot.com/! She is so talented I just can't stand it. She came out to Chicagoland to snap photos of several families here, but she resides in the greater SLC area (Logan-ish to be exact--but she travels to the whole greater SLC area and beyond). So if you need photos call her, she is amazing. You won't be sorry. I am so excited that she'll be doing my sister, Rachel's, wedding next July and can't wait to see what kind of magic Brittany works with a beautiful subject like Rach.

Click here... photos ...to see the whole session Brittany recently did with our little family at the beautiful Illinois Beach State Park along the shores of Lake Michigan (a few favs are below). My ONLY regret is that she couldn't take 20 pounds off me and add it to Brent. But I suppose that is outside of the scope of her job. How to make an uncooperative 5-year-old smile.

One for the 3rd grade ladies...he's dreamy, isn't he :-) My girl! You'd never guess this precious little guy was being so silly and uncooperative. Somehow Brittany magically captured beautiful photos of him.

Rate My Space - My Bedroom Revealed

My poor bedroom was neglected and in much need of an update. I had intended to repaint for years (I never liked the green I painted) but somehow the bedroom was never top on the priority list. So, when Brent went to Europe for work this week I decided to do my own HGTV inspired "surprise design". Seven days later Brent came home to a repainted, redecorated, and revitalized bedroom.

BEFORE...

Notice the attractive forest green and burgundy matted cherry frames. Yup, artwork from our first apartment. We bought the maps on our honeymoon and had them matted to match our forest green and burgundy decorated apartment--fashionable home decorating in 1994. I'm not really sure why I thought it was a good idea to hang the maps in our bedroom 16 years later. Yes, we really had two nightstands stuck next to each other on one side of the room. An HGTV nightmare. Since they were hidden on the far side of the room I told myself you couldn't really see them and it wasn't too bad. But now that I see it in a photo--argh, what was I thinking?! What a cluttered mess!

Drum roll please... prepare for the big reveal...

AFTER... I dusted off the sewing machine and made the black pillows myself!
Notice the vintage photography from 1994 :-)...a little throw back to the wedding.

This was my grandma Regan's dresser. She found it in the garage of a house her family once rented--left behind by the previous tenant. All the years she lived with us, this dresser was always in her room. I have fond memories of rummaging through these drawers as a child. They were jam packed with all sorts of treasures--boxes of cards, a baby food jar of polished rocks, a blue plastic container of buttons, and sometimes (if you were really fortunate) a piece of Brach's candy.

Oh, and I also whipped up this cool little upholstered board for my necklaces (we have a weird duct that runs up the wall in 1/2 of one of the closets, so this was a great way to put that wasted space to good use)...

So the reveal wasn't quite like HGTV, Brent didn't burst into tears overwhelmed by the beauty of his new bedroom. But, he was caught off guard and he did like it a lot. I was just happy to have the deadline of his homecoming so I could get the whole thing completely 100% finished with no lingering half finished details.

Don't Worry Mom

While Ethan was sitting on the toilet recently we had the following conversation:

Ethan: "Mom, I don't want you to worry, I'm just going #2 right now."

Me: "Oh, um, okay, that's great." I was perplexed as to why I should be worried and didn't really know how to respond.

Ethan: "No mom, it's not great, IT'S AMAZING."

I'm still not sure why #2 is so amazing, but Ethan seems to find joy in many things. And I find joy in his hilarious commentary.