Earning his keep....

Gorgeous fall day? Yard full of leaves? Toddler who loves to do whatever daddy is doing? Sounds like some free labor to me! :)





As usual, Gracie chooses a supervisory role in most housework:

Zoo Boo!

We got Jake's Halloween costume about 2 weeks ago...nearly everyday since then, he had been asking to wear it. Finally, the big day arrived...Zoo Boo Day! Time to get out the costume! We pull into the parking lot, grab the costume and....he doesn't want to put it on. *sigh* After a bit of coaxing from me ("look Jake, all the other kids have on their costumes! You have to wear one if you want to trick or treat!") he agreed to wear it. Crisis averted.



It was much more crowded this year than last, but we still had a good time. Jake enjoyed his first lollipop, I think he was totally intrigued by it...and it kept him quiet & occupied in the stroller for a long time...score one for the parents!! :)



We're supposed to go trick or treating twice this weekend, at my parent's house on Saturday night, then at our house on Sunday night...so keep your fingers crossed that he agrees to wear the costume this time!

It's (almost) the most wonderful time of the year...

If you know me at all, you know that I LOVE Christmas. LOVE IT. I love the entire time from Thanksgiving-Christmas day....the music, the decor, the hustle & bustle....everything. I find that I'm looking forward to Christmas this year more than ever; I'm excited to be in our new house, and I'm excited that Jake will get it even more this year. Brian is super excited to have more space for a Griswold-like tree. (see post from last year here-yes, he has dreams of going even bigger this year).

And so the countdown begins....exactly 37 days until Black Friday (the OFFICIAL kick off to the holiday season for me...yes, I'm one of the crazies out there at the crack of dawn and I love it), and only 66 days until Christmas!!!

Pumpkin Patch

We figured that we'd take advantage of the warmer (non rainy!) weather and the Steelers bye week and go on our annual pumpkin patch trip. Yeah, good idea in theory...but I guess everyone else had the same idea, it was packed!!

Obviously, since we're in a different area now, we had to find a new pumpkin patch to go to, so we hit up Soergels. The only thing I was a bit irritated about was that they told me you couldn't just walk to the pumpkin patch, you had to buy tickets to take a hay ride up there. (I actually found out later that isn't true, you can walk...grrrrr) But no biggie, I buy the tickets, we wait in line for 15 minutes and as soon as we go to get on the ride, Jake says he doesn't want to ride it because the tractor is too loud & hurts his ears. *sigh* No pumpkins for us!

But, he ended up having a good time...we let him use the tickets up on the bouncy house and balloon chase instead.



I had to settle for getting his picture with some giant plywood pumpkins since we didn't get close to the real pumpkins :)



They also had a little "tiny town" area with tractors, trains and buildings for the kids to play in.

While not the biggest pumpkin patch success, not a total loss either :)

Bathroom Mini Makeover: Part 2

Up next on our list of mini makeovers was our powder room; here is the before:



The walls were a light purple color, and while you can't tell in this picture, the mirror had huge black streaks going all down it (not sure what it was). When I posted about our bathroom ideas before, we had intended on doing this one in a latte/chocolate brown color scheme. Unfortunately, that idea didn't pan out; when we got paint chips, we realized that the counter is much more pastel-y than we realized (it almost has a pinkish hue to it) and the latte colors up against it looked horrible. So we changed it up completely and went with a grey-blue color...we loved the way that it turned out!



Here's what we did:
-Painted the walls Behr's Arctic Ocean ($20)
-Ripped out the old mirror with the stains and replaced with the framed mirror, purchased at Kirklands on a super sale! ($42)
-Took out the brassy towel rack & replaced it with silver (kind of free in that it wasn't a new expense; we had bought the towel rack for our old house on sale for $15, but never put it up)
-Hand towel: free, we had it at our old house
-We took down the curtains, not sure if we'll put anything up or not, so it's bare for now
-For decor, I bought a little bowl at Walmart for $2 and filled it with pebbles we collected while on vacation this year



Total cost for makeover: $79

Eventually, we'll swap out the gold faucet fixture and the gold knobs on the cabinets and the makeover will be totally complete!

Book Review: Millennium Trilogy

I can't review the full trilogy yet, as I haven't read the 3rd book, but I can't wait to get my hands on it. (I'm too cheap to buy the hardback, so I have to wait patiently for my turn to check it out from the library) If you haven't read these books, I'll give you a little warning....they start out a bit slow (especially the first one), and at times, they're difficult to follow...but I can assure you that once things get rolling, they are purely addictive. So if you try to start the first one & have problems getting into it, don't give up!!

Be warned that the characters are all Swedish, so their names are sometimes a bit strange. On top of that, the author jumps back & forth, referring to a character sometimes by his or her last name, then a few pages later by his or her first name, making it very confusing. And there are a LOT of characters to keep straight, especially in the first book. But I promise, you'll enjoy the books....read them now, before the movies start to come out! :)

Up next: The Help, by Kathryn Stockett