Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood

Lily has known for months or longer what she wanted to be for Halloween. Sierra has been much less certain... At one point she even decided she wanted to be Little Red Riding Hood too. That would just be too tragic for Lily, and we didn't have that much red velvety material from my mom to pull it off either. So I read her a cool 3-D Goldilocks storybook we have and talked that up to her and she got excited about being Goldilocks, for a day. The next day she had other ideas, so I was determined to make her costume really cute so she'd be excited to wear it. Nothing worse than spending time making something for your kids they don't even like, and then fighting and forcing them to use it! I was determined to have a cute bear border, but I couldn't find any teddy bear print fabric (which would have made it so much easier), so I bought puffy paint and embroidery floss for the mouth and noses and painted the bears along the border. (Sometimes it's easier to just work with what you can find than look all over only to still not find it.) I only had to buy the buttons, paint, floss, and ribbon for both outfits and got the rest of the material from their Grandma's so we did pretty good on our budget! I bought some white fabric and tulle for petticoats, but several days and 2 late nights sewing I didn't get that far! They look pretty cute without it anyway. It's the girls in them that make them the cutest! Wish I had an old fashioned dress to wear!

 

 

Sierra was so star struck meeting these princesses!

This is at Lily's new dentist's office Halloween Carnival to get donations to help needy kids. I was determined to get the costumes done so they could go to this because Lily needed 2 baby teeth pulled the day before it and this event was a major distraction that helped her get through it like a super star. Such an amazing kid's dental office! Lily has had bad past experiences and had to be sedated to get any dental work done, but this time she made it through like a pro. Major milestone!!! I am so proud of my Lily girl!

A Big Ole Pile of Leaves

We went to Grandma Elsie's to jump in the leaves and raid her fabric stash for Halloween costume material. Mike brought his camera took practice shooting outdoors & got some fun shots. (I took the first 4, and the last ones of our yard)

 Mike took these:

I haven't really been getting outdoors too much except to drive the kids around and do errands, but I've sure been enjoying the nice fall weather we've been having, and all the beautiful changing colors. We've been lucky to have more sunny days than normal for here this time of year. I think it's going to be a rainy Halloween :( Boo!

These are from my back patio. The sky and trees were just so beautiful that afternoon! We don't really have the greatest yard to hang out in, it's kind of 2 side yards and we can see right over the fence out our back windows, but the neighbors yard is kind of wooded. And looking past the wires we've been seeing deer out looking for food over the fence almost every day. It's weird because we are pretty close to a big shopping area, I wouldn't expect them to come in here, but there was a whole deer family sleeping just a few yards away from our back door for almost 2 weeks! Mike's parents had a whole flock of wild turkeys our their front window this morning, & they are not exactly out in the country either. Cool happenings!

So speaking of our back yard... One of the previous owners of our house thought it would be a good idea to re-purpose the broken slabs of concrete from an old driveway they replaced as raised garden beds in the backyard. They also made a path and lined them all along the fence in an attempt to keep wild critters out (so a neighbor tells us). There was a lot of broken concrete, and it was not exactly a selling point in our minds. (So ugly) So we planned to get rid of it, but when we looked into dumping it, or hiring someone to help us we got some pretty crazy estimates of what it would cost. $5,000 to $10,000! Um, what!? We were imagining late night ditching it out the back of the car over the next year or so - because it was a lot of concrete! Maybe more than just the one driveway's worth... And it was heavy. Total back breaking work lifting even one block. But anyway, we totally lucked out and the nice neighbors who have had our girls over to their girls' birthday parties since we moved here happen to be affiliated with a concrete cutting company. Mike asked his advice and he totally offered to lend his "little" dump truck and bobcat and ended up loading it all up for us on his own time (3 loads) and taking it to a concrete dump that was much cheaper per cubic yard (since concrete is super heavy) and all we had to pay was the dump fee!! It was awesome!!! Talk about going above and beyond! He even took the gravel from the front side yard that we wanted to get rid of (Load number 4) and dumped it on his dad's gravel road. We lucked out with some pretty nice neighbors! Tried to find a before shot of the garden beds, but since I didn't like it I didn't really take any pictures of them, but you can kind of see part of one in one of the photos above. But here's the after. It's so nice to us to see it gone! Feels like a much bigger yard, and a clean slate for us to start on in the spring.

Super nice neighbor in that bobcat right there. We totally owe them!

It's so nice when some things work out!!

Oh, and a funny one to end on:

Love my little character!

School Halloween Carnival

The girls got their faces painted at the school Halloween Carnival. Usually the line is so long for that kind of thing we pass. It's going to get washed off anyway and Lily's always changing her mind about wanting it so we'd rather spend our time on other activities...but this year we stuck it out and it was super fun to see the girls look so different. We even let them sleep in it so they could enjoy it the next day - what didn't rub off on the pillowcases anyway :)

Some fun pictures from the night!

 It was so cute to watch them sitting there so still getting their faces done - and then to see them all excited about it after!

Lily also finally lost a tiny little baby tooth that had been hanging out by her big grown up tooth forever just teasing us that it was about to come out!

October Highlights

It's been a busy month, but we've had a few major milestones and fun celebrations worth blogging about. Probably too much for just one post! It's been fun for me to be in our own house as the weather is getting chillier and get to play domestic goddess, baking and cooking and making the house feel all cozy. Gotta enjoy this lifestyle while I can!
I love making good food for the people I love. Sierra loves to help - she sticks it out a lot longer than Lily. Isn't she such a cute kitchen helper!?

 

 Some other things to remember in no particular order:

Deer sleeping just over the fence of our backyard and looking for food every day for almost 2 weeks where we could have a close up view of them. (that rail is my back patio)

Sierra's crazy cute fashion sense.

Lily starting her first sewing project - by hand - while I sewed their Halloween costumes.

Lily getting 2 teeth pulled at the dentist and doing awesome without having to be sedated!!!

Face paint at the school carnival.

Me painting an actual painting for the first time in how many years??? a kid's bathroom painting, but still!

Getting the broken up concrete the previous owners of our house used for decoration in our backyard removed. Woo hoo! Many thanks to our amazing neighbor who went above and beyond to help us do it! Fixing the falling down fence after it. (One less thing to have to do in the spring!)

Getting yummy pumpkin and huckleberry donuts at the pumpkin patch again this year. Always a good time.

Sierra saying Goodbye to Diapers!!! Oh yeah! Keep forgetting to share that one!

I will post more pictures of some of these fun things soon but in the meantime here are a couple of our favorite yummy recipes to share:

Sour Cream Banana Bread

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup mashed banana*

1/2 cup chopped pecans

1/2 cup sour cream

Spray 1 loaf pan with cooking spray. Cream butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla.

Add dry ingredients, then bananas and sour cream, stir in nuts. Mix well and pour into pan. Sprinkle top with more chopped pecans if desired. Bake at 350 for 1 hour or until cooked through.

*Sometimes I make up the bananas with a little carrot shredded in my food processor.

Chocolate Chip Blueberry-Zucchini Muffins  (Makes 12 muffins)

1 1/2 cups flour (1 c. all purpose + 1/2 c. whole wheat)

1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

1 large egg

1/2 cup oil (I use melted butter, olive or canola & a little coconut oil

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 c. shredded zucchini & carrot.

1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries (or 1/4 c. chopped blueberries & 1 c. chocolate chips.)

plus cinnamon crumb topping (below)

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Grease your muffin tin and paper liners.

Grate zucchini & squeeze out excess moisture with strong paper towel, shred carrot in food processor.

In a large bowl combine the sugar, egg, olive oil, milk and vanilla, mixing well. Stir in the zucchini. Add the flours, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Mix until just combined. Fold in the blueberries/chocolate chips. Spoon batter into the muffin cups.

Cinnamon Crumb Topping: Mix together 1/4 cup sugar, 1/6 cup flour, 2 Tbsp butter, and 3/4 teaspoons cinnamon. Mix with fork, and sprinkle over muffins before baking.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the muffins are starting to brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Enjoy!

If you add blueberries they will come out looking funny colors, but the taste is amazing! Tip: Don't seal up to store or they'll get soggy. Best eaten up the first day!

Just Us

I never would have pegged Mike or I as a gnome people, but he planted this guy
he'd bought to take a photo of in our yard the first day we got the key, and I love it :)

Well, this post has been a long time coming. We've been in our house over a month now! It's just us! And it's great to feel that everyone in the home totally supports and loves me! Such a great feeling!!! So, so can not even do it justice with words so insert dramatic pause here ........ We can do our thing, our way, without worrying about bothering anybody! ...So even though it's not our dream house, and we've had a lot of sadness about the decision to leave beautiful sunny San Diego... I'm really glad to be here right now feeling a little bit more like the me I was meant to be with each passing day. Finally growing up :D

We're in!

It's good, and scary, and life changing for sure! Scary because now we have a mortgage payment. Scary because now it is just us responsible for listening out to the bumps in the night. And this house makes a lot of noise we can't attribute to other people being here! Our fridge makes so many knocking sounds at times I've thought about taking videos of it to post --it's just so ridiculously noisy! ...It's been a transition - with definite periods of sleep deprivation. In some ways we miss bunking in with family... But over all it's really, really great that it's just us! I have danced wildly and freely in the front room with my 3 year old without fear of looking ridiculous to anyone in the house because it's just us!!! Our little family being out on our own has been a much too long time in coming so it's going to take us a while to get used to it!

It was like Christmas getting all the toys out of storage - they did not want to go to sleep the first night!

There are definitely more things to do when you move into a house of your own than when you are renting a space! More things to change and repair, and for us this time, more space to spread out in! We have always been pretty quick unpackers and were doing pretty well getting things organized in the house the first few days so I didn't really think it would take as long as it has to really get settled. But we had quite a few projects to do, and children to take care of and school starting, and all the moving and cleaning was pretty exhausting on our poor bodies!

Lily wanted to help give her Dad a back massage.

Stripping paint off and refinishing a table we were gifted took us a few weeks, but it turned out very nice...and after eating at a small folding table with our kids trying to take over the only 2 big folding chairs and tipping over in them all the time - it was super nice to finally be eating at a regular table again!

So glad to trade in this sweet set up for this one!

I didn't really expect to do much in the way of decorating for some time. Not wanting to spend any more money, and as artists we've usually had too many things to hang on the walls, but now having a whole house we have quite a few big blank spaces we still need to fill. I've been looking forward to finally printing some of our family photos to hang up. We never had any space for them before! I don't have a big budget, but I found some frames at Ross for great prices and made a family photo wall in our dining area for just under $100 prints included. I've kind of gotten in the habit of not buying anything to decorate because we just didn't have the money to spend or the space to store it, so now it feels weird to spend money on decorating! But whenever I look at our photos it makes me happy - so I think it's worth it :) You have to admit it - just doesn't feel as homey staring at a blank wall.

Earlier this month we had our first general conference in our own home. I made our traditional homemade cinnamon rolls and we decorated for Halloween. I'm enjoying having our little homemade decorations fill in the gaps and make it feel fuller in here.

Pumpkins by Sierra & Mommy

 Ghost by Lily

Lily helping me get out the Halloween lights we made before we had kids
with face paint leftover from her school carnival the night before

My littlest cutie hanging decorations in the window

I feel so blessed...so even though life is not perfect, and I could make a list of things that are lacking about our home and yard -- the goods outweigh the bads and I'm counting my blessings! Will try to post more updates soon!