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!

First day of school 2015

Lily started school the day after Labor day. Much later than most kids in the country I take it. Personally, I was relieved to have a longer summer to settle in to our new home. I could go with a little more summer even, but alas - it is not to be...and the weather is turning on us. Hope our heater doesn't give out on us! We are so happy to be in our own home - finally!!! But I will expound on that another time. I have been too busy trying to make the house homey to blog much, but I wanted to share a few photos of the girls for my family. 

Lily's First Day of 2nd Grade!

 Sierra doing a little school with me at home

Lily started at a new school again this year. Her teacher seems very nice and she seems to be adjusting well. Lily rode the bus for the first time with a bigger girl friend from our neighborhood. She took it twice but decided to drive again this year for now as she's one of the few smallest kids on the bus. Lily bonked right between her eyes on a metal handle on our shoe cabinet the night before school started hence her little scrape. She had a big bump, but you can't even tell now. Healed up right in time for picture day :)

I've been trying to do a little preschool time with Sierra each day. The first was the most successful so far. Makes me look like a pinterest mom! Just adapted an idea from Lily's mommy & me preschool of yore. The other times have been even more thrown together. But I'm trying to get it consistent. We still have a few major projects to do around the house and the day just flies by before it's time to get Lily again. Hoping to step it up a notch once things get more settled around here. If things ever settle :)

I was going through deleting bad photos and came across these tonight from the night before school started. (That's a little stick-on ice pack on Lily's forehead.) Anyway, they made me laugh so I had to share them. I love these two so much! They are sweet little characters :)

Sierra's look kills me!

 Lily did the curlers. The whole time they were posing so I couldn't help but think of this old picture of me & luckily found it already on my computer. We look a little bit alike, eh?

 

Some things never change!

Unreal

This afternoon Sierra got a little splinter on her hand in the backyard. She was looking down at her fresh band-aid and her Grandma Elsie asked her if her hand felt better now. Sierra said no it still hurt, and Grandma explained that it would take time, but it would feel better. 3 year old Sierra replied: "When I go to sleep and wake up in the morning it will feel better...When we get to our own house it will get better." I had to laugh, but I also got a little bit teary eyed. We've told our kids so many times that when we get our own house we can do this or that thing we couldn't do yet where we were. It kind of made me tear up because I feel bad that they've had to wait for so many things that that's become one of Sierra's automatic answers, but also because - as unreal as it feels - we are finally so close to that long desired goal!

If you didn't know - We've been living with family for kind of a long time... Kind of a lot longer than most adult people can stand living with extended family or the extended family can stand letting them - especially when they are married with kids! I could probably write a book about how to live with multiple families in one house, or write long lists about how living with multiple families in one house makes life more complicated. Not that there haven't been blessings along the way! We are so grateful to our families for their love and support as we've been changing career directions and trying to make plans for our family. But it's been hard, and I am beyond excited to be starting this new chapter in our life, as difficult of an adjustment as I know it will be. 

We've been looking for a house that will suit our needs (as a family and a home business) for over a year. We've made several offers and looked at thousands of homes online and many many homes in person. We feared our wonderfully patient realtor would drop us. Especially after all the holes we dragged her out to. It honestly seemed like we would never reach this day! But today, as yellow smoke fills the skies of Eastern Washington from fires, we signed the papers for our new home! We get the keys tomorrow!!! Ahhh...can't wait to dance with my girls and stretch out on our living room rug! To organize my own entire home, to bake in my own kitchen! To have a full closet for clothes and keep the food and the cookbook in my pantry instead of my bedroom! To be a little more like regular people :) 

Tomorrow - commence cleaning! And praying for rain!

Just to round this post out:
A picture of a cute girl with training pants on her head.