homemade halloween

It has been a brutal week around here with stuffy/snotty noses and cutting 4 canine teeth which all in turns in lack of sleep for all...except Moose who somehow gets a win win situation. No disturbed sleep for him and as soon as one of us is out of bed he takes that as his cue to hop in and cuddle up to the lucky one still in bed.
Then it occurs to me on Thursday night...yes..yesterday that it's Hallelujah night (a Halloween celebration, think bouncy house, games, & candy!) at church Friday, yes...the NEXT day! and Noel does not have a costume!!! YIKES!
Then starts the debate in my head after lack of sleep Thursday night..who am I kidding, lack of sleep ALL week!

Is it worth getting both girls out of the house by myself to pick up the needed supplies to make a costume???

Will I even realistically have the time to get the costume made???

Will all the stars naps align that I can have such time to assemble a homemade costume???

Is my teething, snot nosed 18 month old even going to feel up to going to this outing???

YES, YES, YES...and if I say YES to the first 3 questions...the 4th is going to be a yes after going to all the work!

But really it's ALL worth it because someday I would regret looking back and thinking that we skipped Noel's 2nd halloween costume...hence an hour and a half of prep to get out of the house, 2 hours spent @ the mall & JoAnn Fabrics, and home to 2 napping girls...viola! we have a costume & we had a great night!
[Mila took the little sister hand-me-down as a lady bug...Noel's costume last year, but I have personally promised her that she will get her own costume next year]

So here's what I did:

My first homemade Halloween costume...makes me feel like a Mommy :)
Happy Halloween Everyone!

Canadian Thanksgiving

We were so blessed for the days of October 8th-10th.
We started off the weekend Friday October 7th with an attempt at celebrating Keith's 28th birthday.
We grabbed our gift certificate for Acme BBQ in downtown Williamsport, wheeled out our new Phil & Teds stroller & were going to hit up First Friday.
This is when we quickly discovered how differently our "nights out" are now with two babies.
Noel decided she wasn't really hungry nor did she want to ride in the stroller, she wanted to cry & walk. But walking downtown for an 18 month old consists of going in the opposite direction, wanting to walk off the sidewalk onto the street and touch everything!
So we sadly ended our night early and headed home for early bath & bed times. With all the craziness of my first week back to work, I didn't even have the chance to get the ingredients to make Keith the chocolate peanut butter pie I had decided to make (via Pinterest)...so a late birthday dessert will happen (hopefully this month)!
But Saturday mid morning we were graced with the presence of great friends & new friends for the celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving.
Andrew & Annica from Canada came for a visit and brought three wonderful ladies with them, that are studying in Canada for the year from France.
Keith's "best man" Andrew who is a trained chef (not that he needed any of the schooling!) made us a scrumptious meal in celebration of Keith's birthday the first night they were here.

apple crumble

cutting up steaks

adding the onions

steaks with onions...my mouth is still watering

wine that I like..woohoo! Oh! and if you look behind Keith's right shoulder you will see the beautiful bouquet of flowers our beautiful friends brought back for me :)

Needless to say it was already looking to be a great weekend.
After enjoying cooking and scarfing a meal together, and trying to learn some french, we settled in for the night and woke up to this....

This is "pain perdu" meaning the lost bread. it was used taking the leftover day old bread (or in our case bread from the bread thrift store) and making a french toast-like dish adding fresh apples and raspberries.
Oh yumm!
The rest of the day was filled with amazing aromas wafting from the kitchen, the front porch swing and dining room table or couch filled with french girls studying and speaking beautifully.
Taking advantage of the 80 degree weather we loaded up our 'family' for the weekend and headed down to the Susquehanna River walk way.
Upon returning home Andrew put the chicken (although traditionally still a turkey for Canadian Thanksgiving, we opted for a free range chicken) in to finish.
Few things are more enjoyable than a house full of friends preparing an amazing meal.
7:30-ish pm we started our Thanksgiving meal. Which the understatement of the year would be to say that is was delicious!
So here is my 'public' display of gratitude for friends that drive distances and bless our house with their hospitality and friendship.
Happy Thanksgiving Canada! and a small piece of France

my love of pinterest

If I haven't already gotten you addicted, maybe this will convince you.

I love love love reading the Young House Love blog. I never followed a blog until this one, and it's mostly still the only blog I do follow. They have so many DIY ideas, they are so great for explaining what they do and how they do it and give you the confidence to try things on your own.  I mention them now because it is this blog that introduced me to my new love....Pinterest...(imagine an affectionate sigh).

Of course I did not say that it's my first love (note to Keith as he will be analyzing my every word), but a love I do have :)

If you already know of Pinterest and share this love then you will know what I speak of.

First of all I really don't even know how to say it. I first thought it was P-interest, but now I say all one word pinterest. which makes sense because you are "pinning" ideas onto your own "boards"

It's the solution to finding ideas online or in magazines or from your friends when you think, "oh I want to try that" or "I like that" or "I want to cook that" but then you miss place the recipe the picture of the sweater, or that clever DIY project.

So the purpose of my post is not only to proclaim my love for this "social network" of sorts...sorry facebook you have moved WAY down the priority list!!!

But also to make myself feel less guilty for pinning all the time to share with you the fact that we have accomplished a lot of the projects that I've been pinning
p.s. since I only discovered pinterest in the recent past, these things have all been done while being VERY pregnant or with a new born..yah!

So go to My Pinterest Boards to check out the 'things' I'm pinning and "follow" me if you would like.

green dishes

Quickie post as I'm trying to load up some new pics and type a blog while both girls are napping.
So I made some homemade dishwasher detergent! yah! go green & cheap!
I found my 'recipe' on Pinterest.

1 cup of Borax: 1 cup of Washing Soda: 1/2 cup of Kosher salt: 4 packets of Lemonade Kool Aid

Mix it all up in a bowl

I'm storing mine in a mason jar, so that it looks cute sitting on a shelf in my kitchen
So simple!
You simply add 1 tbsp to your dishwasher (2 if really heavy duty pots and pans).
For a little extra clean fill your jet dry spot with some vinegar. viola! We have ran our dishwasher several times and find it's doing a GREAT job!! (and this is compared to the expensive gel detergent packets)

Happy Columbus Day to all Americans and Happy Thanksgiving to the Canadians!

rainy day anniversary project

Here I am trying to write something on my poorly neglected blog :0/
We did this a while ago, but we are starting a tradition of making a project as a family each year for our anniversary. We thought it would be a good way to see how our family grows each year in number and or talent!
last year we did this:

my hand & foot in pink, keith's in blue, and noel's in green.

We played off the term from our wedding "as 2 become ONE" ...and then our ONE became 3 and well as the story goes...we quickly doubled ourselves in FIVE years ;) 

This year we did something a bit practical. As Noel is growing and doing more things for herself we thought a step stool would be great so here we go...

Now our anniversary is July 7th, but we held this project off until (as you can see above to Aug. 6th) as we needed to wait for our tiniest foot to make it's debut on July 27th :)
Moose's foot didn't make the cut for the top as we couldn't get a good print from his fluffy paw. but we did add it to the bottom, under the date as you can see here.
Total cost of project: $0 !!!
Keith's mom picked up the stool when she was down (THANK YOU!!!!)
and we used some left over pink paint from Mila's room.

What do you think?!

t-minus 9 days!

So since I am so completely running out of time to update you all on what we have been doing around this place for the last CRAZY months. I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures of what we've been re-doing, re-making, re-decorating!
Lets just say Keith has been painting just about every room in the house and anything of fabric material has been run through my sewing machine to make something *new* for us, or Noel, or baby #2.
AND since it's WAY easier to post a bunch of pics to facebook that's what I'm going to do. I'll add descriptions there.
So to leave you with a few final thoughts before checking out those pics.
We are only 9 days away from bringing home our 2nd baby girl and we're trying to get ourselves ready and also some time to relax and enjoy some fun and special times with Noel.
If you would like to know more details about how we made anything please ask and I'll do my best to get you an answer!
Have fun!

DIY toddler room!

Noel's new room is FINALLY done & she is sleeping in her new "big girl" room :)
We are transitioning her by still sleeping in her crib for a few months and then hopefully going to get her in her new toddler bed.
We scored an adorable toddler bed on a HUGE markdown @ the Pottery Barn outlet in the early spring. It was marked down because it was missing some lock-nuts..and to my rescue...my handy hubby saved the day! After a few runs to different hardware stores he found the solution with some new thingy-majigs (if you want the full scoop you'll have to talk to him).
We made/refinished/reused nearly everything in her new room.
Being that I feel like I barely have time to breathe, I'm going to break up her room into a few posts, so I can get some things posted in spurts.

Lets start with the paint job conversation
Me: Lets do STRIPES!!! it will be so much less work because we can do them so we don't have to do the trim & cutting in around the ceiling and floor boards!!! (thinking I'm so clever)
Keith: but that's going to be a lot of laser leveling, chalk lining, and taping
Me: ahh it won't be that bad!
Keith: (keep in mind he loves me) ok

Here is  part of the tape job up. We did 2 walls of stripes and 2 walls of solid...this took quite a few hours and some sore forearms from Keith balancing the laser level over and over and over again!

and now all the tape was up and ready to paint!

So I don't have any pics of just the painted room..oops! But here are some sneak peaks of the new bed and the finished stripes

Noel checking out the new bed (prior to mattress)..and a sneak peak at the duvet cover I made

helping Daddy put the new screws in 

Hopefully you can catch a feel of the stripes from these shots.  

So since it is actually making its debut in this post, I'll tell you about the comforter I made too. Since we spent a good buck on Noel's nursery bedding, which included a comforter (which is silly because you don't put blankets on babies to sleep). I decided to recover her existing bunny comforter with some fun graphics.
First I did this...

I took my new tree/fuscia fabric and made 4 panel front (with lots of help from my momma, since I am such a novice sewer)

so then the front looks something like this (note my model of Keith's legs underneath)

Then I took some brown jersey knit fabric (which is HORRIBLE to work with..mental note) and hemmed it up all around, folded it over the edges to make a border leaving lots of fabric for the opening at the bottom to make it a duvet cover that can be removed for washing. I then added buttons (and button holes..oy!)

Here you can see the "pocket" at the bottom with the buttons and Noel and I  (and baby b) enjoying  the finished product

I got all the fabric at JoAnn's and with a 20% off coupon spent a grand total of $20..yah!! reused/recycled the old comforter and put some green in our pockets!

More of the room to come soon!

The Grass is Greener on the South Side

We don't have a whole lot of grass in the backyard due to our gigantic maple that shades our house and backyard (which is great for helping keep our house cooler, meaning less running of the central AC) but also makes growing grass a bit of a challenge. We have made some huge strides in that we have some grass now, as last summer it was all dirt. Our house was rented for a period of time before we purchased it and therefore the lawn was slightly neglected so slowly but surely we are literally sitting back and waiting for the grass to grow in (more). We still have lots of grass that needs mowing though!

Last summer we found a pretty decent Honda lawn mower on Craig's list for about 40 bucks. The only problem was that the self propel part did not work which meant a heavier piece of machine to push without the help of the self propel option. Also we lost a piece that helped hold the handle up, so this year Keith was struggling to mow trying to get the handle to keep up. But we broke down and made a green change!

ahh..Noel is keeping you in suspense!

We bought this! 

"Great States" Reel Mower

It has awesome reviews and we even got to test one out before we took the plunge ourselves (since our friends down the street lent us theirs after our gas mower went south). 

We actually ordered it on accident. Keith was doing a little online searching and when we went back in to look at this beauty on Amazon we somehow had our account set up to "one click" shopping and bam it was on it's way to South Side! But it was only $99 and we got free shipping, so it would have been the way we would have gone anyway. 

Some assembly was required, which did not need the use of any tools. Of course Moose always around to lend a helping paw

And there we have it! Our new human powered lawn mower...GO GREEN!! We even read that the emissions from a gas powered lawn mower can equal up to that of 11 cars!! YIKES! so earth...here's your hug from us :) 

So it's obvious why this was a eco-friendly green move for us. But it was also a wallet friendly move. As these baby's are way cheaper than the typical gas powered mower. But we held off on making this purchase until we had a yard sale to see some extra cash come in.

Last weekend we did a yard sale on Saturday only from 8am-1pm and got rid of a TON of stuff (recycle and reuse people!) and we pocketed some nice cash. Enough for us to purchase this and stock some away for some other things. So we got rid of a bunch of junk (one man's junk is another man's treasure) and got to buy something great! Happy Yard Sale season! 

Tangent Post:

One day it occurred to me how many throw away paper towels I was going through during Noel's meals! So I cleaned out the linen closet and grabbed a huge handful of wash cloths (that we have way too many of anyway) and they are now stashed in the kitchen so be easily wet and ready to wipe and I can use one for a whole day and then just toss it in the wash! Simple green solution for free :)

You can see how useful this can be!