How sweet is that!

I had my blog up with the celebrity look alikes on it and Ashley was looking at it. I asked her which person she thought was the prettiest. She asked if it included my picture and I said "Sure" assuming I wouldn't be it. But I was wrong, she thought about it for a few seconds and said "I think you and her are the prettiest". The other being Josie Maran. Wasn't that just so sweet!

Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage

I've seen a few people do this, so I thought I'd try. I did several pictures and Gwyneth Paltrow was on every single one. According to the site, she must be my celebrity twin! Some of the pictures brought up weird results, but for the most part, I had 3 of them always the same. Just thought it would be fun. I did try a picture of Ashley and it brought up mostly oriental women and Tira Banks. We'll see how Eden's and Amanda's turn out.

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities - Collage - Morph

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Our first Halloween party of the year! My mother always has a party for her grandkids and this year was no different. The kids had a blast! There were crafts, games, and a spooky story about a monster with fun stuff that went along with that. It was a ton of fun. I wish I would have taken more pictures. I don't think anyone got all the kids in one shot with their costumes on.

One thing that made the whole day a bit stressful for me was, in the middle of crimping Ashley's hair, our realtor called and asked if I could have the house ready for a showing in 45 minutes. I had plans to crimp Eden's hair, curl Amanda's hair and put makeup on them all. But as it was, I had to quickly finish up Ashley's hair, throw their costumes in the car, quickly get the house ready and leave. So the girls got dressed at mom's. Hopefully I'll have more time to get them ready before Trick-or-Treating. I'll take more pictures of them all done up! Oh, and the people who were supposed to walk through our house that day, might not have come. Or at least they haven't expressed any interest in the house since.

Amanda is a beautiful princess!

Eden is an adorable witch!

And here's our Dark Fairy (Ashley)!

So here goes! We started with a Halloween necklace craft. You can't tell in most of these pictures, but they are working on necklaces. (On a slightly different note, don't get the necklaces from Oriental Trading, the last 2 times I've gotten them, they've been extremely difficult to thread the beads on.)

Next Mom told the kids about the cathedral they went to. The same one that Quasimodo lives in. And in the basement there was a dead monster and she and Karl were able to take some of the pieces. Yucky! She put things in paper bags, like flour tortillas for the skin, jello for some other part, and several other bags that had various things in them. The kids weren't allowed to look in the bags, just feel what was inside. Now, that may sound gruesome to you, but the kids liked it. Well, sort of. As you can tell by Eden's and Emily's faces, it was kinda gross.

After that wonderful story, Janina had the kids play a little game. They had to pick a paper pumpkin out of a cauldron and the papers said different things on them. If you were lucky, all you had to say was "trick-or-treat" to get your treat, but others said "Walk like Frankenstein" "Howl like a wolf" "Laugh like a witch" and other fun stuff like that, and you had to do what the paper said before you could get your treat.

After the game, Mom had the kids make bleeding eyeballs! And then they ate them!

As the kids finished eating, we got out Halloween stickers and had a some fun with that.

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of everyone, but here are some of the characters that showed up.

Emily was a vampiress, and even though Micheal isn't wearing his costume in the picture, he was a washing machine. It's the coolest costume ever!

Sweet, tiny Bailey was a pumpkin!

Emma was a cute bumble bee.

And of course I wish I'd gotten a picture of Melanie in her outfit. She was a baseball. If you want to go look at Christie's blog, she has a picture of Mel's costume. And Kara was adorable in her poodle outfit!

On a totally different note, Paul comes home on Wednesday and is home for 4 whole days!!! We're so excited to have him back for a bit!

Showing Off

I just had to! I'm kinda proud of myself for making such cute things!

I've been looking at those super cute bows that several blogs are selling and I thought, "I bet if I could find instructions I could make them myself!" So that's what I did! I found some instructions and went for it.

I have to say they turned out really cute! And now I have all the stuff I need to make more!!!

Here was my first attempt. I like the pink and browns, but I purposefully didn't use the cutest ribbons. I wanted to make sure I could do it first. I think next time I'll make them fuller.


Here is my second attempt and I have to say I like these the best! They're so cute and easy to make.


Here's the third one I made, and I'm not sure I like it. There's more room for error and it's just not my favorite. This bow is pink and black.


These last ones are in honor of Halloween! I had to make three since I have three girls. These are a combination of the first and second bows. I think they're pretty cute!


One last thing to show off. Okay, three things, but they're basically all the same. I made these at Terrific Tuesday. The first 2 look basically the same but are a little different. They're both pinks, creams and browns. The third one is pinks, grays and black.




They are super cute and of course the pictures don't do justice.

I got a couple of extra frames so if anyone wants one let me know your colors! I think for the set it was $35 by the time you buy the frames, flowers and papers. I'm sure if you got the flowers on sale it would be cheaper.

My 8's

I got tagged for the first time ever!!!

So, here are my eights. (Which I think is really funny that this eight thing only has 7 categories.)

8 Favorite TV Shows:
1- Dharma and Greg (although I don't think this is aired anymore)
2- King of Queens
3- Everybody Loves Raymond
4- House
5- I Love Lucy
(I'm out of shows now, so I'll move to my kids' favorites)
6- Word Girl
7- Arthur
8- Word World

8 Favorite Restaurants:
1- Macaroni Grill
2- Zupas
3- The Roof
4- The Garden
5- Souper Salad (No, I didn't spell that wrong it's a soup and salad place)
6- The Training Table
7- Sizzlers
8- Corenas (Which is a wonderful little place in Lehi that just disappeared one day, and that's so sad cause it was a great little Mexican place.)

8 Things That Happened Yesterday:
1- Took Ashley to school and Eden to preschool. (I also picked them up!)
2- Got flu shots for Amanda, Eden and myself (Ashley will be going tomorrow).
3- Cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned some more.
4- Went to JoAnn's to buy something that I'll be blogging about tomorrow.
5- Went to Shopko for pillows and chair cushins.
6- Had our first showing in 3 weeks!!!
7- Returned the chair cushions (they were too small).
8- Watched "Incredibles" and ate dinner on the floor on a blanket, made the thing I'm going to be blogging about, and then had a video chat with my amazingly wonderful husband.

8 Things to Look Forward to:
1- Sell our house.
2- Being together as a family again and in a new house!
3- A wonderful life with my husband.
4- Healthy Happy Kids.
5- Our trip to Hawaii in February!!
6- Halloween, Thanksgiving, My birthday and Christmas!
7- Being able to paint and decorate said new house however I want.
8- Long hair (I chopped it off really short last February and donated it to Locks of Love and I can't wait to have long hair again)

8 Things I Love About Fall:
1- The beautiful colors.
2- Using our fireplace.
3- The smell of the wood burning in our fireplace.
4- Jumping in the leaves. (courteousy of Ashley)
5- Halloween!
6- Christmas is getting closer.
7- Getting out my fall/winter wardrobe.
8- Watching the ducks, geese and other birds fly South.

8 Things On My Wishlist:
1- Lose 20 or so pounds.
2- Sell our house.
3- A few extra hours in a day/or to never have to sleep.
4- Happy childern who are strong in the gospel.
5- A self cleaning house.
6- Lasik surgery.
7- Differnt pieces of furniture.
8- Learn to play the violin.

8 Friends I Tag:
1- Well, just about everyone I know who blogs has been tagged. I don't know if Debbie was tagged, so I'll tag her.
2- Anyone else who wants to who hasn't been tagged.

The Skeleton

We have a cute skeleton decoration out for Halloween. It stands about 2 1/2 feet tall. The girls really like playing with it and like that I keep candy in it.

One day I walked past it and it must have been hungry or something cause it was really trying to get the candy.

(I circled the arm cause it's kinda hard to see.)

The very next day I walked past our front door (where it's located) after the girls had spent quite awhile in that area and this is what I saw. I guess it's a "girl" skeleton!

Winter Wonderland

This is what we woke up to Sunday morning! I know some areas in and around Utah are getting more snow, but we thought it was pretty cool (or cold). We had almost 3 inches out there and once it all melted, it started snowing again.

I liked it because I knew it wasn't going to be around long. Don't get me wrong, I like winter well enough and even the snow. I like the snow when I don't have to go out in it and I can just enjoy it in my nice warm home.

But I'd prefer the snow wait till after Halloween and all the Trick-0r-Treating!

Our Little Songbird

Here's our little Amanda. She loves to sing, especially these 2 songs. Usually a few minutes after being in the car she'll sing one if not both of these songs so sweetly. During the day, at home, she'll burst into song, usually it's a song off of a Barbie movie (I know, don't criticize me, the Barbie movies are actually not that bad, I should know cause I have them all memorized.)

In these videos she's holding a plastic spider and she's kinda distracted by it, so this isn't her best, but she's still so darn cute!

WARNING WARNING! Only 77 days till Christmas!

I know what you're thinking... "who can think about Christmas when Halloween isn't even here yet?"

I CAN!!!

Allow me to tell you just how much I love and look forward to Christmas each year.

It's right around June or July that I break out the Christmas music. I don't listen to it all the time during those months, but with each passing month I listen to it more and more. I usually make myself stop listening to it around February (I'll admit that by then I start to get sick of it).

Normally I have Paul hang the outside Christmas light in October, and bless his wonderful heart, he doesn't complain. But that way it's not too cold or too wet, it makes things easier. This year though, we won't be hanging lights simply because the house hasn't sold yet. (Paul will admit to liking Christmas just as much as I do, so don't think I make him hang lights that early.)

As for decorating, that starts before Thanksgiving! I get the bulk of it done within the first 2 weeks and the rest I finish up over the course of the following 2 weeks. It's like a totally different house around the Holidays. This past Christmas we had about 14 trees of varying sizes out and decorated. Three of them were really big trees. I love that stores put the Christmas decor out so early!

This year I started my Christmas present shopping in February. I'm usually all done with my shopping about a week before Thanksgiving. I have it all planned out again this year to have most it done by Halloween and the rest finished up before November ends.

Now, there are several reasons as to why I start my shopping so early.

1- I love to shop! It's a good excuse/reason to go!

2- It spreads the spending out so I don't feel like I'm over spending. So instead of spending $500 (just throwing a number out) on gifts in 3 weeks, I can spend more a little bit at a time and our budget doesn't suffer much because of it!

3-LESS STRESS! Who doesn't want less stress, especially around the holidays!?! I'm not running around in the crowded stores spending an hour picking out gifts and then another hour in the checkout lines. I've also discovered that on weekday mornings around 9:00, the stores aren't very busy, most people are at work, even in December. If I need to run out for a last minute something, I go when it's nice and slow.

4- More free time! More time to play, relax, enjoy! It's nice to be able to get it all out of the way and be able to focus on the reason for the season. It's so nice to be able to sit on the couch with my sweetheart, after the kids are in bed, with a hot cup of coco, a nice fire going and the only lights on are Christmas light from various decorations and the trees... all guilt free!

5- I absolutely LOVE teaching my kids about the Savior and being able to focus so much of the holiday on His birth! My girls love reading books about Christ's birth more than they like books about Santa! And I have to throw in the Primary Christmas songs too!


I know some people might enjoy the hustle and bustle of the holiday crowds and ornery shoppers and I know some people feel like they shop better or faster under stress. I say "Good for you, more power to ya!" I can't do it that way without loosing my mind.

So, call me smart, call me crazy, call me totally weird. I don't care. This system works for me.

Mostly I just wanted to do this post to warn all of you to get moving! The Holidays are coming faster than you think!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
in October!

Beautiful Conference Weekend

What a beautiful weekend! General Conference was inspiring, the weather was gorgeous (to me anyway) and we had some fun!

Saturday's weather was totally cloudy and rainy, I loved it! It's probably a good thing I love rain since we'll be moving to Washington state when the house sells.

Sunday's weather started of a little rainy but cleared for awhile to beautiful blue skies. My original plan was to go up the canyon on Saturday but because of the awesome rainy weather we postponed it to Sunday.

We're about a 7 minute drive to the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon and this spot is about 5 minutes up the canyon. So it wasn't a long drive at all.

I wanted to take my really nice camera, but I knew I'd be helping the girls over rocks and other bumpy terrain which means they would've gotten clocked in the head several times, so I just took our dinky little point-and-shoot camera. Which I've discovered from this trip has a permanent blurred spot. I guess we'll need a new one.

So here are some of the pictures I took. The girls absolutely loved it once they got use to the bumpy ground. We got out of the car and Eden was terrified of walking. She was so worried she was going to trip. But by the end of our little hike the girls were running around.

Amanda: Mom, do I need to worry about this thing in front of me?

Amanda: Come on Mom, quit taking so many pictures and just walk.

Ashley: See my pretty leaf!
Eden: I have one too.
Amanda: I want one!

Ashley: YAY!
Eden: Too much effort, I'll just drop one leaf.
Amanda: What am I looking for?

If you look closely you can see snow on that mountain top!

Ashley: Come on, let's just go, Mom's taking too long with the pictures.
Eden: I got her keys out of her pocket during the last picture so let's go to the car.
Amanda: Can I drive?