Wednesday, October 28, 2009


Rather than attempting a pumpkin patch with 25 people again this year, Jake's parents planted pumpkin seeds at their house. We had a pumpkin day and even had rides on the tractor and roasted marshmallows for s'mores in the bonfire. Here's some pictures from our day!





I decided we'd decorate rather than carve pumpkins this year. Here's Isaac's little mummy pumpkin. He did help {a little}. It took me all of 90 seconds to whip this baby out. No mess, no stinky pumpkin guts, and no impatient 2 year-old. We'll save the knives for another year!

Fall Crafting, Decorating, and Baking

I'm usually not a HUGE crafter, but now that I have a little corner of my own in our family room to do what I want, I've been a little more adventurous this year. My creations thus far:

This is a wreath made from paper. Find the directions here. I wish I would have used more paper, used a white styrofoam wreath instead of a green one (because the white ones are softer) and, most importantly, followed the advice to use a thimble-my thumb and finger hurt for days!


Pumpkins made from paper. I also found the directions for this online somewhere, but I didn't save the link. If you're interested, let me know-it's super easy!


The top of my entertainment center decorated. The "Fall" picture frames idea is from here-good ol' dollar store was a great help in this decorating adventure. I think everything here cost less than $20 total.


This one I get to take all the credit for. It started as a wedding gift for a friend, but it turned out so hideous that I scraped it all off and made this instead. I bought the letters that say "trick" like 3 years ago-they were in a set that came with the whole alphabet. Unfortunately, there was only one of each letter. It took me days (literally) to think up a word that didn't have a double letter and that each letter had a different pattern. As it was, I had to make a new "i" for this one. I have to say I really like the way it turned out.


Lastly, are these not the cutest little spider guys ever? Found the directions here-they were a little time consuming, but totally cute in the end. (I'm assuming they were tasty, I didn't eat any since I'm not such a fan of chocolate cake...I know, I know!).

Jake and I made one more treat that I know we took pictures of. Not sure what happened to them....I'll have to see if I can find them before I post about them.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Pumpkin Patch (on second thought)

Last Friday we went with my parents to an apple orchard that also had pumpkins. We thought it was one that had a corn pool (like a sand box but with feed corn instead of sand). To our disappointment, we got there to find it was only an apple orchard (not even one where you could pick your own) with a bunch of pumpkins in the grass that were already picked. Hmm...not so much fun for our little guy. So we made a split-second decision and headed up to Cambridge (about 30 minutes from Des Moines) to Center Grove Orchard. It was GREAT! They had a ton of stuff to do: goats, chickens, turkeys, ducks, and other animals to feed; a minature 3 little pigs village (with a house made of straw, one made of sticks, and one made of bricks); a GIANT corn pool with slides into it (of which Isaac was NOT a fan, hence there aren't any pictures!); rubber duck races, a giant slide, hay maze, corn maze, apple sling shot (which, sadly, wasn't open that night), and a jumping pillow (Isaac was also not a fan of that, click here to see what it is-SO cool!). Our only complaint was that it was quite chilly-otherwise we would have had even more fun! We will definitely be visiting there next fall!

8 months

Leah is now 8 months old!

She has 6 (SIX!) teeth!!! They erupted in a bit of a strange order, but that's just fine. We are kind of disappointed that her top middle teeth are coming through because we thought she'd have her eye/canine teeth to be a vampire girl for Halloween. Oh well!

She is rolling from belly to back like a pro and is SUPER close to pushing up on her knees. I'm sure it's just a matter of weeks before she's roaming around our little house.

She loves to eat-anything! Though she still nurses every 2-3 hours...except at night when she usually sleeps 7-8 hours at a time, nurses, then sleeps for another 2-3 hours. (It is SO nice!) :)

Leah is the happiest little peanut we know and we couldn't love her more or imagine life without her.



And, just for fun, here's a cute picture of big brother Isaac.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Fall

To celebrate the beginning of Fall and October, I made a special dinner the other night. Using a recipe and directions from this blog and another recipe from this blog, I made baked potato soup in pumpkin bread bowls. Took me all afternoon to make it all, but it was so worth it...the bread bowls were adorable and the soup was YUMMY!*



*This recipe made a TON of soup-I could have easily halved it and possibly quartered it and still had plenty for me and Jake. :)

Happy Fall!!!