Pumpkin Patch 2012

This past Monday was our Fall Parent/Teacher Conferences.  The kids had the day off of school - except to attend their conference.

After the conferences were over, Chad was able to leave work early and we headed to Sweet Berry Farms in Marble Falls.  Their pumpkin patch has grown over the years and is so much fun! 

 

This picture is a little blurry, but worth it.  The girls are trying to give Caleb a kiss :)

 



They have lots of different pumpkins to choose from.

 

This kind is so ugly, it is neat! We bought this one for Mom and Dad and when I brought it over, Mom's exact words were, "What am I supposed to do with this?"  Once she set it out with the other pumpkins we chose, she was sold.  I think it is her favorite one.  If not, I will just pretend.

 

Moving along to sand art.  It amazes me how careful the kids can be when doing something that they enjoy... like funneling sand into a candy corn container.

 

Ella took forever to finish hers and it turned out just perfect!

 



 

 

The kids LOVE the face painting station! 

 

Ella sat so still.  This is serious business to her.

 



 

Ella chose a red butterfly.

 

Caleb chose a vampire and walked around saying, "I am a vampire.  Blah, blah, blah!"  Have you watched Hotel Transylvania yet?  The kids loved it!  It is a good story and cute movie.

Olivia chose a pretty pink butterfly.  Did you notice she got her hair cut even shorter?  She loves her shorter hair!!

Then Caleb tried to bite Olivia's neck!  Blah, blah, blah!

Next, we fed the goats.  Olivia had that smile on her face the entire time :)

The goats cram their heads through the fence to get the food. 

After sanitizing our hands (goat slobber - yuck!), we headed through these arches.

 

 

Various shaped gourds hung down everywhere!

 

Next, our very own VIP hay ride.

My favorite picture of the day! 

Olivia loved seeing all of the silly set ups they have as you ride along the trails.  They have a school, jail, pumpkin repair shop, deer hunting (the deer are the ones hunting), a wedding, and more!

Even Ella thought it was silly!



A neat old tree.

I took this picture for Dad.  Look closely... do you see it?



Another favorite - cutting your own flowers!  They hand you a cup and scissors and send you off to the fields full of flowers.

 

Olivia carefully selected the most perfect flowers.

 

Then, she chased a chicken. 



Caleb loved the cat.



Finally, it was time to choose our pumpkins!  This is when Chad grumbled to stop taking pictures and help find pumpkins... 

So, I took just one more!

The kids each chose their own pumpkin and we bought a mini one for Logan.

Next up - choosing costumes!

 

Dining room reveal - chairs

Let's switch gears from guinea pigs and head on back to our dining room.  It is almost finished.  We are so close.  I wanted to give you a quick update on our new chairs.

I knew I wanted metal chairs. Something new, something fun since this room will hopefully be used for playing board games.  I found these at Crate and Barrel for the low price of $199 PER chair. Yikes!  There is no way spending over $800 makes any sense.

. 
Chad and I were out running errands back when Gramma and Papa were watching the kiddos and we went to store after store looking for a cheaper version.  No luck.  We pretty much gave up the search and decided to stop by a consignment store in Austin to look around just for fun. The sign in front said "Cool Furniture and Consignment".  What a name!

We walked around and Chad told the owner we were just looking around, really searching for metal chairs.  She told him to follow her and pulled out similar looking metal chairs... for $80 a piece!
Sold!  Only problem?  She only had 1 chair.  And, it was red.

We gave her our name and she promised to call when the next shipment arrived.  The chairs came in yellow, red or blue.  None of the colors went with our dining room.  We picked yellow thinking it would be the easiest to cover.

So, now we had 4 very yellow chairs.

Chad did all the work to remove the yellow paint using a steel wool type attachment on his sander.  He originally started to strip the paint but quickly realized it was too much work.  He went back to sanding and soon our garage was covered in yellow dust.

We were hoping the stripped down chairs would work, but they were too shiny.

We headed to good old Home Depot and bought spray paint.  This to be exact.  It is a dark, hammered gray.  Or grey.

Chad sprayed one chair to see if this is what we wanted and I think we have a winner! 

Here is the original yellow chair:

And the final chair:

Much better, right?!  And they are pretty close to the Crate and Barrel version.

One chair down, 3 to go and I will show you the finished product soon!

This guinea pig

We have had little Logan for just over 5 months now!  He is such a cutie and has grown so much.  He has easily doubled in size.

He loves to be held and is so soft.  He never once bit until Gramma held him and he tasted her sweet skin.  Now anyone is fair game to his sharp little teeth.  I have noticed (lately) that he isn't biting as much... fingers are crossed that he will grow out of this phase.

He loves to eat!  He loves his organic salad mix, carrots and bell peppers.  Apples are his favorite by far.  Every morning he gets a fresh bowl of food and a healthy treat.  At night, he gets a big bowl of yummy hay.  He is pretty much trained and starts squeaking when you are near his cage.  When you open the door with a bowl in hand, he is up on is hind legs smelling to see what you brought him.  This morning he could hear my footsteps and was squeaking as I was walking up the stairs!  Smart boy!

He is a stinker too.  He loves to tear apart his houses.  Yes, houses.  He bites them, flips them over and tears them to shreds.  He is on his 4th house.

Here is house #1.  It had colorful wood shapes on the side that were meant to be chew toys.  Logan would pull them off and throw them across the cage.  This should have been our first sign.  He soon grew out of this house.

This is house #2.  Chad refused to buy another house and found an Amazon box.  Logan quickly started chewing this box.  Not a problem.  Until he started tipping it over many times a day.  And we would run back in, flip it over, and walk away only to hear him tip it over again.

So, I decided to buy him a heavier house.  Chad said no way, grabbed the chewed up box and headed to the garage mumbling something that probably wasn't so nice.  He came in and announced that he made Logan's house tip proof.  There is NO WAY he can tip this bad boy over, claimed Chad. 

Well, he did.

So, we went out and bought house #3 called The Snack Shack.  100% edible.  Perfect.  Heavy.  Even perfecter :)

Or so we thought.  This house didn't even last 2 weeks.  The roof was full of perfectly lined up hay (in two layers) and Logan would sit and pull it out, chunk by chunk.  But never ate it.  It just made a mess in his cage.

I went back to the pet store and bought house #4.  Not the prettiest, but how pretty can you make a tree trunk?  It is heavy and was only $10. 

And... so far, so good.

How long do you think this new house will last?  How can you get mad at this little face?

He is worth it though and Olivia just adores him.  She takes him out every night and gives him a kiss and giggles because he smells like syrup.  (He really does!)  And she gets mad when Papa comes over and asks where the big, black rat is :)

Ella doesn't really hold him that much, but loves to help clean his cage and always refills his water bottle.

Even Caleb loves Logan and will often take him out of his cage to play with him and feed him a treat.  One day I even saw Logan sitting in between Olivia and Caleb as they played a video game. 

Wish I had gotten a picture of that one!

 

And, just for fun... a little sneaky peaky at Caleb's room!

Thanks for helping Dad!

An apple cheese ball

I am the Homeroom Parent for Olivia's 2nd grade class (I am also the Co-Homeroom Parent for Caleb's 3rd grade class...) and each grade level takes a month and provides snacks for the teachers during their staff meeting after school.

We had the month of September and decided our theme would be "Fall into something sweet and salty."  Cute, right?!  We had a make your own trail mix bar, chips, dips, meatballs, brownies, cookies, cupcakes, cake balls, AND an apple shaped cheese ball made by me!

I looked on Pinterest (of course) and found a few examples. 

I followed this recipe because I have never made a cheese ball.

And it turned out like this.  Not too bad!

Once I got it safely to school, I surrounded the apple with a few different types of crackers.  We set up two tables full of snacks and treats and left as the teachers were arriving.  I heard one teacher say, "it is too cute to eat!"  And then another teacher said, "Oh, look at the pumpkin!"

Can't win them all...

Painted projects

Thought I would show you a few pieces of furniture we have redone and are ready to sell.  Take a look:

I love buffets!  This one we painted "pencil point" and chose dark, contrasting knobs.

This buffet has a silverware drawer hidden inside... very nice!

This is a dresser I had in my room growing up.  We chose a very light pink called "lotus petal."   I love the curves on the front and the "dirty" glass knobs are the perfect, delicate compliment.

This piece belonged to Mom and Dad... and took Chad a lot of work to restore.  This is painted in a pale mint color.

This is just a basic dresser.  We painted it white and reused pulls from our bedroom set.  It sold right away.

 

 

And this is our next project.  An entire set of furniture - king size headboard, two dressers AND night stand.  Guess what I paid for all of it?  $75!

It is dark and ugly now. 

But, trust me... I see white again.

 

Wanna buy any furniture?  :)

Homework

Take a look at Caleb's science homework.  This is the first science homework sent home - for 3rd grade:

Create a model of liquid molecules or particles... say what?!

It is going to be a long year.

I am tired



No fun blog posts lately.  Here is why:

 

Everyone in our house has been sick.  Everyone.  Fevers, coughing, sore throats, pink eyes, ear infections.  I am tired of everyone being sick.  It has been weeks of this.  I am tired of running to the pediatrician, buying prescriptions, kids missing school, nothing getting done in the house.  I am tired of being tired.

In all fairness, the two medications on the far right are Jacks :)  We are dogsitting for a couple weeks.  She is not sick, but she needs pills crushed into her food twice a day.  And she gets up at 3am every night to pee...  it's a good thing I love her.

Wish us luck that everyone will be better soon and that I can get caught up on things in the house and post some fun projects!