This was 2010:

This was 2011:

So what to do for the big 2.0.1.2?  You know what I always say, “When in doubt, consult Pintrest!”  I searched “mantle” and after a few minutes found this picture.

{Better Homes and Gardens}

Huh.  Books?  Oh, I have books.  Lots of them!  And I love to decorate with them.  So I ran (literally) upstairs and gathered piles of books and a few random knick knacks that needed a new home.  What do you think?

This is my kind of decorating.  Rather than spending money,I shopped around my house like I did here and used what I could find.  Don’t get me wrong, I love a good trip to Home Goods and Hobby Lobby as much as the next girl.  But when I can pull something off without opening my wallet I sorta feel like Rocky when he reaches the top of the capital steps.  Oh yah!  I did that for F.R.E.E! *arms in the air*  So here’s the rundown.  The mirror was already hanging.  The books were all shelved upstairs.  The wreath (made several months ago from a book I thought was lame) was hanging in the upstairs hallway in a spot I never really cared for.   I actually passed it on my way back downstairs with an armload of books and went, “Oh!”  Do you ever walk around your house and suddenly see something that would go perfectly somewhere else?  That’s kind of how this whole thing went down.

Ooo, you know what I’d really love to do?  I’d love to recruit a friend, my mom or my sisters  to help me redecorate using fresh perspective and stuff I already have on hand.  Any volunteers?

So my challenge to you is this:  pick a spot that looks tired and boring.  Strip it down naked.  Then go shopping around your house.  Who knows what you’ll rediscover.  And if you get stuck, there’s always Pintrest to inspire you.

We piled in the ol’ Navi once again and went to Utah for Christmas to be with family and friends.  The trip was almost canceled when our heater decided to act like a/c full time.  But after tweaking with it we realized that heat was still reaching the back seats just not the driver and front passenger seat.  So Carl and I put on some layers and packed blankets for each of us and made sure the boys were bundled up comfy.  And away we went, far too excited for the trip to let a little thing like -15 degree temperatures slow us down.  And it did drop that low, but only for about 20 minutes in one portion of Utah.  We blasted the heat in the back to compensate for the cold air up front (we had to keep it on in order for the backseat heat to work).  At one point Crew had stripped down to his undies while Carl and I were in beanies and coats.  He kept saying, “I’m sweaty!  Can you turn the air conditioner on?”  Pretty funny!

We arrived at our parents’ homes and spent 10 fun filled days with our kids, family and friends.  Here’s what we have to show for it:

We rode Trax to downtown SLC with Nana, Papa, Britney, Greg, Daxton & Boston.  We stopped in at Deseret Book for a free gingerbread cookie and met up with Jay and Janice, Janica (and soon to be baby), Seth and Warren and Nathan before seeing the lights at Temple Square.  IT.WAS.COLD!!

A quick family photo in front of the temple where it all began on June 6, 2000.

Or at least our best attempt at a picture.  Kids don’t like to hold still and smile when they’re turning into popcycles.

Aw, I just love this guy. (And I love that Carl’s beard grows in red!)

We made one quick walk around the grounds and then hightailed it out of Temple Square and back to the Trax station with minimum frostbite.  How quickly we forget how cold it gets in the wintertime there!  Yeesh!

The kids were the happiest when they realized we were leaving!

Goofing off and thawing out on Trax back home.

{Daxton and Crew}

{Britney and Boston}

{Nana and Jax}

Milo didn’t make it 5 minutes on the tram.  He was out like a light until the next morning.  Yes, I put him in his Pj’s.  Ha!

My parents have been holding a gingerbread house contest on Christmas Eve so we were pumped to be here for it.  There was a lot of trash talk and intimidating texts between me and my siblings leading up to this.  You better believe we came with our A game.  For the record, we made a special call in to Nana before arriving to find out what the rules of the contest were.  Structural support was allowed, we just had to provide our own supplies and bring candy to contribute to the pot.  Here’s what we started out with.

The timer was set for 2 hours.  Ready… Set… Go!  Carl, being experienced in construction (not really) began building the framework for our creation.  Milo sampled the candy to make sure it was up to code.

Brit, Greg and Daxton built a neat little bird feeder.

K

Kolby and Dustin recreated a scene from 300.

It was pretty awesome… and I haven’t even seen the movie!

Court and Joe built their dream home, complete with stained glass windows.  Peyton just wanted to know when she could eat the gum bricks.

Ryan and Ashley made a replica of my mom’s mantle clock.  And there’s no cardboard holding that stuff up.  Now that’s skill!

Milo carefully applied the candy, even Crew was impressed at how well he helped out.

And here’s our finished house.  Do you recognize it?  It’s the house from the Disney movie Up.  I love that the husband and wife in the movie are named Carl and Elle.  We modified it a bit.

Everyone voted on who should get the awards my dad had come up with.  We won most colorful.  Crew and Jax were pretty happy about that.  And I must say, I was a little nervous at how Crew would deal with this.  He tends to be overly competitive.  But he laughed, allowed Daxton to help us (even though he was technically the opposition), and cheered everyone else on when awards were handed out.  I love this tradition!

Then we had dinner.  Mmmm ham.

Peyton and the boys opened their pj’s.

And posed for a few pictures.

{Milo, Crew, Peyton, Jax}

And don’t forget the mandatory ninja pose.  It took Peyt a few tries to get this down but she was all set once she put Nana’s slippers on.

Then we read a few Christmas stories and said goodnight to the kids.

This is what they found the next morning!

Santa brought Peyton a new Tricycle and the boys Plasma Cars!

Jax and his new block set.  He LOVES to build.

Milo and his new race car track.  Did you ever have a marble track like this?  It’s awesome!

Crew and his new Spiderwick Chronicles series to read.

Dad and his new game to play with friends “Cidadels”.  Good thing, all our board games are long since trashed from the kids.

And here’s me getting all teary with my new Harry Potter series!!!  I’ve wanted this for so long!

Peyt and her hilarious bounce horse.

All ready for church.  I can’t remember the last time Christmas hit on a Sunday but it was nice to sing the carols (again, I cried.  Sheesh.) and be reminded of why we really celebrate Christmas.

Then we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa’s house for Christmas dinner with Car’s family.  It was a really fun filled Merry Christmas!

Over the next several days we did lots of fun things.  Carl’s mom and I took our usual trip to D.I. for thrift shopping.  I didn’t find anything fun this time but I did see this and couldn’t help but laugh.  I guess the craze if finally ending in Happy Valley.

We ate at Rumbi Grill, or “Rumbly Grill” according to Crew.  He still asks when we can go back!  I’ll admit, it was pretty tasty.

{Jax & Crew}

And we decided that Milo can and will sleep anywhere!

We went to Cabellas.

And had a few good laughs!

Another day we visited a dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point.  I’ve never been to a museum like this.  We were all very impressed.

Jax kept telling us he had to use the bathroom but then we’d all get distracted by the next cool exhibit.  Next thing I know, Jax is crying and both his legs are wet from his waist down to his shoes.  Yep, peed his pants.  So we had to leave before seeing everything.  Both Jax and Crew were devastated.  Carl and I felt terrible because we hadn’t paid closer attention to Jax.  But the ticket clerk was understanding and after talking with her manager gave us free passes to come back another day and see all that we missed.  The day was saved!

Carl’s buddy Charles invited us to go up to their property in the mountains and go sledding.  There wasn’t much snow to speak of (which was the case the entire trip) but we still had fun with our new friends.

The kids cooked hot dogs around this fire made from some tubing and an old tire.  Very cool!

Crew and Jax tried their hand at BB guns… and lived to tell about it.  Barely.

Jax made the perfect snow angel.

And Charles took us for a few sledding runs with the snowmobile.  I forget how fun sledding really is!

Paul and Lisa let us use their truck to haul the 4wheeler up the mountain.  Judging from this picture I’d say it was a successful day!  (Thanks Pauly!)

We all cleaned up and made a mad dash back up north to Matt and Deanne’s for a party with all our Utah buddies.  My boys absolutely adore their girls Macy and Peyton.  I must admit, they’re pretty rad.

Poor Jax.  He threw up when we came down from the sledding.  We diagnosed it as car sickness (he get’s motion sick all the time) and had him sleep on the drive to the party.  He ended up sleeping all night and woke up just minutes before the party was over.  Just in time to throw up again.  But even after all that, he was still all smiles.  That’s how much we love these girlies.

Jax was sick the rest of the night so we decided to skip a potential day of snowboarding (there wasn’t any snow to be heard of anyway) and opted to lay low all day.  We watched lots of movies and didn’t leave the house except to buy diapers.  This is what happens when you have several fun filled days without a nap.

Saturday was our last day in Utah so Carl and I split up to maximize our last few hours of fun.  He took the boys back to the dinosaur museum to make up for the pee incident.  This time they were able to dig for fossils and see all the other cool exhibits we’d missed.

I joined Joe, Court and Peyton for a shopping trip to an antiques warehouse I’d heard about called Euro Treasures Antique.  Apparently the story is this:  A man in London was a sort of antiques hoarder and collected all this stuff.  He became ill and sold all of it to the warehouse owners.  There was so much stuff that it took them 3 years to have it all shipped to Utah!  We walked in and oh.my.word.  I’d never seen anything like it.  The upstairs was dedicated to just chairs with a few tables and desks.  Look at it!  An ocean of chairs!  Some had their dates of origin.  I found one that was from 1200 A.D. and it was NOT cheap.

Downstairs there were pianos, old doors, stuffed lions (!!), everything you could think of.  And rows of old stained glass windows that were taken from old cottages.  Some glass cleaner and these would be beautiful.

One wall of the warehouse had been converted into a floor-to-ceiling shelving system for armoires and dressers and the like.  It was nuts.

Peyt was just as curious about things as we were.

There were so many great things to buy but the trouble was getting them back to Utah.  But I couldn’t help myself when I found this little chair for $20.  The antiques dealer said it was 200 years old.  This much was apparent when I brought it home to clean it up and realized it leans to the left.  Alot.  But I don’t mind, I think it just adds to it’s character.  And it reminds me of the fun I had finding it.

Joe took us to a great sandwich shop called Moochies for lunch.  Then we made one last stop to a shop called Home Again.

It’s a consignment and antiques shop with a totally different shopping experience from the last place.  Everything was staged so adorably that you couldn’t help but want everything in the shop.  Court and Joe bought a little table for Peyt’s room.  I chose something small this time, a little vintage water heater for $10.  Perfect for a making a cup of tea (or hot chocolate in my case).

A cord plugs into this socket and the coil inside heats up the water.  Cute, right?

It also happened to be my Grandma B’s birthday so we left our shopping and met the rest of my family at the cemetery to place flowers on her grave.  Jax still randomly says, “I sure do miss Grandma B.”

The next morning Carl packed up the car to the gills (he was a good sport about my chair) and we gave our hugs, kisses and goodbyes to everyone.  California here we come!  But the vacation wasn’t over just yet.  We planned to stop in Pasedina for a Rose Parade camp out with several of our buddies back home.  We found camp around 1am.  The boys had been asleep for several hours so they were awake and excited when we found “camp” on the street.  They snuggled in with their friends under blankets and air mattresses and drifted off to sleep.  But Carl and I had come unprepared.  Rather than trying to sleep on the ground we tried to get comfy in some beach chairs until sunrise.  Let’s just say it was a long night.  If I’d been smart I would have grabbed my phone from my purse before packing it away with everyone things for the night’s safe keeping.  All night I kept thinking I could be watching movies, playing games or web surfing to pass the time.  Oh well.  It felt like a lifetime, but morning did eventually come.  And so did the crowds.

We took down the beds and set up the chairs and mooched off everyone’s snacks.  We sorta forgot that we’d need to feed our kids breakfast and didn’t bring any food.  Ironically, our car was overflowing with travel snacks.  Again, oh well.  We had great friends that came to our rescue until Carl could get us some breakfast burritos.

And once the parade started, all inconveniences and discomforts were forgotten.  We were just a curb away from the floats.  You can imagine how much fun that was!

I’ll admit, as soon as we got back in the car to drive the rest of the way home I was totally exhausted.  And so was Carl.  He gets huge points for doing all the driving while the rest of us did this.

This past year has been crazy, fun, exciting, frustrating, sad, scary and magical.  I love closing out the year with so much family fun.  I’m really looking forward to what this year has in store for our little family.  Look out 2012 ’cause here we come!

]]> http://carlandchantel.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/wrap-it-up-ring-it-in/feed/ 4 Tel IMG_0103 IMG_7831 IMG_7833 IMG_7834 IMG_7836 IMG_7840 IMG_7842 IMG_7845 IMG_7846 IMG_7847 IMG_7848 IMG_7849 IMG_7852 IMG_7865 IMG_7854 IMG_7866 IMG_7864 IMG_7870 IMG_7859 IMG_7862 IMG_7871 IMG_7893 IMG_7873 IMG_7875 IMG_7876 IMG_7881 IMG_7882 IMG_7885 IMG_7891 IMG_7897 IMG_7898 IMG_7899 IMG_7906 IMG_7910 IMG_7915 IMG_7918 IMG_7919 IMG_7922 IMG_7927_2 IMG_7928 IMG_0113 IMG_7932 IMG_7933 IMG_7934 IMG_7940 IMG_7942 IMG_7945 IMG_7951 IMG_7955 IMG_7956 IMG_7957 IMG_7958 IMG_7961 IMG_7964 IMG_7966 IMAG0419 IMG_7968 IMG_7970 IMG_7972 IMG_0114 IMAG0428 IMAG0426 IMG_0118 IMG_0119 IMG_0120 IMG_0122 IMG_7998 IMG_0123 IMG_7999 IMG_8000 IMG_7977 IMG_7976 IMG_0140 IMG_0132 IMG_0130 IMAG0460 IMG_0134 http://carlandchantel.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/pinspiration-hoodie-how-to/ http://carlandchantel.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/pinspiration-hoodie-how-to/#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:42:51 +0000 Chantel http://carlandchantel.wordpress.com/?p=2091 ]]> I don’t know about you but I can always use a good hoodie for a lazy day, an extra cold day up home or just a cover up on my way to the gym.  Carl has lots of boring and plain “old workplace” sweatshirts collecting dust in his closet.  Pair that up with this hoodie revamp I found thanks to Pintrest and I have myself another pinspiration.

via See Kate Sew.

This is another great beginner friendly tutorial to follow.  But it did get tricky trying to figure out how much to take in.  I had to use my seam ripper a lot more than my last project, but the end result turned out pretty fun.  I forgot to take a “before” of the hoodie I tweaked, but this one is pretty similar.  Just picture it with a zipper down the front rather than as a pullover.  It started out as an XL.  The bigger, the better so you have more to work with.

And here’s the after:

I had to get a little creative towards the end when I realized I couldn’t remove the “old workplace” logo without making a hole.  I used some leftover leaves I’d cut from felt to use on a Thanksgiving garland and it did the trick nicely.  (We’ll see how it all holds up once I wash it.)  I just stitched them over the top of the logo with some embroidery floss Pretty fun, eh?  And yes, those are real buttonholes.  They’re surprisingly not too difficult.  Another shout out to my user-friendly sewing machine!  So go raid your husband or little bro’s closet (since my little brothers aren’t so little anymore) and give this one a try!  He’ll benefit from the closet purge and you’ll have something new to add to your wardrobe.  Let’s do this!

It was getting late, the kids were driving me crazy and I was ready to give up for the night.  Jax had disappeared at some point during the furniture shuffle so I went to find him.  Already grumpy and being the jerk that I am, I marched out with my bad attitude ready to bust him in the act of doing something naughty.  I thought, “He’s probably upstairs playing ipad and eating my secret stash of  Flips from my night stand.”  I rounded the corner and stopped in my tracks.  Every single decoration we owned (broken or otherwise) was unpacked and strung about the living room.  It was a disaster.  Just as I was about to exclaim, “What the @$%*?!”  I saw Jax.  There he was in the middle of it all, carefully and quietly hanging ornaments on the trees we’d set up.  Bless his heart, he’d been waiting for so long to decorate the tree he just couldn’t stand it any longer.  While I was steaming over the feng shui of our family room and our less than Better Homes and Gardens decor Jax was singing Jingle Bells and rediscovering all his favorite and familiar nicknacks.  If ever I needed to be chastised it was now.  I was schooled.  I had to bite my lip when he turned around to show me his work.  Smiling ear to ear.  What a tender heart.  He wasn’t bothered by decoration protocol, “Lights first, Jax.  Then decorations.”  He didn’t care if the tree bobbles weren’t coordinating with my couches.  He just wanted to invite Christmas into our home.  And to do that you have to decorate a Christmas tree.  Plain and simple.

{Jax and Milo}

I gave myself a time out for being such a brat.  I tucked the kids in bed for the night.  I read them extra chapters in our book. And I gave each of them a Merry Christmas kiss goodnight.  “Tomorrow,” I promised, “I will be better.”

The next morning I woke up with a better attitude, made breakfast for everyone and we all set to work once again putting our house in Christmas order.   But we soon realized that unless you counted the pile of shards at the bottom of the decorations box (looks like I didn’t do a very good job of packing it up last year) we really didn’t have much to put on the trees.  And our lights had pretty much had it too.   So we took a family trip to Walmart and picked out several boxes of “shatter proof” balls and lights.  We came home and decorated all the trees with Jax heading up the project.  Crew and Milo showed us their dance moves to Pandora Christmas music.   Carl made hot chocolate for everyone.  We even ate, I mean strung a little popcorn while watching football.  I make this day sound all warm and fuzzy because, well, it was!   When the day was done we went from this:

to this:

My favorite part is turning off all the overhead lights so the tree lights can sparkle in all their soft glowing glory.  Makes me want to snuggle up in a fuzzy blanket and watch A Muppets Christmas Carol.  I walked around the house and declaring, “Oh, our house is so pretty!”  It’s not Pottery Barn perfect, it’s our “we have little boys and we’re still growing” perfect and I really do love it.

]]> http://carlandchantel.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/the-halls-are-finally-decked/feed/ 7 Tel IMG_7719 IMG_7715 IMG_7717 IMG_7722 IMG_7725 IMG_7720 IMG_7721 http://carlandchantel.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/pinspiration-maxi-skirt/ http://carlandchantel.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/pinspiration-maxi-skirt/#comments Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:28:03 +0000 Chantel http://carlandchantel.wordpress.com/?p=2061 ]]> I’m back with my next Pintrest inspired project!  I know you’ve been sitting on the edge of your seat all week waiting for this.  *wink*

I’m 5’8″ and finding a dress or skirt with just the right length can be quite a task.  Short skirts are too short and long skirts end up hitting at an awkward spot too.  But I really needed to add to my church attire.  I have kids climbing in and out of my lap on Sundays so I prefer longer lengths.  Otherwise I’m constantly trying to yank my dress back into place to stay covered up.  I’m sure all you moms out there can relate.  When I saw this on Pintrest I knew I needed to give it a try.

via Elle Apparel

Right off the bat I thought, “Oooo, it’s long!”  And I love the maxi look.  The tutorial seemed pretty simple and straight forward so I thought it’d be worth a try.  But I’ve never sewn with knit fabric before.  I saved this project for Thanksgiving when Mom, the seamstress responsible for every single amazing dance dress I ever wore in high school, would be visiting.  If anyone could help me figure it out, she could.  (Thanks again Mom for your patience!)

Going into this project I quickly learned that knits can be expensive.  It took me a few visits to Joanne’s but I found some great jegging fabric from a Project Runway line (fancy, I know) on sale for 50% off.  Score!  The tutorial calls for 2 yards, but knowing this girl is quite a bit shorter than me I bought 3 yards.  Just to be safe.  It turned out to be a good call because we used most of what I had with a little extra to work with.  Carl used that for his Turkey bowl sweatband.  Nice.

After Mom and I worked on the measurements of my skirt it was time to cut.  Yikes.  Cutting fabric is always the scary part for me.  It’s so final, ya know?  We used a tape measure and my kids’ sidewalk chalk to mark the cutting line.

Have you ever used elastic thread?  I hadn’t but needed to learn how to use it quick in order to make the waste band.  Mom and Courtney had tried using it in the past with disappointing results so I was pretty nervous to give it a try.  But forging ahead I loaded the thread just how the tute said to do it.  After all, “You’ve gotta risk it for the biscuit!”  Right Brit?  And you know what?  It worked!  Mom and I were both amazed!  See me gaining all sorts of self confidence throughout this process?  My mom was stuck with the tedious part of the project.  She had to kneel on my hard tile floor for the hemming.  Now that’s love.  We did this part on Thanksgiving day while the turkey and rolls were baking.  Mmmm turkey and rolls.  And pie.

Anyway.  At this point I was feeling pretty darn confident in my sewing ability and decided to go all out.  I had purchased a double needle but was half planning to chicken out and return it unopened.  But hey, if I can sew with elastic thread why not try the fancy needle too?  Nothing too it.  (I give most of the credit to my very user-friendly sewing machine for dummies. Kenmore is fabulous!)  I’m telling you, I was beaming when I finished this skirt.  I bombarded Mom with texts to show and tell her about my accomplishment.  Did you catch that?  My ACCOMPLISHMENT!  Not a start and half finish, but a 100% completed project.  The fact that it turned out cute made it all the sweeter.  And I only had to use the seam ripper once.  Now that’s saying something.  What do you think?

It’s LOOOOONG!  Oh how I love the length.  It barely misses the floor when I walk.  And I love how it sorta pools at my shoes.  I plan on making at least one if not two more when I find another great deal on knits.  This place has great deals!  I dare you to try this.  Seriously.  You’ll love it too!

It’s Elfie our Scout Elf, sent by Santa to keep an eye on how our boys are behaving between now and Christmas. Each night after the kids are asleep he flies home to the North Pole to report to Santa.  Then the next morning he comes back and usually causes a little mischief too.  But don’t touch him!  He might lose his magic and then Santa would never know if you’ve been good.  Crew was 100% on board but Jax was really skeptical.  “It’s not real.  It’s just a doll.”  But he changed his mind when he woke up this morning and saw what Elfie had been up to.

I’m so excited for this new tradition.  We can always use a little extra help keeping our kids in line!  “You wouldn’t want Elfie to tell Santa what you’re doing right now, would you?”

Do you have a scout elf?  I’d love to hear what he/she’s done around the house!

P.S. There are some great ideas here.

I first heard about Pintrest from Young House Love.  They’re always pulling ideas from pictures seen on Pintrest to remodel and update their home.  So I hopped over and requested an invite.   After about 20 minutes (I hear there’s a waiting list now, crazy!) I received an email allowing me to create a free account and get started.  You can search for anything you like so I started by looking for decorating ideas.  You see a picture, you “pin it” to your inspiration board where it’s saved so you can refer back to it whenever you’d like.  But what really sold me on this:  Say you’re blog hopping and you find a post or picture that you love and you don’t want to forget.  Pintrest gives you a little “Pin It” button you can install to your toolbar.  Just click on the picture you don’t want to forget, click on “Pin It”, make a note of what it is or why you like it and Pintrest will save the picture to your board along with the link source.  No more “I saw it somewhere but I can’t remember where!”  For me, this has been life changing!  Ok, maybe that’s being a little overly dramatic but it has cut down my mindless blog surf time to a minimum.  And Pintrest has an app so I usually browse while I’m waiting in line at the store or in my car at after-school pickup.

I’ve been creating and trying new things and by doing so have sort of rediscovered myself.  I thought it’d be fun to start sharing some of these ideas I’ve found with you each week.  Whether you use Pintrest or not, I hope it’ll inspire you to try something new that inspires you too!

So, this week I’ll start with a fun one to kick things off.  I have a hard time putting together outfits anyway, but Sunday is a beast all it’s own.  Pulling a skirt, top and shoe look together for church takes way, way too long and I usually end up changing more times than I’m willing to admit.  And then there’s my hair.  It’s been getting longer (yay!) and I’ve had fun finding new ways to style it beyond my usual ponytail or messy bun, a.k.a. gym hair.  Enter Pintrest.  While browsing around the site I found these:

via The Daybook

via 9gag

via Running on Happiness

And here’s what I was Pinspired to do.   (I thought up this idea moments before bedtime and scrambled to take some pictures so forgive the funny lighting.)

My hair isn’t long enough for a knot all the way up on top of my head, so I had to modify the style slightly.  I never would have thought to wear these items together like this so it was like a brand new outfit to me.  And I pulled it all together with minimal closet staring and wardrobe changes.  Fist pump!  Looks like I may need to work on my posing for pictures so I don’t look so tomboyish next time.  But I felt cute and dare I say stylish all day long and this Mommy very much needed that.

Three cheers for Pintrest!

Stay tuned for next week when I show you the skirt I just finished, thanks to help from my craftacular Mom!

P.S.  This Pinspiration thingy is my own deal.  Pintrest doesn’t know this blog even exists … yet.  *wink*

“It’s business, it’s business tiiiime.”  Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

We’ll start with Halloween and our pumpkin pancake breakfast.  We’d just returned home from a whirlwind trip to Utah at 3:00am that morning so everyone skipped school.  They were a little sad to miss their class parties until I served up some of these.  Can you believe Jax doesn’t like candy corns?  Who’s kid is he?!

It’s a jack-o-lantern.  Use your imagination.

I always look forward to making our own Halloween costumes.  It usually isn’t much cheaper than if I were to buy pre-made costumes and it can be a little stressful, but it’s so great to see it all come together and have my kids get excited when it turns out like they’d hoped. (So far, so good.)  But between my church callings and our last minute trip to Utah I just couldn’t put the money, time or attention into any costume construction this year.  Halloween was getting closer and closer and I still didn’t know what we were going to do.  Hooray for Jim and Dyana who came to our rescue!  Jim is a Halloween fanatic and offered to let our kids borrow costumes from their large family stash.  Honestly, the clouds parted and I heard a choir of angels rejoice when I heard this.  My kids adore their family too so they were S.T.O.K.E.D!  Crew chose to be a ninja, being a self-proclaimed martial arts expert and all.  Jax can make killer sound effects and went with Spiderman so he could spit, I mean sound out webs shooting from his wrists all night.

We referred to our own stash for Milo and he chose the pirate costume that I’d made a few years ago for Jax.

Carl dressed up as Dale Earnhart Jr. since he’s mistaken for him all the time.  Phew!  Everyone was happy.  But wait, I wanted to dress up too!  So at 4pm on Halloween Day I riffled through my stash of costumes from past Blue Lily party shoots and craft odds and ends.  Taking cues from Once Upon a Time (now one of my favorite shows), I came up with Cinderella.  Or should I say Chantelerella?

I hope my kids think I’m cool for getting so into the holiday.  Seriously:  Halloween, Christmas, Independence Day.  In that order.

We met up with Dyana and her kids for trick-or-treating.  Jim posted himself at the front door, dressed like the psycho from Scream to make all the kids do just that.  Crew and Jax took off at a dead run with the older kids leaving Carl and I to show Milo the ropes.  Oh man was he cute.  I will always love this age with my kids.  If the candy doesn’t give me a tooth ache, Milo will because he’s so darn sweet!

“Twick -o- tweet candy.”

“Happy How-wo-ween!”

As if watching my kids wasn’t treat enough, I had several adults compliment me on my costume.  And one little girl, in Cinderella ballroom attire, looked at me admiringly as her mom pointed out that I was Cinderella too.  MAGIC!

Oh how I love Halloween.

On to Thanksgiving.  Somehow I convinced my parents to board a plane and join us for Thanksgiving dinner since the whole family wouldn’t be together this time.  My kids couldn’t wait for a new guy around the house to tackle.  But they weren’t prepared for my dad’s veteran tickling skills.  When he wasn’t tickling them to death he was trying to teach them the art of “Just relax” where you try and convince yourself it doesn’t tickle when someone does just that to your bare feet.  Brutal.  But funny.

I asked Mom to teach me how to bake my own pie crusts.  I’ve heard it was simple but pie crusts are on my list of intimidating foods to bake/cook.  Not any more. We made a pumpkin and a peach pie.  My house smelled like heaven. I think I caught my mom in this pictures right before she sneezed.  Mom, Dad, Crew, Jax and Milo were all coughing and sneezing.  Cold and flue season is definitely here.

Carl took Crew and Jax to the annual Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving morning.  Did I mention that Crew is fast becoming a huge football enthusiast?  Oh, and I always love the “uniform” Carl dons for the occasion, complete with his old high school jersey.  I was relieved to hear that this year it was flag football.

While they were gone, Mom and I finished up a skirt project.  More on that to come soon.  I’m telling you, when I get with my mom all I want to do is cook and craft!  (Bet you never thought that day would come, right Mom?)

Once the boys were back, I put Carl in charge of the turkey.  We grill it every year and Carl does a fantastic job.  I think he has fun with it too.

While that grilled, we finished up the rest of the trimmings:

7 layer dip

cranberry cream cheese dip (YUM!)

Spriteberry drink

mashed potatoes and gravy

rolls

sweet potatoes

stuffing

green bean casserole

How do you grill a turkey?  Well, you rub it down with olive oil, italian seasoning, salt and pepper.  Then you set it in a roasting pan and place it in the BBQ.  Carl turns on the outside burners only so the bottom of the bird doesn’t burn.  Then he pours a little Sprite inside the turkey to help with the juices.  After 30 minutes you’ll baste it with the juice that starts dripping into the pan and repeat every 20-30 minutes until the internal temp reads 180 degrees.  Ours was a 22 lb. bird and cooked in about 3 hours.  Don’t forget to save the juice to make gravy!

Doesn’t that look amazing?  Let’s eat!

Poor Milo felt lousy all day with his cold and a mild fever.  He crashed out on the couch before dinner and later preferred a heart shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwich over turkey dinner.

We ate until the mere thought of food made us groan.  We watched about a gazillion movies.  I loved every minute of it.  I think Jax put it beautifully when he said, “Anyone who doesn’t like Thanksgiving gets a punch in the face *spitting and sound effects*!”

I can’t believe the holidays are here again already.  I’m so thankful to celebrate them with such amazing family!

Hope your Thanksgiving is as fun as these pumpkins are large!

The pinata was so hard that I ended up having to step on it a couple of times before the bottom finally cracked and eventually the candy fell out.  It was a little anticlimactic, but the kids didn’t seem to care as long as there was candy to claim.

It started to rain at that point so we went back inside to sing happy birthday and have cake.  I must have done something wrong while baking the cake because it was really, really dense and sorta gross.  Most of the kids didn’t touch it anyway.  They were more concerned with the big bag of candy they’d just scored.  Phew, that was a close one.  Oh well.  Milo liked the candy on top and I thought the frosting was heaven.

Carl came home from work and gave Jax two birthday options to choose from: 1.  Carl could pick out a present and suprise Jax when he came home.  2.  Jax could go with Carl to Toys ‘R’ Us and pick out a birthday present.  It was no surprise that Jax picked option #2.  Then he added, “Dad, would it be ok if we took Mom and Crew and Milo too?  Then everyone could have fun.”  What a sweetheart!  So we all took a drive to the toy store and browsed the isles while Jax looked for the perfect toy.  Carl even let Crew and Milo pick out a small $3 toy to play with so the boys could all play together.

Everyone left the store happy (naturally).  We finished off the night with an elegant dinner from Wendy’s, complete with frosties since the cake was a big fail.  But if you ask Jax it was the perfect day and he went to bed smiling from ear to ear over the fact that he is now 5.years.old.  Happy Birthday bud!  I love you.