Cozy Living

Revelry

I love the sound of the word 'revelry.'  Boisterous festivity, merrymaking, revelry.  That's definitely what we had in mind on Halloween.

Everyone gets in on the carving of the pumpkins. 

The black widows...which Jake kept reminding us are POISONOUS!

...and we just had to torture our poor Ellie cat. What can I say, I've always wanted a little girl to dress up like a chicken! (No, I'm not kidding.  Tried to convince Greg we could do it with Jake when he was 10 months. He disagreed.)

Revelry.

Tyler, who suddenly and without warning sat down on a driveway one street over and proclaimed, "I tired! I wan go my house." Are you sure you don't want to trick-or-treat a little bit longer? "I tired. I wan go home an drink milk!"  Okay, if you insist. So he spent the remainder of the night like this. Resting in his chair next to Nonna, drinking milk and handing out candy to the other kids. Or chasing people down the street yelling " 'top! I hab treat for you!", in the case of one man who passed by our house without stopping.

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Patch Photo Tips

Aaaahhh...the weather may still be hot, the leaves may still be green, but we know it's fall around here when we begin our annual visits to the pumpkin patch.  This is perhaps my favorite place and time of the entire year to take pictures of my boys.  I look forward to this all year round, and I LOVE the pictures we take there.  Considering that I saw so many moms there this year trying to capture that perfect pumpkin patch picture, I thought I'd throw in my two cents about how to get some good ones.

1. Go right when the pumpkin patch opens, or just before it closes.  The lighting for photos is muted and soft in the early morning and just before sunset, and the patch is usually less crowded, making it easier to get shots without other people's kids in them.  Avoid the weekends.  The middle of the day is the worst time for photos, because it's crowded and the direct sunlight overhead causes crazy face shadows.  Or best of all, go on a cloudy day, when the light is diffused just perfectly!  If you are stuck there at noon, move into some shade (not dappled shade...it makes uneven shadows on the faces)  The photo of Jake above, from last year, was taken as the sun went down...I love the warm glow.  Hasn't he grown up this year?

2. Go more than once!  We take advantage of October by visiting the pumpkin patch two or three times.  That way I can view one of the times as a "photo shoot" more than an outing, knowing that on at least the first outing, my main goal is to take pictures.  I don't feel like I'm missing out on the moment if I know we'll be back again.  If you plan on using these for a Christmas card or a scrapbook, like me, consider dressing the kids in the same clothes each time you go, so that your pictures will all coordinate on your future cards or scrapbook pages. (I realize this sounds totally contrived, but really, they wear the same clothes every now and then anyway, so why not make sure they wear them to the pumpkin patch each time?)

3. Look for different textures in your background...old wood fences, bales of hay, dried cornstalks all contrast nicely with the soft skin tones in your photos.  Just make sure the tree trunk and the cornstalk aren't sticking straight out of your kid's head!  This photo of Tyler from last year has such nice contrast in it (and speaking of boys growing up...can you believe how big he's gotten in a year?!)

4. Take tons of pictures.  I think I downloaded over 400 pictures from this, our first visit to the patch.  I know, I know, but if you keep your camera set to continuous shooting mode, you can get the perfect expressions on your kids before they're gone.  And when you get home, DELETE most of them.  My current folder holds 41 photos from those 400, which is still too many for me, so I'll probably get it down to 25ish in the coming weeks, as I only keep the very best.  If you take a lot of pictures, you're bound to get at least a few fabulous ones.

5. Don't dress your kids in orange or in bold patterns.  My favorite is jeans and a plain, richly colored shirt or flannel.  You don't want your kid to blend into the pumpkins in the picture or their shirt to be the focal point of the photo.

5. Let the kids be silly...don't order them around, don't tell them to smile, just follow them around, snapping pictures as you go.  Every once in a while I'd say to the boys, "Okay, if you'll sit here and take a few pictures, then we'll go in the hay maze again afterwards." Also, stay for a while and let them enjoy themselves.  That's when you'll get the natural smiles.  I got lots of these lame (but funny) pictures...

in order to get to this picture below, my favorite.  They only gave me these natural smiles after the pumpkin they were sitting on fell over...pumpkin-lanche! They thought this was hilarious and we spent probably 10 minutes causing pumpkin-lanches as I took pictures.  Be patient.

6. If all else fails, bribery can work.  Not for my Tyler, who's in the "here's my horrible fake 'cheese' smile" that I do not want in my photos.  But if your kids are older it might work.  Our bribe for Jake was an Icee for everyone to share with our picnic lunch. Which I probably would've bought anyway, but he doesn't have to know that.  

Here's one of my favorites from last year...a friend asked me if I set this up, and the answer is, not particularly...the boys are used to holding hands in public places so I can keep track of them, so that's nothing new, but I did ask them to hold hands as the walked to the hay maze, even though it wasn't crowded, and I just held back and took this from behind them. 

Happy Fall to everyone!  I'm going to the mountains for a retreat for the weekend (aaahhh...silence, peace, quiet, renewal.) See you next week.

Pumpkin Love in Pseudo-Summer

Our October Summer has cooled down by about ten degrees, and the evenings are getting cool.  I am still wearing long sleeves and pants, in hopes that the weather might cooperate, then finding myself changing into a tank top when I find out that all I'm really getting out of it is sweaty.  But as I mentioned before, that doesn't mean I'm not going to celebrate Fall!

I LOVE decorating inside my house for Autumn.  I am lucky enough to host our Thanksgiving dinner each year, so I feel like the decorating is all worthwhile, knowing that lots of people will appreciate it along with me.  We also do a lot of entertaining for church, and I like knowing that the atmosphere here is festive and fallish, even when the outside world is not.  So here are some glimpses around my fall house right now.  Nighttime candlelit pictures would be so much better, but these will have to do for now.  Our dining room table is above, which I set for Thanksgiving about a week or two beforehand, just so I can enjoy the sparkling of the glasses for a little longer!  I'll be sure to post a picture when the time comes.

...and a closeup of my favorite decorating element...these little stones come in every color.  Ikea usually has a few colors at a time, or you can get them at other decorative stores sometimes, too. I use them all the time in decorating.  Just sprinkle a few around the edge of your display and it seems to finish it off just right.

And aren't these little turkey salt and pepper shakers wonderful?  I need to ask my mom where I got them.  She remembers these things.

My mantle, which is pretty much the same as usual, plus a few pumpkins and a fall quilt I made years ago but have nowhere really to hang right now.  Mr. Turkey here has a wife, but she's currently indisposed...Tyler has adopted her and she might be hidden under a bed somewhere, just calling for her Tom to come save her.  Poor little turkey. 

Our kitchen island (oh, I'm just still thrilled that I chose wood, even months after our remodel finished!  Even better that my dad and my uncle and I made the island together.) now decorated with an easy to move fall arrangement, including some flower shaped napkin rings. I love using odd things in my arrangements.  Pomegranate from the farmer's market today, inspired by Selena.

And what would fall be without some kind of pumpkin cake?  I  cheated  did the smart thing and used good old Trader Joe's Pumpkin bread and muffin mix, because I knew I wanted to make these adorable little pumpkin cakes.  

They're made with miniature bundt cake pans, and you can put one on top of the other to make a real pumpkin shape, or just leave it as half a pumpkin.  Drizzle orange frosting over and finish with a tootsie roll that you soften in the microwave and twist and stick in the top with a toothpick, or if you just don't have the time to make a special trip out for tootsie rolls, you can pipe a little thickened frosting in green on the top for stems.  We host our church's Young Families Fellowship every other Friday, and I love having an excuse to a) clean the bathrooms and b) make fun desserts like these.  But seeing as I have 30 people arriving in less than three hours, I better scoot.  Today I told you about the turkey Tyler adopted, tomorrow I'll tell you about the creature who's adopted him.  See you.

Remembering...

The boys and I colored this American flag with sidewalk chalk on our driveway for the fourth of July this year.  Now, two months later, there are still faint remnants of our flag spotting the sidewalk...a smudge of blue here, a scribbled star there.  We've spent day after day driving, riding, and generally living life on top of it, until it's pretty much unrecognizable.  It seems that our memories of September 11th, 2001 are slowly fading, too.  Slowly seeming less significant.  Slowly losing their weight in our minds and our lives.  Every day brings with it more excitement, more troubles, more joy, more pain, more busy-ness, more emotions, more to-do's, until thoughts that used to be life-changing are buried so far below the surface that they're not even rendered important to our days anymore.  I am determined to remember.

There are two odd things that I recall most clearly from that day: Those horrible little arrows shown over and over on the news, representing planes making unscheduled u-turns in the sky, and that moment of silence and tears with my class of 30 eleven-year-olds, knowing that I was the only one in the room who could even begin to grasp the enormity of this tragedy.   

My life isn't even close to the same these days.  I spend my days thinking about two little others instead of myself.  There are things to be done, memories to be made, people to be loved. So today I will simply pray that you will find comfort in your grieving, whether for one person or for a country's lost innocence.  And I pray that the images in my mind from that day seven years ago will never fade away like a chalk drawing on a driveway.

Happy Birthday 100th Post Giveaway

I promised this post yesterday, but as it turns out, 32 was a pretty great birthday with too many wonderful activities packed in to have time for the post and my 100th post giveaway...yes, both fall on the same day!

Yesterday was one of the best birthdays in recent memory.  Breakfast in bed with my boys. Sewing on a present for myself and for you.  A gorgeous lunch with just my mom and my sister. Researching which new lens I should buy as Greg's birthday present to me. Playing at the meadow, just the four of us.  Dinner outat a delicious Cuban restaurant with dreamy ambience and good friends. Flan dessert at the restaurant, and chocolate dessert at home. A movie with family before bed. Aaahhh...perfect.

As for the 100th post giveaway above...I'm calling it a picnic table cover/tablecloth/picnic blanket.  Is that obscure enough for you?  I'm going to use it as all of the above (I made one for myself and one to give away!)  It's designed to fit perfectly on top of picnic tables, with ties to keep it from flying off, so that when we go camping we'll have a cozy cover to feel more at home...and really, I love seeing pretty fabrics out in nature.  And when we're not camping I'm going to use mine as a tablecloth in our breakfast nook.  It would also be a great little picnic blanket for a small fall picnic.  I haven't tried yet (not quite finished backing and putting the ties on them yet) but I'm hoping the ties will be able to be used as a carrying strap for taking it on outings.  We'll see.  I'm loving the combination of vintage looking floral fabrics with the bolder brighter modern fabrics.

If you'd like to give this baby a loving home, just leave a comment here on this post.  I'd love it if you spread the word around, so if you'd like to post a link to this giveaway on your blog, throw an extra bonus comment on here for an extra chance to win.  I hope you'll be as excited about yours as I am about mine!  I'll do the drawing late Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, and since I'm a new little blog, you've got a pretty good shot at winning! 

I'll leave you with a few favorite birthday pictures.  Happy Sunday. 

(half) Birthdays at the Beach

We finally got to experience a summer birthday party. It doesn't happen often, with all three 'boys' birthdays being in early February, but because of Amy's wedding this year, we celebrated Jake's and Tyler's half birthdays last night at the beach with a party on a beautiful evening with perfect weather and even small waves for the kids. We had an archaeological dig for some dinosaurs in the sand, built some short-lived sandcastles,

and played on the playground and in the waves (with our dinosaur friends watching over us.)

My favorite parts were the stegosaurus cake, which after going through a very awkward teenage phase during his creation (as my Aunt Krissy calls it), turned out to be pretty cool; 

the goodie bags (which contained a dinosaur figurine, a dinosaur bouncy ball, a couple of tattoos, a water squishy ball, and a bag of goldfish...some of you asked.) 

I loved that the presents were books instead of more toys, and I especially loved taking pictures of the kids silhouetted against the setting sun.  

Happy (half) birthday, boys.

Happy (six month) Anniversary, Amy & Rob!

(photo courtesy of Stephanie Mejan Photography)

I started this blog at a time when my life was thankfully beginning to slow down. I had emerged from the fog that is having a one and three year old, and after a February that involved all three of my boys' birthdays, our annual huge Super Bowl party, a bachelorette party weekend and a wedding (both of which I was planning), I was feeling very free.

Six months ago today, my dear sister Amy (whom you've heard me mention often here) married Uncle Rob (as he's come to be known around our house.) It was a feat of frugal but elegant planning on the part of Amy and myself, and it turned out to be one of the most beautiful weddings I've been to. If you know me at all, you know there's a true country girl hiding in this suburban housewife, and my sister is no different. She chose the church long before she chose the husband; it has a quaint white steeple and sits so perfectly atop the foothills (the church, not the husband.) It fit the mood of the wedding, which she and I dubbed "small town country picnic," perfectly.

(photos courtesy of Stephanie Mejan Photography)

The two flower girls definitely got their fair share of attention from the congregation, as they were just beautiful, and so perfectly behaved. This I cannot say for my two little guys, whom I refer to as the flower boys, although I know they were officially ring bearers (why can I never remember that?) Boy number one took two steps down the aisle, then turned back to the rear of the church, where I had to pick him up and carry him, scowling, down the aisle, throwing his pillow to the ground in the process. How's that for a little wedding excitement? Boy #2 told me moments before walking down the aisle, "No A' Amy's weh-ing," to which I replied, "No, we're not having Auntie Amy's wedding. You just need to go downstairs and walk down the aisle to sit with Sara and she'll give you a treat." And that was good enough for him. Here the two handsome fellow are, looking oh-so-innocent.

Did you want to see a family portrait from the wedding day? I thought you would. Just wait, it's gorgeous.

This would be the happy family: Greg, groomsman recovering from a week of the flu; Tyler, flower boy who makes this handsome face whenever he's asked to say cheese; Jake, flower boy who came down with the flu that morning; and Linn, matron of honor trying to hold it all together. Aren't we lovely?

In the end, all that matters is that the wedding was Amy's perfect country style wedding, and that she and Rob will live happily ever after, just as it should be. Happy Anniversary, Amy & Rob!

(photo courtesy of Stephanie Mejan Photography)

July 4th!

photo courtesy of Uncle Rob Bryant...great angle Rob!

We had a peaceful family fourth of July. Spent the morning with Greg and Uncle Rob decorating the boys' bikes for the neighborhood bike parade, then headed over to the park for the parade and July 4th festivities.

The boys LOVED the bike parade, which was basically a million kids riding their bikes around the block together. Little ones in the front (Tyler took this very seriously and booked it when they said go...everyone on the sidewalks was commenting on how fast his little legs could scoot him along!) and bigger ones behind. I loved watching them love it. Does that make sense?

Greg was miffed, of course, that Jake didn't win the bike decorating contest, and I, of course, rolled my eyes about that. I believe my comment was, "I can see what kind of soccer parent you're going to be..." Let's hope not.

After the incredibly hot but fun neighborhood party, we hung out around the house, renting a movie and lying around until a mellow dinner for just the four of us...barbecued ribs, mashed potatoes, and homemade ice cream for dessert. Although several of my homemade items did not come out perfectly, I still felt like we had a very cozy holiday together.

We ended the night with some leftover sparklers in our backyard with a few snakes and strobes thrown in. Usually, I really like getting out and the hustle and bustle of holidays with lots of people, but today this felt just right for our little family.

Talking about Freedom

I'm so excited that the boys are old enough to talk about the world nowadays. Today I reminded them that the fourth of July was coming (they're so excited!) and we had a great conversation about why we celebrate our country's freedom, and who fights to keep us safe and free, and how thankful we should be to live here in America.

So, Jake immediately wanted to decorate for the fourth of July...why not, we decorate for most other holidays around here. We pulled out some of the bike parade decorations and went to work, coming up with the beauty you see above. Well, anyway, it was beautiful to Jake, and that's beautiful to me.

Mother's Day

Now, who can top a painted handprint flower as a Mother's Day present. That has got to be the sweetest thing a mama can receive from her little boy. "My mom is as beautiful as a color," his card read. I guess that's better than the other mom I overheard after preschool who was "as beautiful as a train." Actually, Jake is in love with trains, so that would probably have been the highest compliment I could've received.

The day was spent at church, relaxing, hanging out with my mom and dad, with Greg and Dad finally putting the doors on the entertainment center for me, after 5 1/2 years of waiting for this moment. We played Sorry! and Chinese Checkers and the boys didn't watch any T.V.   Family, food, and no t.v. are the epitome of a wonderful day for me.

Happy Mother's Day!