What are you Thankful for?

Remember this little arrangement of twigs... Well, I've been seeing a bunch of little Thankful trees on other blogs and decided to convert this for Thanksgiving!

First I emptied the Candy Corn

I was really wanting to use acorns, but the squirrels beat me to them, so I used almonds since that is what I had a lot of!

I had bought a couple bags of these from Target
from their dollar bins a few months ago- not
really sure what I would need them for...
Now I'm glad I grabbed them!

I had Chloe help me punch holes in the leaves... She loved doing this so some leaves have quite a few holes in them!! Then we wrote with a Sharpie what we are thankful for!!

It makes me smile whenever I see it... and reminds me of all we have to be so very thankful for!



So... What are you thankful for this year?

1/2 Marathon!

Two weekends ago I ran/walked a half marathon with Wendy P. and my sister Nicole! I had agreed to do this a long time ago and somehow never found the time to "train," (I use that word very loosely since what I do is never really "training" more like not sitting around every day!) so this was a little bit of a shock to my system!! Especially since Wendy did quite a bit of running!! She set the pace for us and I was impressed!! :)

Here we are right before the start!

And we're off... Like a herd of turtles!!

I made them stop along the trail so I could take a picture!

Wendy took one of me and Nicole too!

Here comes Callie!! She was doing the full Marathon! Passing us after already running over 16 miles!!

I wanted to get a shot of everyone running!

And here we are finishing!

Becky was at the finish!!

The whole group!

Nicole, Me, Danay, Lana, Jim, Amber, Callie, Warren, Dylan, and Wendy

P.S. Thanks to Bob and Dana for several of the photos!!

Little Redneck!!

While we were at Cabela's Elijah decided to have a major blow-out! I had to take his shirt off, and I of course had forgot to pack an extra outfit, so he went hillbilly style! Actually we just kept his jacket on and you couldn't tell, but I thought he looked really cute in his overalls without a shirt!!

Cabela's!

We are excited that Brynna will be living closer to us now that she got the job working in Reno for Sky West! When she had to go to Reno for her interview, we decided to join her- no, not on the interview, but in Reno. Joe has been wanting to go to Cabela's for ages, but we are always driving through with no time to stop, so this was a good opportunity! We drove to Cabela's, wished Brynna good luck, and walked around Cabela's while she got the job!

Here we are outside the store

Now you can actually see us!

Here is Chloe making fish lips!

Elijah excited about the fish!

You can imagine how much fun this was for them since they beg to go look at the fish at Walmart whenever we are there!!

At the back of the store there is a
huge animal display.

It seems that every imaginable animal is here!

Once Brynna was done with her interview
she came back to Cabela's to see everything too!

Baking Cookies!

Ever since Special meetings I have been craving peanut butter cookies with the Hershey's kiss on top... Katie R. had made some for their lunch, and they were nice enough to share, but apparently I needed more!

So... I got a bag of Betty Crocker cookie mix and started mixing!

Chloe loves to help me bake... She helped peel
all the Hershey Kisses and only sampled a few
along the way!

Her favorite part was putting the kisses on top!

Here she is clapping for herself!
I told her that she was practically an expert and she went running into the laundry room saying she needed her apron!!

I guess that's what experts wear!

This little guy was begging for handouts the entire time... who can resist that?

A Festive Fall Chandelier!

Oh how I wish I had a chandelier... but alas I don't! Not even a little tiny one. Lucky for me my sister-in-law told me about something she had seen on Marthastewart.com.

I decided to give it a try and have been loving my little lights ever since!

If you have some of this you are good to go... If not, Jo-Ann's has some for really cheap right now... I got mine for $4.00 and that was a few weeks ago... In fact they are probably out of fall stuff and only have Christmas stuff-crazy stores!!

Then I got a box of these from Walmart for $5.00

and I had one of these lying around... I had actually just got it at a garage sale for 25 cents a few weeks earlier!

Hot glue it all together and ta-dah!! A festive fall chandelier!!

The only thing that was a minor pain was cutting the holes in the pumpkins so the tea light candles would fit inside... but even that wasn't very hard... I just traced around on the pumpkin and then using a sharp knife started cutting away at the foam pumpkins!!

By the way I use the battery powered tea lights! No fire hazards that way!
Oh yeah, and I hung it using some twine I had gotten at Target in the dollar bins... That stuff is so handy I'm planning on picking up a ton more the next time I see some!

I'm so in love with it, I'm planning on making a new one for Christmas and any other holiday I can figure out a way to make one... Hey-if I can't have a real chandelier at least I can keep making them!! :)

Cut to Shreds!

One fine day, as I was enjoying my quiet time in the afternoon perusing the many blogs I follow, my mischievous little three year old was in her room quietly cutting her sheets to shreds!!! Chloe always takes a little time going to sleep for her nap, so I don't worry when I hear little noises coming from her room... THIS time I should have worried!

It looks like she was planning her escape from
prison using a bed sheet rope or something...

Needless to say... This mommies quiet time was rudely interrupted!!!

The scissors that I had in her room (up on her dresser and far from her reach... I thought) have been confiscated!!! And in case you are wondering... she had pushed her little chair over to her dresser and climbed up on that to reach the scissors! Quite resourceful!

Plenty of Pomagranates!!

Joe's grandma gave him a pomegranate plant/bush/tree(what is it?) for his birthday two years ago, and this year we got quite a few pomegranates..

Here is a picture of one nice big pretty one!

Chloe liked playing with the seeds

They are such an interesting fruit...

Messy...

And beautiful...so brilliant...like rubies!!

If you come over to our house and we have salad... You can expect to have some pomegranate seeds in it!