Happy Halloween!

This was our first year of Halloween in Ocean Shores. Instead of trick-or-treating, all of the children and their parents converge on the convention center.

I was told this is because the streets here aren't lit very well and the houses are further apart than in a regular city. Plus there is always the chance of rain.

I would guess there were approximately 40-50 businesses, groups, clubs, etc. that each had a booth.

Each booth is decorated and it's somewhat dark in there so everyone can have their own lighting. Most booths had a game to play and then they give you a treat.

It was PACKED in there! (Grant...you would have hated it!)

Rebekah loved it. She filled up her Hello Kitty purse with treats, stickers, and play jewlery, and even had to have Mom hold on to some stuff for her. She was quite pleased with her "score".

And if by any chance you are thinking, "isn't that what she wore last year for Halloween"? Yes, pretty much. I made a new tutu and she had different wings and a tiarra this year, but otherwise it's the same. Given my schedule leading up to Halloween, I'm not going to worry about it too much :)

She thanked me about 5 different times for taking her to "Happy Halloween", so I'm calling it a success!

Traveling law!

Did you know I could make laws? I can in the car! :)

Sorry for the poor camera operation, I was driving. Don't get too bent out of shape, I was driving in Eastern Montana, there is a slight curve in the road approximately every 34 miles.

The 29th I headed off with Rebekah and Harvey, towords home. I just thought I'd share...imagine this little clip times 13 hours and you have an idea of how I spent my Thursday. Deerwood, MN to Livingston, MT...good times.

More scenes from the farm

Llama Love!

Rebekah has been cooking a bit at the farm...I snapped these pictures but then had to leave, it's hard for me to watch! Good thing she has Grandma and Grandpa.

Making applesauce with Grandma from farm fresh apples!

Making cake with Grandpa, with only a very small amount of help on the mixer!

Minnesota geocaching...da thirty point buck.

Ashley says this picture makes me look like the crazy cat lady,

I'm actually okay with that.

I owe you wonderful pictures from the farm, I know!

Soon :)

But we are busy playing with kittens, hauling wood, playing Scrabble, cleaning up the garden, etc.....

This morning a little bird hit the window here at Coffee Lake Farm. Ashley rushed out to see if it was still alive, before the farm cats helped themselves to a snack!

It was still alive, so she set it on her hat up high and when we checked later it had flown away.

Despite the chilly weather, Ashley took her horse for a little walk.

She brought her over to the house so Bekah could get a little horsey kiss too.

Life is good at the farm :)

Wordless Wednesday

Fargo

We got into Fargo very late last night and I wasn't up to posting.

It's funny, when I lived in Minnesota, I couldn't hear the accent for anything. Now this morning, one lady in the elevator said "Oah Geez" and I wish I could write it the way she said it but just go ahead and think back to the last time you saw the movie "Fargo" and you'll hear it.

Then the hotel front desk lady was on the phone and I hear her say "Yah sure"....I was just waiting for the, "you betcha".

Cracked me right up both times. Always good to come back to your roots. :)

We've made it to Butte!

Montana, you are a very large state. Oy!

Over the river and thru the woods and across the mountains and through the plains etc....

Yeah, we are heading to Grandma and Grandpa's. All the way to Minne"snow"ta!

Posting will be light, I imagine, but hopefully there will be lots of great farm pictures once we get there :)

Two nights and 3 days on the road, prayers for safe travel are always appreciated!

Please....please....take a moment to look at this link :

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11

I am personally re-comitting to using my stainless steel water bottles and continuing to do what I can to reduce my impact on this planet and the innocent birds and animals that live here. I know I have room to improve. Do you?

If you can get past the poor lighting and imagine this in lovely deep yet vibrant colors...then you can appreciate my new purse :)




This is a free pattern from Happy Zombie, it was very fun to make. I added a velcro closure, to make it more purse like and less bag like. Makes me glad I passed up that purse I was looking at at Sears today. Even though it was on clearance, I'm finding it really rewarding to make my own stuff.

And the winner is?

I'm sitting here waiting for 8:00 to roll around so I can pick a winner in the drawing. I searched for a good 20 minutes, somewhere in one of the blogs I read, I saw a CUTE random number generator. Can I find it now? No I can not.

Know what else? I'm not doing the snazzy video this week because that camera is ALL THE WAY out in the car and I am dog tired. So you'll just have to take my word for it and hey, there are only 12 of ya, so I think we can deal with it, right?

We finished up in Kent today. All done, complete, the end. What a load of work. Not that we were slobs but there were just all of these little details to tend to...like washing blinds. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY STRIPS ARE ON A ROLL OF MINI BLINDS? Me neither, but they are shiny white now.

Anyway...the real reason you are checking in tonight, drum roll please.....

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The winner is # 3 who said:
That is really awsome! I think that is such a great idea! Sometimes I wish I was this creative!Andrea

Congrats Andrea! Message me your address (although I should almost know it!) and I'll get this sent right out!

Well it took me most of the day, but Rebekah has one more skirt

to take with to Minnesota :)

Bekah got new shoes at Payless the other day, I know I just shattered your Nordstroms image of my family...HA!

Anyway, they gave her Hannah Montana stickers...which she loved because, hello? Stickers! Who cares what is on them!

For the rest of the day she called them Hannah Mah-tana stickers. I can not express how happy I am that she doesn't know who Hannah Montana is.

Fast forward a couple of days and she's completely forgotten the name. She just came up to me and asked, "are these Aunt Tina stickers?".

Good to know that in our house Aunt Tina is more of a household name than Hannah Montana :)

4 pair of slippers for the afore mentioned project....

now next project, a few toys for our toy society toy drop on the way to Minnesota next week.

working on...

making slippers for

The Pink Slipper Project

Check it out...good stuff!

Ten years I've been married to this man, and I love him more every single day.

Happy Anniversary honey!

Crayon Roll Give Away!

I've been working on a couple of crayon rolls since we have a road trip coming up. They look like this and I used this tutorial from Skip to my Lou. Fun stuff. Last time we drove to Minnesota we had a plastic bucket of crayons in the car and lets just say we were finding crayons for a looong time after we returned home!

So on to the give away. I am giving away one felt crayon roll complete with 16 brand new crayola coloring crayons (who doesn't just love new crayons, even adults love new crayons!) Go ahead and leave a comment, in your comment give me your best boredom buster for a 4 yr old on a long road trip. I'll use the random number generator again to select a winner at 8:00 PM PST on October 14th. That gives you a week. Good luck!

A couple of things...

First of all, we are going to Minnesota in a couple of weeks...yes, all of us. Even Harvey. Originally it was just going to be Grant and Rebekah but certain things never transpired that would have held us here and we're in the last month of grueling double bills ( made our last rent payment last week...yippee!) so we've decided we can swing it.

It'll be good to see the family again and spend time on the farm.

Next...I've been looking at this site tonight (click on the button below). And now I just want to sit in the studio and make toys to randomly give away. I can see these being dropped at rest stops between Washington and Minnesota in a couple of weeks hmmmmmm...


Also, for those who are interested in geocaching but can't afford a GPS or want to try it out before investing in a GPS or might just enjoy a different angle of caching, I give you Letterboxing because you know, I didn't have enough hobbies that I can't fit in to my day. Letterboxing doesn't use a GPS but is a similar concept and guess what? I found my first one today at the park just down from our house. Unfortunately I didn't bring an ink pad with me, but I plan to rectify that in the very near future!

Okay, that's enough for one post! Enjoy the links and let me know what you think!

Please read this article if you have time.

And then give me your input and best ideas on how to build self confidence in little girls so they don't fall into these traps. It's a scary world for our girls right now, with a teenager and a 4 yr old I watch what society wants and expects of them. It's somewhat frightening at times. By the time they are teenagers it feels like it's too late to have much of an impact...the world is so much bigger than Mom and Mom is so lame.

Building enough self confidence so these girls can naturally turn away from needing the constant approval of society, yet balancing that with respect and courtesy for the population at large seems to be an impossible balance.

How do you do it? How do you do it in THIS world?

Make your own caption :)

Vicky and Jim were kind enough to invite us over for a movie and cake night this evening. Our anniversary is on the 8th but since they won't be here on that day they bought us a cake to celebrate this weekend. It was delicious! White cake with raspberry filling and butter cream frosting...oh YEAH! And...yes there is more, the cake plate is our gift (as if the cake wasn't enough). I'll try to capture a better picture of the plate after we lick it clean wash it.

Oh what? Is this not how most people dress to go to the neighbors? Fully accessorized with wand and all?

Poor little Torteshell the cat, Rebekah terrorizes her from the moment we walk in, until the time we leave. Tortie takes it pretty well, but I think she sighs with relief once we've left.

After cake, we settled in to watch National Treasure 2. Bekah's got the best seat in the house it looks like!

Towards the end of the movie, Torteshell and Bekah come to a compromise and all is well. Thanks for a great evening you guys :)

And the winner is...

Congrats Jess, message me your address and I'll get those fun lil snack bags out right away!

And to my other readers, don't lose heart, more give aways are in the near future! :)

Trying to be crafty :)

As much as I sew and piddle around with my crafty stuff, I'm not that great at involving Rebekah. I'm trying to get better about that. Rebekah has a pretty short attention span, so we hurried thru this tutorial and it didn't turn out too bad. It was fun to watch her focus on the cutting part and she was really excited about the results. We now have autumn decor!