Halloween...

On Halloween my mother-in-law and I got to carve some pumpkins...

And our favorite of them all... the one where I try to match the pumpkin's expression.

If you are wondering why I'm in those ridiculous overalls, it's because they're my painting clothes, and I was finishing up painting the upstairs nursery room while my in-laws took care of the trick-or-treaters who came to the door. We've been remodeling for a few months now, in order to get the house ready to put on the market (will post a picture soon). It's improved so much from what it was before.

My 2 yr old nephew made such a cute tiger this year. He stayed out longer then he did the year prior, and by the end of the night he was asking his mommy and daddy to "stay, I be right back" as he saw the other kids going to the door on their own, and he wanted to follow too.

We had discovered at Nikki's birthday party, that he was freaked out by eyeballs falling out of his grandfather's head... even though it was just a little piece of paper that had a circle printed on it... it still freaked him out. So for Halloween, I picked up come chocolate covered caramels that had eyeball printed foil to see what he would do. His grandmother decided to play the trick on him... she put the candy up against her eyelid and hit the back of her head to make it fall out and roll towards him. The best part is the look that he gives you, a sort of disgusted and not sure what to do about it look. He picked it up and gave it back to her, and she pretended to put it back in her eye, when she actually put it back in the candy dish. :) This age is so fun.

Motherhood Maternity...

During the initial interview, Suzette prefaced the interview with "We don't really even consider any applicants who don't have any retail experience, but since you have a background in fashion I wanted to give you a shot." Praise God! Also, the Motherhood stores usually "don't get very busy over the holidays... Easter and Mother's Day are the busiest times of the year," so it awesome that they even considered me over the holidays (since we'll be moving up to Omaha in January to be closer to my hubby's work, and church).

On top of all that they were looking for someone to do the morning shift because they had a lot of closing shift people.... which was perfect because I was looking for a morning/afternoon position so that I could be home to make dinner for my family, and get any chores done before they got home.

Motherhood sounded like it was going to take a long time to go through the process, so I wasn't sure if it would be quick enough before I got hired at the other places, but I really wanted to work there of all places. I just prayed that God would place me where he wanted and it was really amazing to see God's hand working in all this. Suzette the manager was really great at keeping me posted all through the process so I wasn't left hanging. She also warned me when the upper-level manager from Kansas was going to be calling for my phone interview so that I was prepared, I thank God for that!

Praise God!!! I got the job at Motherhood Maternity! Totally an act of God... the other two jobs that I applied for seemed to be on a roll, and then after things were looking good with Motherhood Maternity, the other two places seemed to drop off the face of the earth. They were talking about their pressing need to get people placed before the holidays and we were talking about scheduling, background checks and such but they never called back since the beginning of last week (when all the Motherhood interviews started).

More acts of God to come I'm sure...

Putting the house on the market pt. 2...

As some of you may already know, my in-laws are trying to do some improvements to the house before they put it on the market. One of the projects my husband and I have been helping with is the small middle room upstairs. This is the update from my previous post about the progress made on the room... Now we have the ceiling finished and are now working on putting up the textured wall paper that you can paint on. (the white side is with the wall paper).


It's beginning to look like a fresh canvas again. I can't wait to see a fresh coat of paint on the walls, carpet pulled up and furniture in the room.


The walls are going to be a greenish blue color and the baseboards and trim will be an off white (kind of close to what it is now, but reversed).

Fall is Here!!

Once the temperature starts to get a bit cooler (which this year was Oct. 10) the leaves change colors and start to fall. If the temperature gets too cold all the leaves will fall off and everything looks dead, but if it warms up a bit after the cooler weather, the trees change beautiful vibrant colors before falling and it wont fall as quickly. This week has been really nice and warm, so the leaves look so beautiful and vibrant.


I've been wanting to take pictures of the trees around here while there is still leaves on them... so I finally was able to. Here are some pictures of some of the trees a few blocks away from our house.


In preparation for the fall I've reduced all items in my etsy store $2-$70 off original prices. And I'm also offering a 2 pack special for belly bands. Please feel free to look around and tell your friends about the fall sale.

Happy Autumn everyone!!!

Nikki's Birthday...

My sister-in- law had mentioned to me at Thanksgiving that she had wanted to find some baking stone dishes. Later in the week, after searching on craigslist I stumbled across some pampered chef baking stoneware that had probably never been used. Since I knew that my sister-in-law had wanted them, I was able to make arrangements to pick them up.

On Sunday when we came to the party I had Spencer hide the gift outside behind the patio chair, and I had brought a "fake gift" of a children's coloring book wrapped nicely with a pretty bow on top. When she opened it up with a disappointed look on her face everyone cracked up as she said "oh........ thanks." Then I brought out her real gift and said "here's your real gift." She seemed a lot happier this time. Spencer likes that he's rubbing off on me :)

My in-laws got her a Le Creuset pot but they put it in a box filled with shredded paper (in hopes that their grandson would get into it. Sure enough he did...



Once he got in the box he got a lot quieter...


Once he got a cookie and was in his sugar coma, he didn't care what we did to him after that....

Canadian Thanksgiving pt. 2...

We are so thankful for our family, and all that the Lord has blessed us with this year. Spencer's job is one of our biggest praises, as well as God's provision for our family since we moved out here. Though things might not have happened as speedily as we had wanted them to happen, our sovereign God had an even better plan in His own perfect timing. Praise God that He has our best in mind!


This is one of the pictures of the fries and the winter vegetables before I put them in the oven. The fries are in a ziplock bag, so that they can get evenly coated with olive oil, salt and pepper. The winter vegetables are just cubed carrots, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes with salt, pepper and about 3 tablespoons of olive oil.

The ladies were in the kitchen cooking, while the men were playing Boom Blocks on the Wii.


Since it had snowed earlier that morning, our nephew also got to go play outside in the snow for a bit before dinner.

Over all it was a very nice Thanksgiving. The poutine was a nice compliment to the chickens as well as the yummy green bean casserole and winter vegetables. I ended up forgetting to make the stuffing, but we were ok with out it. Since we did chickens instead of turkey our left overs only lasted us until Sunday afternoon. I was able to make chicken broth from the bones, and now stored in the freezer in 1 and 2 cup bags portions for when I need them.

Early Canadian Thanksgiving and First Snow Fall of 2009...

This morning I woke up and noticed a bit of a white reflection coming from outside the bathroom window. After further investigation I quickly ran back to our bedroom to wake up my husband... "Honey.....(nudge).... honey.... (nudge, nudge) .... there's SNOW outside!!!"

Here's my nephew, he was looking out at the snow as I was snapping a few pictures. He really wanted to go play in the snow when he woke up this morning.

Today we are celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving (which is actually on Monday).... I can't wait to try all the yummy foods! I'm trying the Alton Brown way of cooking the turkey (or in our case chicken, since I couldn't find any turkeys)... where you soak the turkey in a brine over night. It should be interesting. Instead of mashed potatoes this year we are going to try poutine (with shredded mozzarella cheese instead of cheese curds). My sister-in-law is bringing a traditional green bean casserole and then for dessert we are having one of two pumpkin cheesecakes I made... (one pumpkin-banana with a graham cracker crust, the other is a pumpkin with a ginger snap crust). YUM!

Happy early Canadian Thanksgiving and first snow fall everyone!