Around our house this fall

It's fall.  My favorite season of the year.  I love the colors, the decorations, the yummy food, the cooler weather etc. etc. etc.  This year it has been fun because we have been redecorating our formal living room and also have updated our fall decorations.  My goal is to use cream, neutrals, teal and brown in the living room.  I definitely want it to have a sort of shabby chic feel.  It has a way to go but so far I have been really happy with the way it is turning out.  Deke built me this beautiful mantle shelf shown above.  It is so pretty and it is always so neat to me that my hubby has so many neat talents.  Thanks to Pinterest I got motivated and made a fun vinyl chalkboard menu board to keep track of our meals for the week.  It was super easy to make and now I just need to work on my decorative handwriting to make it look neat.  

We bought this fun hutch off of craigslist and Deke installed some lights in it on a dimmer switch.  I love having it lit up at night and it has really brightened up the room.

I found this really nice wooden gathering box at an antique mall, added some candles and fall foliage and it has been great to go across the piano.  After the holidays I am going to try to put some greenery in it.

Fun scrapbook paper banner that we made two weeks ago at a RS activity.  Seriously so simple and yet I think really cute.

Fun decorative pumpkin I made last year....

One of the kids favorite decorations our huge spider web and big inflatable spider.  The kids love this spider every year.

I love pumpkins.  I think that everytime I go to the grocery store I come home with another one.  I love that each one is a different shade or has a unique stem.  Deke has been teasing me saying no more pumpkins but I keep finding ones that are just too great to not bring home :) :)

Thank you again Pinterest for the fun crafting ideas.  Made this letter B frame with some burlap and scrapbook flowers.  Again really simple to make and I love the way it turned out.

We got a new couch in here that is much more neutral and yet lightens up the room.

We painted the walls in here a fun teal shade.  For some reason in the pictures it actually looks kind of blue but it actually is teal.  We have had so much fun decorating this room.  I need to find a neat coffee table and there are still lots of little odds and ends stuff to get to wrap up this room but so far it is coming together and it has been a lot of fun to work on together.  I love it!!!

My favorite Halloween spider.

I LOVE dry erase markers.  My kids love not only to write on the white board with them but even more fun to get to make murals all over the sliding glass doors heading outside.  It is always so neat to me to watch  my children's imagination and creativity develop through artwork.  When scribbles start to actually take the form of things that are recognizable.  When there are characteristics that are identifiable or found in the right places.  This is the stage Emma is in.  She can now stay in the lines in a coloring book and she loves to color.      Now when she draws something she wants to tell me what it is and some things are starting to actually look somewhat like what she says it is.  This morning in one of her Ariel dress ups she asked to color with markers and sat down at the window and went to work.  I told her to color me something for Halloween.  After a few minutes I saw her little drawing emerging and asked her what she had made for me.  "Mom, me made a spider for you."  She told me grinning.  "Its a pooky one Mom" she added. 

I looked down and smiled at what I saw.............

"Here is the eyes, and the mouth.  There is hims legs and legs and legs."  She told me as she pointed each part out.  It made me smile.  This is the first animal that she has ever drawn that actually could look like a little spider.  I love that she knew that spiders were for Halloween, that she told me he was a spooky one and that she did such a cute little rendition of one.  I love this stuff.

So I sat and watched my sweet toddler girl sit by the window and draw to her hearts content.  She asked me to draw with her and I asked what she wanted me to draw.  Her request was a cupcake and so I busted out a red marker and quickly drew a very lame cupcake with a cherry on top.  I told her to make a baby cupcake next to mine and she grabbed a blue marker and started drawing.  It is hard to see in the picture but if you look close to the left of my drawing you'll see it.  If you look closely you'll see how she tried to mimick the shape and draw the lines on the cupcake liner.  Can you see her little circle for her cherry and tiny line for her stem.  ADORABLE.  She did such a good job trying to recreate what I had drawn I was really impressed for a two year old.

I couldn't help but laugh as she stood up, adjusted her mermaid tail and continued on her way.  I love these little moments.  They really are the best.

Washin the car

It still doesn't feel like fall to me yet but it is getting there.  It is nice that now in the mornings and evenings at least I can open up the windows and let some outside air in.  I wish that it was cool enough to start wearing pants and lightweight jackets but no luck so far.  However getting to at least  be able to have my kids be outside after months of being cooped up in the air conditioning is wonderful.  The other day Deke did an awesome head to toe in and out of the van getting it ready for baby.  He had all the kids come out to help and they more than willingly obliged.

 Out they each ran to find a scrubber and get busy.  Emma was extremely excited to help with this task and Hunter of course getting older was not quite as excited about the prospect of helping wash the car.  As I sat there and watched them scrub together and listened to the girls squeal as Deke would "accidentally" spray them with the hose it reminded me of my dad.

 Sunny days as a kid where dad would have us come out and help wash the car and we would have so much fun washing/playing around with the suds and the water.  He would spray us and we would run screaming not to get our hair wet but actually loving every second of it.  Took me back and made me smile.

 They did a great job and about halfway through the older two had abandoned their posts and headed out on their bikes.  Emma right in the age of loving to be a helper with anything finished the whole car right by daddy's side.  It cracks me up that some days when I am cleaning the house and she asks to help if I hand her a disinfectant wipe she will spend thirty plus minutes wiping every surface within her reaching range.

 Clean car, cute kids, trip down memory lane.  A nice way to spend an afternoon working together.