Halloween pics

Here are our belated Haloween pictures. The kids made out like bandits between trunk or treat and once around the neighborhood. Drew had so much in his basket the handle broke before we were home. I ended up having to make Ivy's "Dorothy" dress myself, all in 1 day(jumper w/darts in front & back & zipper) since the costume I had bought ended up being way too big and I wasn't able to return it. In case you couldn't tell, Brent was seriously in love with his costume. He even kept the hat on, which amazed me.

More Halloween decorations

Here's our take on these "Spirit Jugs"--originally found here, with all the directions.  http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2010/09/todays-project-spirit-jugs.html

We did google to find all the images. I let the kids pick the pictures & I free-handed them with a sharpie. For the left (Drew's), I reversed the colors of an image I found so the light would shine thru better. It's a mummy, in case it's not that obvious. I chose the middle for Collin, since he was getting to bed. Ivy chose hers & was happy to color it in by herself. The eyebrows were a last minute decision. Hopefully, we'll be thru 1 more gallon of milk by Monday so I can make one more. I cut holes in the back with a utility knife and tried out some colored Christmas lights, since we don't have white or clear Christmas lights.

Haven't made the other Halloween decorations yet, since I discovered the printer does not want to print on anything thicker than regular printer paper. I was hoping to print the images on a heavier paper, but it didn't work out that way. We still may make them, just not till this weekend & then hang them up by the door on Monday.

Halloween decorations

I'm not one for really for decorating for holidays besides Christmas, but I just found these and this is too cute & easy to pass up!

The directions(and printouts) are on this page: http://papercrave.com/paper-crave-halloween-freebies-halloween-garland-two-ways/

Pinterest.com

Just started up a Pinterest account, and let me say this: it is so fun! It's virtual inspiration boards. It's nice because I can put all the things I like together, and find it in one spot. Plus, it's not taking up space in the house and things aren't being thrown away/moved around. I've been "pinning" a lot of home decorating/organizing ideas, clothes ideas, hair ideas, photo layouts, family picture poses/outfit ideas.

Thru that, I found the link to this blog post about finding family picture poses online & making them your own. http://www.homestoriesatoz.com/2011/08/how-to-prepare-for-fabulous-family-pictures-family-pictures.html

A tip I found there was to google "what to wear photography" and click images, and up will come hundreds of coordinating outfits for the whole family. One thing I have noticed, as far as the decorating & the fashion, I like nice stuff. It just doesn't look that way in all of our house yet, or the way I dress. I'm still learning to find my way/style. You'd think at 30, I'd have more figured out by now, but that's not the case. Also, it's hard to have nice stuff & still have it be nice and be kid-friendly. I think I also have mildly expensive taste, which is why we don't have a lot of "nice" stuff. lol

Anyway, here's the link to my Pinterest account. If anyone's interested to make one for themselves, I can email an invite.

http://pinterest.com/icab/

P.S. "Icab" has a double meaning. First being, the initials of all the kids. Second, somedays I feel like I'm a chauffer transporting kids from one place to another.

Shooting at Seal Beach hair salon today

For those who aren't local, this is about 10 miles from our home. So tragic this happened. The irony of the situation is that I was at another hair salon today just 2.5 miles away and had just left the area less than 30 minutes before this happened, to go get kids out of school--early outs this week. Didn't have my cell phone with me at the time, but on Tom's way home from work this was all over the news and called to check on me. We're sad it happened in such a nice, quiet area but so incredibly thankful that I'm okay and that the salon I went to was not where the shooting took place--especially since I had my consult today & found a really good stylist! From the tidbits I have heard/read  from people who are familiar with the salon involved, is that the shooter was an ex-husband or soon to be ex-husband of one of the stylist. What a poor choice that man made to involve so many people. Now the owners of the salon, as well as others, are dead.

http://news.yahoo.com/8-killed-southern-california-salon-shooting-234451134.html

So cool!

One of my sisters found this online. It shows 13 pieces of clothing(2 are shoes) and how to mix up the pieces for a whole month! I'm going to have to go through my warddrobe & pare down. This is great for the warddrobe challenged like me. Here's the link:

http://bananarepublic.gap.com/browse/category.do?cid=72560


Here are a few screenshots I saved.

The calendar:

Halloween

Can't believe it's almost time for Halloween again. Here were the kids' costumes last year. We had Collin as Larry the Cucumber(Veggie Tales), Drew as Bob the Tomato(Veggie Tales), Brent was a "top banana"--found at Burlington Coat Factory when I was looking for something else, and Ivy was a "Geisha girl"--I made the kimono and belt.

This year, Brent will be a scarecrow, and Drew wants to be a lion(we have a vest thing from when Collin was younger but he really didn't like it). Not sure what Ivy will dress up as, maybe Dorothy from Wizard of Oz since we'll have a scarecrow & lion? Collin will likely be Larry the Cucumber again because the costume is so tall and he doesn't have any qualms with it.

Here's the picture of Brent's costume:

Here's the one picture I have of Collin with the lion costume from four years ago.