The Gingerbread House

 2011 Edition

Last year my mom and I made a new pattern for the gingerbread house. We have been making one ever since I can remember. In the last few years the mentality of it all has changed to "Go Big or Go Home". This year we added a few more things and went with a whole new roof. It was a long process and my mom needs a lot of credit on this one. She has been feeling super sick lately and still powered through it all to keep this tradition alive. So here are a few pictures from Saturday. Special thanks go to Mike, Steve, Dayna and Kate. This was a group effort.

Check out that chocolate rock foundation.

 pretty sweet right?

notice mikes satellite dish hahah

 New flower boxes this year

 we attempted to dormer window this year. It was an architectural challenge but we prevailed.

 Max made a soccer ball....

 Steve and Dayna rocked the chimney.

Thanksgiving Crafts

Yes I made more glitter pumpkins and a new Fall leaf garland for our mantle. It was just meant to be though. I was out shopping and got a whole bag of the smaller pumpkins and the 2 glass beaded ones for 3 dollars. That's a screamin deal folks. I did suffer some serious hot glue burns from this project. That is a lot of leaves on there. Mike got me hooked on the new show Pan Am, so I just plugged away while watching all the episodes. It was so easy as long as you have a paper cutter that scores. I did do it over 2 weeks so if you are going to make one of your own be prepared. I have a few ideas for our Christmas mantle, but since we will be gone in Florida most of the holiday, I am going to have to pull that together ASAP. I have a feeling I will still be using glitter. 

I'm Thankful

During this time of year I am so thankful for my family and all that they do for Mike and I. My parents are so generous and my siblings are the best and so ready to help us out whenever we are in a bind. It's a wonderful time of year to think about all of the blessings we have and this is just one of mine.

My Latest Project

So I made a garland very similar to this for our mantle for Thanksgiving. The only difference is I used a lot more green and I had more variety in my colors. I did use the gold ink pad but a lot of my paper was metallic and it didn't show up as well. I still love it. It was so cheap to make and it looks really pretty with my glitter pumpkins. I will get some pictures up soon once I make a few more finishing touches. 

I was trying to find some pictures to post of anything we have done recently. Yeah you can guess it. I had none. But I did find some from about a month ago when  mike and I were going on a date and decided to document it. So I thought I would throw them on for fun.

There we are in all our glory. I'm making more pillows this week for our couch and possible painting a dresser. If I am really lucky I will make some progress on my Christmas skirt that I started over conference weekend. Yeah it's a very time consuming skirt. You will see why some day.

Hocus Pocus and a Lot of Glitter

These are the things that my Halloween season consisted of. Dayna and I got on a serious DIY kick this year and I totally loved it. My house looked so festive. I have now become motivated to do a mantle for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. We will see how long my enthusiasm lasts on that one. We made our own glitter pumpkins this year which I seriously loved. Clearance pumpkins and half off super fine glitter are pretty much magic words to me right now. We made cute silhouettes of witches and crows. And last but not least we did the cute DIY Halloween banner on Me Oh My Mama. I also  decided to decorate with my fully decked out witch hat from our witches night out at Gardner Village. We also had the pleasure of doing a blast from the past night with Sam and Dave where we watched hocus pocus, ate cookie dough and watched a childhood fav.

Sorry for the very crappy pictures. I ran into the room and took a few in the middle of carving pumpkins

Now for the Activities 

We had our annual pumpkin carving extravaganza ( Doesn't that word make it sound like we went all out) We popped in my spooky sounds CD that my mom gave me my freshman year of college and carved away. Here are some of the results from the photo shoot after. Please excuse the running hair and clothes. It nasty I know.

And of course Dave rocking his sail boat pumpkin

And last but not least our Costumes. Mike found the idea this year. We thought we would go for the theme that has been consuming our lives for the past 6 months... Dental School! So here we are Mr. Tooth and the Tooth fairy.

We might have pulled these costumes together the 3 hours before the Party. There might have been a good amount of hot glue used b/c of the time constraints. We figure we can just reuse the pillow when our kids lose their teeth. I mean who doesn't want a giant tooth to sleep on?

Playing Catch up

Surprise surprise I stink at blogging once again. I have had a serious wake up call over the past few weeks. I have now realized I have about zero personal time in the day. Remember awhile back when I said I was going to try and blog every FHE. Wow I failed miserably at that one. So no more promises about blogging all the time. I'll do it when I can and that's life right? So since the last time I blogged I had my golden birthday, the big 25 and ran a 10k and had another wedding. Life has been craziness. Mike had his first dental school interview at Michigan. It went awesome! We have both been all over the place and realized that we hardly see each other. We have decided this probably needs to change. So lets hope I get better at managing everything I have to do and that I can actually get more pictures up of all the projects I do. I have decorated for Halloween and maybe before that holiday actually rolls around I will have some pictures up. For the time being here are some pictures of what we have been up to.

 The whole group in the muddy finish line

 Steve looks like he is a different race

 Muddy love

 The girls just posin it up

Me being my fierce self . Dayna and kate cheesing it  

 I put this up because it might be one of the worst pictures of Kate and I. I look like I am about to barf and kate is high kick gone wrong. I did get some nice air though.

Just working that mud the best way I know how. 

 Biggest Loser love. I actually kind of freaked out and ran up to Moses and said" Oh my gosh you're Moses." Maybe I was a little star struck.

Hottie washing off 

Kate and I sucked it up and went in the cold showers. It was just a tad bit chilly. 

 The second love of my life at my birthday dinner. Couldn't you just eat those cheeks?

 Girls and Vin

Love. Yeah we really are that cool.

Little Girl Clothes Get Me Every Time

While doing my usual blog scroll through I found this website and just about died at how cute these clothes are. Everyone who has a little girl this Fall should check these outfits out.