Sweet girls and a gift

 The girls got some "new" dresses the other day from their Nana and wanted to show them off. 

In other news, my dear friend Bonnie had a birthday this week. I have know for awhile now that her camera case has been a sock. Our mutual dear friend Melissa has scolded my several times for allowing Bon to keep her camera in a sock when she has such a crafty friend like me. Bonnie maintained that she liked her sock, so I hope she doesn't mind my replacement. I am not too familiar with using piping, so I was pleased at how it turned out. It took a little trial and error, but I think it really made a more professional-looking case. My only concern is that her camera fits! If not, I guess she can find something else to protect and treasure in it.

Halloween "Smookies"

My girls were so into Halloween this year! It was a lot of fun to see them so excited. I always loved Halloween growing up. Next to Christmas it was my favorite. My mom and I would scheme and think of creative costumes for her to create. Over the years I was a salad, buffalo, a tube of toothpaste, to name a few. Before they had their own say in what costumes they would be, my girls were a turtle, a skunk, a pea pod, and a duck cracking out of it's shell. Last year they were both fairies. Boring. This year, Maggie kept saying she was going to be Minnie Mouse, but in September suddenly changed to Dolphin Fairy.  You've all heard of that, right? Well, in Maggie's mind it means a blue fairy. Boring. Oh well, I guess the holiday is not all about me anymore. ;) Lila chose to be a cheetah. I had already made her a cheetah costume for the dress up box last Christmas, so she put it to good use. Cam painted her face.

 

Living in a rural area, we’ve never tried to trick-or-treat near our home. We’ve had the tradition of going to my in-laws’ neighborhood which just so happens to be the neighborhood I grew up in. It’s a pretty, well-lit area with some of the folks still around from my childhood. We order pizza and all the grandparents come over for the celebration. After pizza, we make the trick-or-treat rounds. It has been really fun to see my girls growing up each Halloween. This year, no one needed to be carried. They walked to the doors by themselves and knew just what to do. They were both so excited that they may have forgotten their thank you’s a few times. We made the neighborhood loop and came back to Nana’s homemade hot chocolate with whipped cream and a fire in the hearth. We snuggled in to watch the Charlie Brown Halloween movie. All in all, a very fun evening.

Maggie refused to wear her wig for actual trick-or-treating, so Mimi wore it.

 

The weekend prior to Halloween, we hosted a party at our home. The girls and I brainstormed all kinds of fun decorations and activities. We pored over Pinterest and had a great time coming up with food, beverage and fun. The weather was fairly cooperative that day. Cam made a fire out front and it was nice to have a warm respite. Lila and Maggie spent the morning at Mimi’s while Nana helped me decorate. When Lila and Maggie got home, they *loved* the decorations! The guests brought some spooky food and the kids came decked out in costume.   

 

Our wooden bear "Fuzzy Wuzzy" even dressed up

Opa forgot his Cyclops hood, so a painted eye will have to do.

Cece the pink flamingo

 

 

Lila had just gone to friend’s birthday party with a scavenger hunt and she thought it was the best thing ever. She thought we definitely needed one for our party. “We can do a scavenger hunt where people are DIEING , mommy!”. I nixed that idea and we ended up searching for parts of a skeleton I named “Boney Woney”. The clues were rhyming and had them criss-crossing the yard finding his legs, arms, torso, and head. The readers of the bunch read the clues. The sweetest part of this was when one of the girls wanted to give everyone a turn to read, so she whispered the words into another child’s ear so she could “read” it to the group. How very inclusive. Way to go, Mama Rhonda for raising a thoughtful girl. Cam did a hay ride, we ate, we ate apples off strings, the kids ran around like ghouls. Success.

Baby stuff

I've been churning out baby gifts left and right lately! Here are a few of the hat/bootie combos that I've made for some special little babies. I also made mock Moby wrap or "Feauxby Wrap" for Cam's cousin's new baby. Busy, busy, busy! I do love homemade gifts. I shopped from my stash for these. Personally, I like to add colors other than pink and blue to baby goodies.

Pigeon Roost Massacre

Wow, I am so far behind! It was early September when we headed up to Scottsburg, Indiana to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Pigeon Roost Massacre. Cam can trace his lineage back to survivors from that awful day. We decided to dress in period garb and had a good time doing it. I whipped up my dress, apron, bonnet, the girls' aprons, and Cam's drop-front britches in the weeks leading up to it. We are posing in front of the cabin they dedicated during the event. We could have moved right in. 

The week prior, we had gone to the New Albany Library to make a corn husk doll in one of their family craft activities. My girls both really enjoyed it. Lila thought it was a great addition to her costume for these pictures, but decided not to take it with her to the event for fear she'd lose it.

Maggie preferred to wear her zebra dress from Meijer, but it only took the bribe of cake for her to do a quick wardrobe change into her "Mary costume".

It was a pitch-in event, so we brought a blanket and had a lovely picnic with Nana, Opa, and Poppy before Maggie wanted to change back to modern clothes.

Camper Fun

See her "wings"?

 We took out the '69 Lakeland camper we've been working on AKA,"The Hen House" last weekend to a music get together right down the road. There was a good chance of storms and we thought it might be nice to try the old girl out before we sold her. Earlier this year we bought two vintage campers to restore and "cuten up" to sell them. So far, we are super close to having this one completed. We are waiting on some paper work to be finalized, and then she's going up on Craigslist.

The four-of-us slept very comfortably. Well, actually, Cam didn't stop pickin' until about 2am and then drove home to milk the goats at 5:30, so he didn't sleep much at all. But, the girls and I slept great.

The music went on 'til the wee hours. The music drifted down over the hill and to our little home for the evening. It was quite a pleasant way to drift off to sleep.

TOP SECRET!

 This is Maggie's "sneaky face".

We are headed to a special four-year-old's birthday party this weekend who will refer to as "Special Agent M". Agent M is celebrating his birthday at a super hero party. I was trying to decide what to bring Agent M and happened to peruse his mother's Pinterest page. How handy is it that I can browse ideas from Agent M's mom!? I deduced some very important information about him.

1) He's into the whole 'stache craze.

2) He's a unique fella, just like his momma

3) He can dig on handmade gifts

Mom had pinned this to her Pinterest page which looked very intriguing, right up my alley, something I could run with, and very inexpensive which is always a plus. I henceforth set to work constructing a spy kit.

 Maggie modeled the disguises for me.I had to tell you who it was, because I'm sure you wouldn't have recognized her if I hadn't. Don't be thrown off, it really is her.

ZZ Top disguise

 

With this one I was trying to match Agent M's pater familias. Do you think I got it? 

The whole project kind of puts me in the mind of Where in the World is Carmen San Diego the computer game. Remember it? On floppy disk?

 Every good spy needs a place to file away evidence, so I made these mini-folders, just the right size for the spy notebook pages. I made them from full-size file folders, just cut down and rounded the top. I used a stamp set similar to this one that just has the alphabet and I can spell anything I want to stamp the top of the folders.

 We happened to be going through all our books and VHS tapes yesterday (wow, I've  mentioned two very old school technologies in this post, but at least I didn't mention that we still have cassette tapes...doh!) and were getting rid of this copy of The Andromeda Strain. I thought it looked like a very inconspicuous title for a four-year-old secret agent to be carrying around, no one would be the wiser that there's actually....

A SECRET COMPARTMENT INSIDE!!! Ok, so I've always thought these were really cool. And, I'm sure it would come in handy for a spy. I also made a little Secret Agent ID for Agent M with a pic of him looking very inconspicuous and spy-y in some cool shades. Where did I find such a picture you might ask? Facebook. I love being able to find exactly what I'm looking for without having to bother the parental units! Facebook is good for something other than political rants and corny quotes! Who knew?