Good enough

Family Photo session number two...the first one resulted in lots of great individual shots, but not many family ones....

So we planned to reconvene in the cooler weather hoping for a quick session to get a family photo for the year. 

Then Laney grabbed the super hot curling iron just minutes before leaving....ouchie.

So she is in pain and crying in all of these.

This one is as close as we got.

And we'll take it.

Twist on a Pinterest

Another idea that was born with Pinterest and adapted for our house:

I like photo number 4...

...even though I'm embarrassed to jump onto the burlap bandwagon (it's all the craze!).

But I didn't really want to have to throw out the little white pumpkins at the end of the month...

So I just went with painting letters on a burlap banner and pinned it up over my family photo wall. 

I like it.

Next year I am definitely going to add the pine cone garland to the mantle.

I make no promises....as usual.

Gratitude Tree 2.0

I'm in a crafty mood. 

I'm learning to embrace it when it comes, because it typically doesn't last very long. 

Halloween is over and we just put it all away....all FIVE totes of costume and spooky craziness and I had one sad little tote to get out for Thanksgiving. Half of that was filled with an old eighties-style wreath featuring a wooden turkey head.

So I've been on the lookout for some Thanksgiving ideas that I can produce with minimal cost or things I have on hand.

The last couple years we have done the "Thankful Tree" which looks kind of like this: 

But I didn't love having to move it on and off the table for every meal.

I saw this one and I liked the idea of the picture frame and having it be in a less high-traffic area, but I miss the tree part. 

So I was on the lookout for a frame at the thrift store that would let me do a kind of tree-in-a-shadow-box kind of thingy....

Then I found this cool cork board for 3 bucks!!! And I had a 20% off coupon....shebang!

I twisted up some brown lunch bags I had in the pantry and stapled them right to the corkboard to form a tree with several empty branches.

Then I made a little bag out of a couple leftover burlap pendants (stapled together, of course), and filled it up with some dollar store leaves and a box of brass thumbtacks. If I didn't have a sneaky 2 year old and a very capable 4 year old, I would also include a sharpie....but for now I will keep that in a high and top-secret spot.

I love it!

Happy Thanksgiving!

My mom is coming!!!!!

Changing of the guard

Goodbye, 5 totes of costumes and creepy decor!

Goodbye our first ever home-grown jack-o-lantern!

You will be re-purposed into our Nineties Toll Painted Turkey.

Please don't rot too soon. I'm not in the mood to buy any more pumpkins.