Back To School Party

Last Friday I threw a "Back to School" party for my three kiddos.  

You see, we have decided to home school for the next couple of years.  

Yup.  

This decision kind of came out of the blue for us.  

A decision I will explain in my next post (along with a tour of our new school room, errr ...area).  

But anyway, it was a hard but happy first week at school for my children as well as for myself.  

So I thought a party was just what we needed to start the year out on a high note.

The invitations given to several of our best-est friends, were about as simple as they come.

The supplies included black construction paper + white crayola crayons. 

That's it.  

Together those supplies work like magic to give the subtle illusion of a chalkboard.  

(Very back to school-like.)

 The setting was simple.  Just a big green back yard and a picnic table full of goodies.

After school snacks included buttery microwave popcorn... 

sprinkled with gummy worms, loaded into a brown paper sack, cut short.

Apples and juice boxes were included too.

My favorite party accent were these "lined paper" paper napkins I picked up in Target's dollar section.  Seriously.

I still can't get over how cute they are.

My children and their school friends, climbed trees, played tag, ate and ate and ate, played minute to win it games with shaving cream, and giggled and screamed LOTS like children seem to do when they're together in bunches.  It was a blast.

************************************

Come back later this week to see our new home school room!

Blessings

"When Upon life's billows you are tempest tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings;
name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.
... So amid the conflict, whether great or small
Do not be discouraged;
God is over all.
Count your many blessings;
angles will attend..."
~ {Hymn:  Count Your Many Blessings, by Johnson Oatman Jr.}

This song pretty much sums up how I've felt this past week, especially because of some events that have come to pass in the state that I live in.  Times are changing, morals are fading, but life goes on and there is still so much good in my life and that is what I need to focus on.

It's so fitting that this is a month that we especially look for those things we are thankful for.

So, in no particular order, these are the happy blessings in my life that I am so very thankful for:

*Christmas Songs in November

*The Book of Mormon

*Hot Chocolate

*My Family (three healthy, beautiful children and a very supportive husband)

*A cozy home

*Prayer

*Clearance racks at Target

*Fall colors & changing seasons

*The Temple

*Electricity

*Chocolate Chip cookies, fresh from the oven

*Fall Scented Candles

*Great Friends

*Cars

*A healthy body

*Extended Family Members

*My Husband's Job

*Food in my pantry

*Thrift Stores

*The Internet

*A Closet Full of Clothes

*Household Appliances (Dishwasher, Washers, Dryers, etc.)

*A Safe Neighborhood to Live In

*My Savior

*Date Nights with My Husband

*Sleep

*The Opportunity to be a Stay at Home Mom

*Classic Chick Flicks

*Modern Medicine

*Cameras to Capture Favorite Memories

*Our Family Dog, Paco

I wish each one of you a month full of blessings! 

Can you believe that Thanksgiving is only two weeks away?  

This month is moving so crazy fast!

Happy Fall

:: Fall ::

cool crisp mornings, bright orange pumpkins, happy yellow mums, school routines, hot chocolate, breezy evening walks, comfy warm blankets, mulled cider scented candles, happy holidays and family gatherings, new school supplies, candy corn, college football, soft cardigans, yellow/orange/red leaves fluttering and falling, corn mazes, and pumpkin pie.

I look forward to fall all year long.  

For me, it is the happiest season, filled with so many of my favorite things.

Happy Fall my friends!

(well, ...almost)

Linked here:  Centsational Girl

Decorating for November

Before November's completely over and we've all moved onto December and Christmas, I just wanted to share with you the little bits of decor I have up for November.

It really didn't change a ton from what I had up in October.

It's just less Halloween oriented and more fall-nature / thankful oriented.

November Mantle:

- Vases filled with corn stalk tassels {These were actually from last years corn stalks.  I had wrapped them carefully in grocery bags and saved them in my "fall decorating" box.}

- Hurricanes filled with cinnamon pine cones {kept from last year}.

- Crow silhouette plates {tutorial found here}.

 

- Green, Orange, and white pumpkins from the grocery store

- The last thing I added to my November Mantle was the burlap Give Thanks pendant banner.

I started the makings of this banner last month during a craft night I held at my house.

November Banister:

Leaf garland makes this banister festive.  {garland tutorial found here}.

November Reminder.

This is a great reminder all the time, actually.

So I'll probably leave it up all year long.

I put this frame all together today.  The frame I found at Michael's.  It was originally $20.99.  But it was missing the glass so it was on clearance for $5.49.   

I wrapped some burlap around the cardboard backing of the frame and then fit the frame back on top of it.  I used stencils {purchased previously at Michael's}, to say "Count Your Blessings" on the burlap.

I love the simplicity of this project and I love the thankful message it displays too.

So there you have it!  There's my decorating for November.

Happy Tuesday Everyone!

Linked Here:  Blue Cricket Design, Between U & Me

A Month of Gratitude - Day 5

{source}

Day 5 :: I'm thankful for my friends.

Old friends, new friends, and future friends.

They're all wonderful. 

Life wouldn't be as good as it is without them.

"A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be."

- Douglas Pagels

 

p.s.  Speaking of friends...I'm having another craft night. {Notice the sidebar on the right?}  Bring a craft to work on, and if you want, a snack to share.  It's such a fun way to spend time with friends.  Sometimes more talking goes on that crafting.  

But who cares, right?

We all have fun.

If you're local, I'd love to chat with you there. 

It's Tuesday, November 15th @ 7pm.

My house.

Email me for directions if you need them.

If you're not local, hosting a craft night or book group, or any other kind of friend get together is a great way to strengthen old friendships and make new ones too.

:)

A Month of Gratitude - Day 4

Recording what I'm grateful for this month has been an amazing exercise for the soul. 

As I go about each day, I've been realizing that I could easily post way more than one thing a day.
Life is good.  Maybe better than I thought.

But for time's sake, I'll keep posting just one thing per day.

So for today...I'm grateful for my town.

{A few months ago, I framed a map of our town and hung it in our living room ...as seen in the picture above.}

Why I'm grateful for my town:

It's small.

It's family oriented.

The people are kind.

The schools are great.

Every time I drive to the grocery store, I get to pass by horses. {Who doesn't love looking at horses?}

While it is small it is still neck and neck to other bigger towns so... only a short 10-15 minute drive and I'm at the mall or just about any other fun shopping store.

I love our town.

It's the perfect place for my husband and I to raise our three children.

What are you grateful for today?

A Month of Gratitude - Day 3

Home.

There really is no place like home.

Although I could count on my fingers and toes, plus your fingers and toes, all the many ways it's not physically perfect, it's imperfectly perfect to me in so many ways.

While our homes are obviously a place where we dwell to be protected from the outside elements {rain, wind, snow, heat, etc.}, our homes are so much more than that too. 

Home is where we find love and acceptance. 

It's a classroom for lessons like patience, humility, charity, and hard work. 

It's filled with comfort, memories, and laughter. 

Home is  heaven on earth.

I'm so grateful to have a house I can call home.

{Click here and here to read more posts on gratitude.}

A Month of Gratitude - Day 2

{source}

I am grateful that my husband has a good job. 
Many people these days are out of work.  So I know the fact that my husband has a job is a great blessing. 

His job provides well for our family and allows me to stay in the home to take care of our little family. 

I always wanted to be a stay at home mom. 

My whole life. 

I even majored in Marriage, Family, and Human Development at BYU.  {And if it didn't pan out for me to marry and have a family right away, I was going to further my degree and be a family counselor.}

My husband's good job provides our family with all the necessities of life and allows me to live out my dream.

What a blessing!

Carving Jack o'lanterns

Last night was a fun, fall, family night.

Full of tradition.

Contrary to what I hoped, it wasn't going to work out for us this year to go to a local pumpkin patch.  But last night, I think the kiddos had just as much fun as we headed just around the corner to our local grocery store to pick out pumpkins.  After the pumpkins were picked, we headed home, covered the table with plastic {aka: grocery bags}, and got to work. 

Scraping out the "guts" of each pumpkin was really slimy lots of fun.

{Eew, yuck!}

When it came to carving time, my husband was the expert helper in that department.  And while he was busy helping each kiddo carve their pumpkin, I was busy in the kitchen.  I separated the pumpkin seeds from the "guts" and  used {this} recipe to make roasted pumpkin seeds.  {Yum!}  They turned out great! The kiddos enjoyed them as a special treat in their school lunches today too.

And ...this was the final result of all our hard work.

Aren't these jack o'lanterns so fun???

{Jack o'lantern inspiration found here.} 

I love holiday traditions!

Nice Neighbors are the Best

So it's no secret, here on this blog, that my home is a fixer upper.  {And one of these days I'll get around to creating a link that shows all the before and "in-progress" photos of all the different rooms in my home.}  But one of the reasons my husband and I chose our fixer upper, verses a new build, was because of the area that the home was in and the nice, well established neighbors that would surround us.  Seriously, they are the best.  Totally down to earth, nice, caring people.  I love that.

This weekend I had plans of going with the whole family to a local u-pick pumpkin patch.  Each of us would be able to pick out our own perfect pumpkin, that at the end of the month, we would get to carve into a jack-o-lantern.  In addition to picking out perfect pumpkins at the pumpkin patch, I was going to pick out some fun lumpy gourds to use as fall decorations around our home.  

However, I made these plans in my head before I realized it was General Conference this weekend.  

{One of my favorite weekends of all time!  How could I forget?}

So the pumpkin patch trip was put off until later this next week, {and I promise I'll show you what we end up picking :) }.

Fortunately though, I have such sweet neighbors.  One of them, not even knowing beforehand that we had cancelled our plans of going to a pumpkin patch, dropped by with a whole grocery sack full of those little pumpkins pictured in the bowl on my kitchen table above.  These pumpkins are so small, that at first I thought they were fake.  But they aren't.  My neighbor grew them right in her very own backyard!

I love the addition of fall that these pumpkins bring to my small "in-progress" dining room.  

I am also so grateful for such a thoughtful and attentive neighbor.  

I hope my family can be as charitable to all our neighbors as they are to us. 

Simple Fall/Hallowen Mantle

This morning the leaves on the trees outside my window are rustling in the wind, the sky is gray, and the air is cool.  {luckily I took this picture last week when the sun was still shinning!}  It definitely feels like a fall day, the first one of the year {so exciting!}.  I'm looking forward to baking something yummy in the oven later this afternoon to warm the house up and welcome my kiddos home from school.  I LOVE this time of year!

I recently decorated my mantle for fall...well mostly for Halloween.  After October 31st, I'll change some of the decor out to reflect more of a harvest/Thanksgiving theme.  Anyway, this is what I've done for now:

{A lot of this I had from last year, as seen HERE, except this year I get to decorate it on my newly remodeled mantle --my husband built it last December}.

+ Black spray painted branches from the back yard in clearance vases from Michael's

+ A pair of Goodwill hurricanes filled with about four big bags of candy corn and labeled "Pumpkin Teeth"

+ Two Goodwill plates, spray painted white with a mod podged black crow that I found online.  {just googled black crow and this image came up right away}

Simple right?  I love simple.  

This weekend our family is going to head down to a local u-pick pumpkin patch to pick a variety of pumpkins and fun lumpy gourds and I'll add those to the large galvanized bucket I have sitting on the hearth of the fireplace.  I can't wait!

Isn't fall the best??? 

Today I'm joining Layla's Fall Link Party.  Check it out for some amazing fall inspiration!

Apple + Peach Picking

Picking apples and peaches has become one of my most favorite fall traditions.

Earlier this week, I loaded my three year old in the car, picked up the older two after school got out, and headed to a local u-pick apple + peach orchard.  It was a good ninety degrees or more outside, but it was still so much fun.

This lovely lady was my fastest picker. {BTW, she got new glasses a few weeks ago.  So cute!}

{LOL. Don't be fooled by my little man's funny little face.  He was loving it out here!  But when I ask him to smile... this is what he gives me.}

My kiddos favorite apples to pick were the small "baby" ones because they thought they would be perfect for their school lunches.  I couldn't agree more.  That's my kind of "fruit snack". {hopefully my children don't read this because they would totally disagree.  :) }

 If you'd like to have the fun experience of picking your own fresh fruit, check out pickyourowndotorg  to find an orchard or farm near you.

p.s. - today I made peach cobbler out of some of my peaches using this yummy recipe.  {we all had seconds!}

Hey There, September!

This big fella recently found it's way into our home from the garden.  

Last year our garden was full of pumpkins, so many that I was giving them away because I was running out of places to put them!

This year we may only be blessed with just this one. 

For some reason the bugs are getting to our pumpkins before we do and eating them {yuck}!
Oh-well.

Can you believe it's September already?

Is it just me or does it feel like this month just appeared out of no where?

Don't get me wrong, fall is my favorite.

But because it took forever for it to feel like summer around here, it seems a little strange that fall is almost literally just around the corner.

But it's exciting nonetheless, so...

I celebrated this lovely new month by buying a small fall smelling candle at Walmart this morning.  

It's called Cinnamon Spice Cookies by Simple Living and was only a whopping 89 cents!

Cheap.  But it smells delish!

It's just what I need to put me in the fall mood!

How about you?  Are you ready for fall???

Celebrate the First Month Back at School with Apple Stix

Today, two out of my three kiddos went back to school. 

New teachers, some new friends, new curriculum, and new classroom rules.

Talk about a fun, but exhausting day.

So I decided to make an extra special after school snack to celebrate all their new fun experiences today... Rice Krispy apples on a stick, a.k.a. apple stix.

I made these almost exactly the same way I made Trix on stix.

Only these are made with Rice Krispy cereal instead of Trix and I added some red dye into the mix to color them red...-ish.  

Green gummy fruit slices were cut in half and pushed down onto the top of the Rice Krispy treat to look like a leaf.  And then the stick that you eat this yummy treat on acts as the apples looooooong stem.  :)

These treats were a huge hit for the kiddos when they arrived home today.  

Apple stix would also be a fun treat to serve at a fall party.

If you added orange food coloring instead of red, they could even be pumpkins!

Oh just think of all the possibilities!!!

Are your kids back at school already?
I'm excited to get back into a routine with school back in session.
But I'll admit, it feels a little quiet here with two of my kiddos gone all day and I miss them.

linked here:  Just a Girl

Fall Favorites

Last week my girls and I went apple picking with my sister and my two nieces.

The weather was nice and crisp and cool.

Perfect.

I could have wondered through the shady apple orchard for hours.

It was beautiful

and the apples were/are delicious...

better than anything I've ever bought from a grocery store.

I am loving this time of year!!!

What are some of your favorite things to do in the Fall?

~Robin

Fall wreath

Making a wreath from scratch is something that has always been soooo intimidating to me.

{I know that's such a silly fear to have.}

Last night I decided to conquer this tiny little wreath making fear of mine.

And guess what?

It wasn't so bad!

I started with a twiggy round wreath and two packages of fall leaves.

{The leaves were gifted to me by a very lovely neighbor of mine who knows I like to create things.}

I put a small dab of hot glue on each leaf and just kept layering them.

It was crazy easy!  Nothing to be afraid of.

So if you have homemade wreath fear like I did, conquer your fear and just make one!

You'll be surprised what you're really capable of!!!

On another note, I had a fabulous weekend this last week.

My husband and I dropped our three kiddos off at my parents house for most of the weekend and took off for our FIRST ever overnight weekend without the kids.

Our FIRST!

I have a degree in marriage and family and I so know better than this!

We should have taken one of these trips a loooong time ago.

In fact, we should have taken at least eight of them by now.

{Cause we've been married almost nine years!  It has been suggested that married couples should have at least one overnight trip without any kids at least once a year to keep the relationship strong.}

We had such a fun time!

I'm so glad I am married to my best friend.

What to do with Fall leaves...

One of my favorite things about the Fall season is watching the leaves change colors.

They are beeeeauuutiful!

Red, orange, yellow!  What a loving Father in Heaven we have to give us the beauty of these colors in nature and to let us enjoy them!

I have some great memories when I was younger of making giant leaf piles with all the fallen leaves around my cousins front yard and then taking turns running and jumping into them.

Now that I'm a mom, I get to make giant leaf piles for my kids to jump into.

It's so fun!

The other day I also found some other ideas for Fall leaves... besides jumping into them.

Display them in your home! 

Find some small glass bottles or vases, go on a little nature walk at a park or around your neighborhood, and pick up some leaves or small branches off the ground and make a cute little centerpiece with them.

Why not enjoy nature inside too!

{image:  Better Homes and Gardens}

Make A Decoupaged Leaf Alphabet

Gather a bunch of fallen leaves and mod podge them to card stock in the shape of animals or objects that start with all the different letters of the alphabet. 

This would be such a fun project to do on a rainy day with my kids!

I think I'm going to have to try it.

{image:  Martha Stewart.com}

Felt Leaf Pillow

Find a really pretty fall leaf and use it as inspiration for a fall pillow!

Cut some fall colored felt into the shape of a leaf and stitch it onto a plain pillow.

What a nice way to cozy up a space for the fall holidays ahead!

{image:  Better Homes and Gardens}

***Also, check back this weekend to see a fun DIY storage solution project that I've been working on!

DIY White Pumpkins

image: Midwest Living

I heart white pumpkins.

However, we only planted the orange kind this year in our garden.

So my diy solution to having a mixture of both orange and white pumpkins was to simply take a couple of orange pumpkins and spray paint them white!

This is such a simple project!!!

I bought one can of Krylon semi-gloss in ivory.

{A little off white.}

I taped off the stem of each pumpkin first, then sprayed each pumpkin with a white primer.

I waited about 15-20 minutes, and then sprayed both pumpkins with about two coats of the ivory paint.

Here's the finished product!

{I know you're supposed to group objects in odd numbers when decorating, but I'm still waiting for more pumpkins to be ready from the garden.  So this is it for now.}

It's beginning to feel more and more like fall around this neck of the woods!

Linked to these lovely blogs:  Making the World Cuter, Sumo's Sweet Stuff, Skip to my Lou, Keeping it simple, Hope Studios, My Backyard Eden, Someday Crafts, Blue Cricket Design, Trendy Treehouse, Somewhat Simple, Fireflies and Jellybeans, Tatertots and Jello, The Shabby Nest

Reversible Flower Pot

When we moved into our house, the previous owners left a few old dirty flower pots on the back deck.

I was THRILLED because I knew that with a little TLC they could look great.

I don't have a before picture, but this pot used to be dingy white.

I spray painted it with some Walmart $1.00 black gloss spray paint, and added about three bunches of orange flowers from the dollar tree.

Then I used some left over white paint and painted our house numbers on one side and painted "BOO!" on the other side.  I'll turn the flower pot over to the BOO side when it gets a little closer to Halloween.  But for now, the house number side works great for late summer/fall.

:: one side ::

:: other side ::

one old pot :: two great looks

Linked to these lovely blogs: Tidy Mom, The Shabby Nest, It's FUN to craft, Tatertots and Jello, C.R.A.F.T.

Easy Fall Garland

Fall is my favorite.

I know it's not quite here yet, but it's close.

Last night I made some fall garland because I just can't hardly wait to get started on decorating my home for Fall.

If you'd like to make some fall garland too this is what you'll need:

jute:  Home Depot:  $2.24

fake fall leaves:  Dollar Tree:  $1.00

scissors:  in your home somewhere:  free

First, measure how long you want your garland to be and cut the jute about 12 inches longer than that.

The reason I recommend doing that is because as you're threading it through the leaves, it sometimes frays a bit.  So I kept trimming it so I would have a sharper end to make threading it through easier.

***Note:  My mom read this and she said you can also wrap tape around the end of the jute to make it easier to thread through the leaves...duh, why didn't I think of that!

To make the holes for the jute to thread through, I cut two little slits in each leaf and pulled the jute in and out that way.

After you thread as many leaves as you want through the jute, the next step is finding a place to hang it!  Fun, fun!

I used tape to hang mine up.  It's clear.  It sticks. It works.

Happy Fall...

.

.

.

almost!

{Look what else snuck into the house from our garden. Hee hee!}

Linked to:  Making the World Cuter, Lucky Star Lane, Thrifty Decor Chick, The Shabby Nest, Fingerprints on the Fridge, Tidy Mom, Tatertots and Jello