Pumpkin Carving!

Yesterday we carved our pumpkins as a family! Usually we carve with Mike's siblings and their boyfriends but things have been a little crazy lately! I'm sure we will continue the tradition next year! Here are some pictures:

She didn't cry when she put her hand in the pumpkin, but she didn't really like it. All she wanted to do was to eat any part of the pumpkin she could!

 It was a fun afternoon! Look how bad my pumpkin turned out! I had a little booboo with the knife so my pumpkin ended up with a gigantic nose! hahahah. We usually use pumpkin carving kits with those little knives..I used a steak knife. Bad choice. hahah. Mike had the good knife! (Obviously) he also carved Addy's little pumpkin! Super cute!

I also thought I should show you Adalyn's Halloween basket. I have had fun making little baskets for her for each holiday! Here are her Valentine's Day and Easter baskets! It is getting easier to put stuff in the baskets because she is getting so big and pretty much eating everything now!

Here is her basket:

In the basket we have a Halloween book (I have included a book in every basket! I lovelovelove books!), a pack of Goldfish, some socks, a ghost puppet, some hair clips and a new pair of slippers. They are pink cats and are super cute. She had a pair of these already but I lost one of them!  Cute basket, right?!

I have loved every single minute of the month of October. It has been lots of fun doing crafts and dressing the babe up. I can't wait for CHRISTMAS! I will be working so I won't have as much time to do all this fun stuff...but we will find some time, I'm sure! I can't wait!

Ashley

P.S This is my last week off before I return to work!!

Halloween Mantle

I still haven't posted about our Halloween decor. I figured I better do it since Halloween is almost over. I still can't believe it. We don't really have that many decorations, but I always like to decorate the mantle in the living room.

Here are a few decorations around the house:

 We have had fun with the holidays buying chair covers for the highchair! Remember our Easter bunny chair cover?! They are all from the dollarstore. This one is actually a costume. I thought it would be cute. I did buy an actual chair cover but she got it a little messy...I threw it in the wash and all the pieces came off. hahah. 

And here is the mantle:

I'm loving the black pumpkins I bought this year!! Fun! I think it looks similar to last years though!

Soon I will be taking these down and putting birthday decorations up! I can't believe my booboo with be one year old! *sigh* I am excited for her party though!

Ashley

More Halloween Activities!

I have loved celebrating Halloween with Adalyn so far! It is awesome because she is a little bit older now and there are so many activities we can do together! We did another pumpkin activity, this time involving paint. I didn't take a before picture this time! I forgot!!

I took small paper plates and used painters tape to cut out eyes and mouths. I stuck the tape on the plate. Then I put the plate in a big plastic bag. For the first pumpkin I added red and yellow paint and got Adalyn to mix them together.

 For the other pumpkins I made my own orange paint and added it to the bag. We have done this type of craft a couple of times before! I blogged about it HERE with our friends Amanda and Benjamin! (Look at my bald baby!!!) Anyway...She did a good job moving the paint around and then found the tape..then all she wanted to do was rip the tape off. She eventually did get the entire bag off of the tray...

Here are her pumpkins after I took them out of the bag:

Here are her pumpkins all finished..after I removed the tape! Cute, right!?

I put them with our pumpkin lanterns!

I love how they turned out!

We also did another sensory activity! I saw this on Pinterest and knew I wanted to do it. I boiled an entire package of spaghetti and added it to the sensory box! I was so curious to see what she would do with it. She has had spaghetti before but usually it is cut up into little pieces! I added our scary Halloween creepy crawlies! Here are a few pictures:

 Creepy, right?!!

This photo was the first one I took!  Sorry it is blurry but look at her face! 

She wasn't sure what to make of it at first. She started taking it out and putting it on the table cloth. Then she started to take out all the Halloween items.

 Then....started to eat it! By the HANDFUL. I had to take it away. She didn't want to do anything else with it other then eat it! hahahh. It was pretty funny to watch!

The last activity we have had fun with is our giant felt pumpkin!

I got a huge piece of felt at Fabricland and cut it into the shape of a pumpkin. I then cut out face shapes in black felt. We have had fun making silly faces!

Adalyn has had fun with it too. She still doesn't completely understand the concept but likes putting the felt on and taking it off!

 I have a couple more Halloween activities I still want to do! I'm sure we will do them soon! I will also post about how her bedroom turned out as well as our Halloween mantle!! I can't believe October is almost over!!

Ashley

I am pretty crazy...

you all know that, right?! Remember that time I painted my bedroom three times in three years? hahah. Well I want to paint another room. Can you guess what room?! Adalyn's room! I bet you think that is crazy! I have loved Adalyn's room since we painted it last summer. Then Adalyn came and her room just didn't fit her. Does that make sense?! The room was nice but just not her. So I am going to change that. I am going to make it more like her...bright, funny and colourful! And maybe a little more girlie too!

Here is a picture of her room

And here it is now

All empty and ready to go. I will hopefully be painting it this weekend. That is the plan anyway. I am not really buying anything new but I will be making new banners and printing new art for her frames. All DIY of course! Maybe move the furniture around a little too! Just change it up. I will keep you posted how it goes!!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Ashley

A couple Halloween activities....

This week I set up a little bit of water play for Adalyn. I filled the box we used for corn meal play with water, added a little food colouring and some scary Halloween creatures. Here is what we had in it:

 And here is the little miss exploring:

She only kept the flower in her hair for one picture!!

The eyeballs were her favourite!

This one just creeps me out!

Overall it was a fun activity..and kept her entertained for a little! Any chance to talk about Halloween with her is good with me!!

We also made another contact paper craft! This one ended up being super cute!!!

I stuck the contact paper down and gave her orange paper squares. She stuck them down, then started trying to get them all off again!

 (My poor baby is sick.)

I then added a little face out of black cardstock, stuck the other piece of contact paper on top and cut out the shape of a pumpkin.

 I forgot to add the stem in between the two pieces of contact paper so I stuck it on the back.

Here is her finished product. What do you think?!

I added it to our gallery wall, of course!

I love how the pumpkin turned out! Addy does too...she says pumpkin constantly when she is in the playroom! :)

 

Ashley

Our Thanksgiving...

We had a great day at my Gramma's for Thanksgiving. I made the usual: donut hole acorns and rolo pretzels. Instead of putting pecans on them I put candy corn!

 yum!

Here is the little miss in her Thanksgiving Day outfit...

 She is looking so grown up!

And here are some random pictures from the day.

 

Look at that 30 pound turkey!!

Hope you and your families had a fabulous Thanksgiving!

Ashley

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends! Hope you had an amazing weekend!
 

Ashley and Adalyn xo

11 month Favourites

My baby is eleven months old today. I can't believe it. She has started daycare, which has been going very well and has also started to talk a lot more and understand what we are saying! It is amazing to watch her every day! I am very sad I am going to miss so much when I go back to work next month! Here is our peanut:

Getting pictures now are almost impossible because she NEVER STOPS MOVING! Holy moly. She is fast too! Also I would have never thought her 11 month old photo would be outside and she would have no pants on! It has been soooo nice!

Here are some 11 month stats:

* She is a super fast walker and is starting to run as well. It makes me so nervous. She is still climbing everything! Her new thing is climbing onto the plastic chairs we have in the playroom. She tries to sit on everything, also IN everything!
* She is saying a lot more which is exciting! Her new favourite word is "pumpkin"! Yesterday it sounded like she said "what's that" when I brought my egg to the table so I said "egg" and she repeated me! She has known what a puppy says for a while, she says "ruff ruff"...her new one is a cow. She just says mmmmmm. So cute! She also "counts" to five and claps after she "says" five!
* She is understanding a lot more of what we are saying! You can ask her to go get anything and she can go find it most of the time! Book, baby, shoe, Sophie, etc. The night before we went apple picking she was sitting on the bean bag chair and I said "do you want to bring your pumpkin bag tomorrow to put apples in?" and she got up and got it off the hook! I am telling you, she amazes me every day!
* She will now let us read to her! Before now she didn't want to sit that long..now she brings the book and puts it in your face and screams until you read it. She also screams after you are done to read it again.

Here are a few of our favourites right now: 

1/2/3/4/5/6

1- Addy loves this book! I have probably read this book 50 times in the last two weeks.

2 - She loves her pumpkin bag from Old Navy. She carries it around and puts stuff in it too!

3 - I lovelovelove this sweater my mom got her. It is adorable on her..especially with skinny jeans! She has only worn it once though..because it has been pretty warm out still!

4 - Addy loves this penguin my dad got her! She smiles at it. I think it is the big eyes!

5 - She loves these cookies! We like to try all new things to change it up so when I find something new I always buy it. They taste a little bit better then the plain rice cookies!

6 -She loves all the pumpkins right now. The only thing you have to watch is that she does try to eat them like an apple. She gets big chunks out of them too!

I can't believe next month is her 1 year update...and I will be back at work! Things are changing so much around here..I can't believe I will have a toddler soon! What?!!?!?!?!?

Ashley

The playroom: Halloween edition

I just realized I have not shown you the playroom! It is our favourite room in the house and also where we spend most of our time! I will dedicate an entire post to it after Halloween but thought I would show you the Halloween decor we have up so far!

We have our Halloween books out and a cute pumpkin garland up!

 Here is our gallery wall. I have printed off some free printable art to make it really say Halloween!

 Here is another pumpkin garland over the chalkboard

 Here are the lanterns I was telling you about in last weeks post. I would like to get at least two more...but probably more then that!

* Note - On Sunday when I went to Walmart I picked up 4 more...here is how it looks now:

 Much better!!

And here are Adalyn's pumpkin purse and Halloween bag hanging on our clipboards!

I don't know if I will add anymore or not. There really isn't much room for anymore...but if I see something I think will be cute in there I will get it for sure and add it there! I love Halloween! I will be showing you the house decor this week as well so stay tuned!

Ashley

We are loving October so far..

Adalyn and I have been enjoying October so much already and it is just the first week! The weather has been AMAZING and we are getting outside each day for 45 min to an hour. There are so many dandelions and Adalyn has to pick them all! She also found the path through the corn the other day and basically ran down the entire thing. She was very excited! I think she would stay outside all day if I let her!

I have already had fun dressing her up in her Halloween outfits! She has actually not touched the headbands either! Here are a few pictures:

* dress: GAP *boots: Joe Fresh *ears: dollar store

*shirt: Osh Kosh *pants: Carter's * headband: dollar store

I have already decorated her playroom. Her favourite part are the pumpkin lanterns I got at Walmart for $1. She goes in there, looks at them..points and smiles. I will take some pictures and post about it next week! She said her version of "pumpkin" all day yesterday. I have it on video and Mike doesn't think that is what she is saying..but I know she is! :)

We also did our first Halloween craft! I got this idea from House of Burke. You tape contact paper down on the highchair tray (sticky side up) and they can stick things to it! Addy didn't know what to make of it at first. 

Then after I showed her what to do she got the hang of it and started sticking the Halloween shapes down. 

 After she was done she was trying so hard to get them off. 

 I took the tape off and put another piece of contact paper over top of it! Here is her masterpiece hanging in the playroom:

 So cute, right!?!

I hope you all enjoyed your first week of October as much as we did! There will be some changes over here soon. Next week we are starting to transition Adalyn into daycare. She will be going twice a week. I can't believe the time is already here and I will be back to work in a month! Wish us luck for an easy transition!!

Ashley