halloween.

Halloween was a marathon this year. I'm not sure if it's because he's older, if trick-or-treating with a friend encouraged him, or if he snuck some candy throughout the evening (or all of the above), but we more than doubled the number of streets we went through this year. Last year was adorable when Nate was Woody from Toy Story. This year N picked his own costume and decided to be the Joker. I snagged a decent deal on Amazon for a costume that had pants, a jacket with a made-in vest, and a mask. Out of the box, it looked like this:

 

Not bad, but I felt the need to improve on it. Plus, what's more fun than spray-in hair dye and some costume make-up? The end result was pretty awesome (we got lots of compliments!) and the Joker character suits N's personality so well.

After Nate and his friend tromped around our neighborhood and filled their buckets to the brim, we headed over to my parents' house where Nate promptly made himself at home by discreetly hoarding their candy when no one was looking.  Oh, and I "dressed up," if you count cat ears and drawing on a nose with whiskers. Once we got home one of the dogs promptly ate the ears. Lovely.

Happy Halloween!

pumpkin palooza.

I've more than jumped on the bandwagon this fall and wanted all of the pumpkin things: pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin pie, pumpkin patch, pumpkins on the front porch, pumpkin Oreos (just kidding - I couldn't bring myself to buy those!)

While we haven't done any real family trips to the big pumpkin patches this year, we're planning to go the weekend after Halloween where one of the local farms smashes all of the pumpkins. My kid will LOVE that and no pumpkin will ever be safe again!

We did take advantage of a 'Haunted Happenings' celebration that they held in our local 'old town'. It was a little kitschy, but N had a great time and even met up with a little friend from preschool. The local shops had candy so that the kids could trick-or-treat, the main street was closed for activities like spooky bowling (think paper mache pumpkin v. paper towel rolls dressed up like ghosts) and foam book marker making crafts, there were free hot dogs, and all of this craziness started at 10 a.m. N had a great time debuting this year's Joker costume!

That afternoon we also went to a local pumpkin patch. It's certainly not as elaborate as some that are near us, but it's a family business that my family has gone to for years. N has been almost every year, I think. Here are some of my favorite moments from our outing yesterday:

fall wreath.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then one of the girls that I work with should be feelin' the love today. After seeing an adorable fall-inspired wreath that she made, I decided to make one too. It sounded pretty easy to do (and I'm not crafty), involved a glue gun (yeah!), and would be much cheaper than buying an already made wreath so it sounded like an all around win in my book.

Materials:

• 1 styrofoam wreath - there's a variety of sizes and widths. I went for a larger width on a larger wreath so that the space in the middle wasn't so bare
• 2 spools of wire ribbon burlap with a width between 2-3 inches (each spool was 23 feet long and I used most of it) 
• Embellishment for fun and a little bit of character
• Glue gun (low heat glue guns are recommended for styrofoam but mine was just fine with the high heat)
• Glue sticks
• Scissors

Cost: around $20 (I think this could have been much lower if I had timed the craft sales a bit better)

Total Time: 30 minutes 

Directions:

• Pick a starting point for your wreath and hot glue the wire ribbon burlap to the styrofoam - I did this on what would be the 'back' of the wreath and did this on an angle to make wrapping a bit easier. 

• Wrap the burlap around the wreath in even intervals so that you cannot see through the material and to provide a uniform look to the fabric
• You'll likely need to stop and glue the fabric to hold your place when the first spool runs out. Simply start the next spool on the back of the wreath to continue to cover the entire surface 

• Once I was done wrapping the wreath, I decided to make a small hook on the back to put the wreath hanger through. I folded a strip of burlap into thirds, lengthwise, and then made the hook to glue onto the wreath

• Finally, I added an embellishment to the wreath. I'm still not 100% happy with my choice, but I'm hoping that it will grow on me 
• Ta-da! One finished wreath! 

first field trip.

I mentioned in my last post forever ago how we enrolled N in a Montessori preschool program this year. It's been a learning curve for him to have less handholding/instruction and more input on how he structures his day, but he is slowly growing into it. This week, N went on his first field trip! The class loaded up on their tiny little bus and spent the day at Ticonderoga Farms.

We actually took Nate there last year with some friends and had a blast! I really liked that it was less crowded than some other farm/fall/pumpkin patches that are in our area. N actually remembered going there last year, too, which was pretty neat. We're finally entering the age where long term memory is a real thing :)

I'm not sure about everything that they did during this visit. Nate mentioned the hayride, the slides, the big pillow, and the pumpkin patch -- and then asked me why he didn't get to wear his Halloween costume. I think he's trying to smush all of the good things about fall into one afternoon.  He also showed me the little pumpkin that he brought home and asked, "Do you think you could make me a pumpkin pie?" Hilarious.

This kid...