Vanessa's Halloween Party!

The wonderful, beautiful and magical Miss Vanessa is hosting a wonderful Halloween soiree today in blogland! Be sure not to miss it, she throws the best parties! Because I am sort of in limbo I thought it might be okay to re-post a couple of my favorite things from last year.

My kids and I had a great time making a Halloween tree. This is just a couple of branches that were vitims of Fall pruning that I tied together and spray painted silver then stuck in a pot with a couple of bricks for support.

Then the kids and I made loads of ornaments. We hope to do this again next year.

This is a fun tradition my kids love. Every year I add new pictures of them in their Halloween costumes. It is lots of fun to see how they have changed and remember all the fun we have had with other costumes.

Now go eat some candy over at Vanessa's and have a wonderful Halloween this year!

Our little Puppy!

Mr. Joshua, the puppy! Joshua loves to pretend to be a puppy, it is really amazing how good he is at it considering he is really not around dogs at all. So we thought it would be perfect to dress him up like a puppy this year. Unfortunately convincing a two year old to do anything that is not on their personal agenda is never easy.



This is the perfect picture though. Can't you just hear him howling?



What a cute pup!



How did we get him to participate happily? Lots of brown (puppy colored) skittles!



Oh look Marie Antoinette has a new dog!

Goodbye Bay Area!

Goodbye you lovely place! We have so enjoyed our time here!
We will miss your lovely bridges.

And your blue skies.

We have had such great adventures exploring your forests

And your beautiful beaches.

We have met some wonderful creatures and people too.

Oh, we will miss you!

Watch out Utah, here we come!

Little Boy Heaven

Is there anything better for a two year old boy than getting to watch one of these pull up to your house?!

Do you want your own Spider-man?

This is one of the kids favorite, messy activities. I give them a ball of yarn and the make a web up and down the staircase.




Good fun!

Last Year's Halloween

Our California Friendds

We are almost outta here!

So this is what our house looks like now!

Hope the kids don't have nightmares about the box monster getting them!

Don't you like what we have done with the family room?

Look how big my closet is now!

**For those of you I may not have told, we are heading out of here even though the house has not sold (let's hope the financial world straightens around soon!). William's new job starts Monday and we decided it would be easier to sell an empty, always-clean house. We will be staying with the best grandparents ever until either the house sells or we find something to rent. Thanks for all the good thoughts and prayers!

Watch out for Count Dracula!

Here is Matthew in his costume this year! This is really our first attempt at something scary. He has always been a super-hero of some sort in the past. I was pretty okay with Count Dracula, I mean at least he is a Count and that is sort of classy.
He had very specific needs for this costume. The hair had to be black and he had to have black eyebrows too. And there had to be blood coming from his mouth. Aaah, the wonder of colored hairspray!

Can you believe this fierce creature is ...

This sweet boy?

Watch out! He is after Marie Antoinette!

Halloween Swaps

Okay, so I realize there are about a hundred things that I should be doing that are more important than blogging but I just can't give it up yet! I am afraid I will definitely slow down on my posts after the move next week. We are going to stay with my parents while we are in between houses or until we find a rental and I won't have my computer. So I will probably visit a lot still but it will harder for me to post since the parents don't have high speed and I don't want to clog their computer up with my pictures. So it is blog while you can around here! I may do some predated post though. Anyway, after that long explanation, I thought I would show the swaps I signed up for without imagining that my life would explode into chaos in October. I am glad I did them though, they were lots of fun. I haven't received mine yet, I had my partners send them to my parents so I could still enjoy them without having to pack them.

She was for a Halloween doll swap

Another for a Halloween doll swap. She got to go to Australia lucky girl.

And this was for a Autumn swap.
I am too brain dead to link you to the hosts, just trust me that they were lovely girls and really created a lot of Fall fun!

Creating Marie Antoinette

Okay, say you are moving in less than a week. Just exactly what would you spend your day doing? Well, crazy person that I am I spent the day turning Brittany into Marie Antoinette. Yep, my nine year old had the ultimate in big hair. Here is what happened. We love Halloween around here. Every year I make the kids costumes, take their pictures and then send out Halloween cards to all our friends and family. It is one of my favorite traditions. And the fact that we are moving smack in the middle of one of my favorite months just doesn't seem like a good enough reason to abandon the tradition this year. Now, coming up with the plan to do Marie Antoinette may not have been my smartest move but I have to say, I think this is my favorite costume I have ever made and that includes the year she was a rosebud. You have to admit the hair absolutely makes the whole thing and is probably the reason I am blogging about this now. I was too proud of myself to wait until the actual holiday. Thank you tutorial on Youtube. I do realize that Marie may not have worn this dark a shade of purple but you have to allow a nine year old a little license. I am going to add a bigger slip after the move I think too.

What do you think? Anybody having a costume contest? I really think she could win! Oh, and just wait until you see the other two!

Shop Closing

The Ginghamworld Etsy Shop will be closing on Thursday October 11 at 3 p.m. I hope to open it sometime before Christmas but it will depend on when I am able to have access to my inventory again. Thanks so much for your support this year, it has been so fun!

Sunday Update

Okay, brace yourselves this is a long post!


So yesterday we had to be out of the house so it could spend the day showing its pretty self off to prospective new owners. Since this is probably our last weekend to do something fun we decided to strike out an head for Monterey Bay. It is about two hours from us but we have really wanted to see the big Aquarium there. Boy are we glad we did!

This is what my kids would look like if they were the children of King Tritan (doesn't this remind you of the scene in the Little Mermaid where the sisters are singing?)

This is what they would look like if they hatched like turtles.



Watch out there is a wave crashing over my kids!






Don't worry, we didn't let the killer whale eat Matthew!


Brittany loved the cute sea otters and I think this one like her too, it kept coming right by the glass.

These are the close ups of the little creatures I couldn't resist taking. The ones of the large tanks were too dark to turn out well.



I can't remember what this kind of anemone was called but I thought they were so lovely.






Did you have any idea this is what sand dollars look like when they are still alive? Purple! Who knew?






Of course I had to try and capture all the pinks.






If you look really close you can see the little sea horses!






Beautiful jelly fish! Oh, how I wish I could have a wall of these in my house. They were so calming to watch, my kids could hardly tear themselves away.



After the rather pricey aquarium we went here.





This place was FREE and my kids went nuts. I think they liked it at least as well as the aquarium but were kind enough to pretend otherwise.





I can't remember for sure but I think the creator of Dennis the Menace was from Monterey and that is why they have this park. It was pretty funny, William has always said both our boys have certain resemblance to Dennis. What do you think?





It was an amazing park with an old train engine to climb on.







An enormous bridge, mazes and loads of playground equipment.



It was a lovely day and a grand last adventure for our family here in the Bay area.
Boy are we going to miss this!