Christmas Decor. . . You're Calling My Name!

For everyone who thinks I go crazy with Halloween decorations. . . well, that's true. But I go even MORE crazy at Christmas time! I know it's not officially Christmas time yet, but the stores already have their beautiful decorations out. I'm not allowed to venture near two of my favorite stores, Pier 1 and Pottery Barn, until I have some money to spend there. I'm just dying to have some of these in my own house!

How gorgeous is this wreath from Pottery Barn? So unexpected and simple!
I also love this garland from Pottery Barn, and it would go just as well with fall decorations as with Christmas!

Pier 1 always has gazillions of cool Christmas things, and I totally want this cute Santa candy jar!

I also want these dessert plates. They'd look amazing on a Christmas table with white dinner plates and a red tablecloth!

Ornaments galore! If you've never checked out Pier 1's ornaments, you really should! I always find a bunch that I love.

Both of these Pier 1 pillows would look fabulous on my couch-

Here are some ornaments I'm drooling over from Pottery Barn-

I'd want this on my doorstep ALL year long!

This centerpiece is so stunning!

I just can't resist buying Christmas decorations every year. Especially because they literally do call out my name when I walk by them!

More Fall Fun!

About a week before Halloween, my parents came to Seattle for a weekend to visit Kirsten. Yes, only to see Kirsten. And it's understandable. She sure changes a lot faster than Stephen or I do. :)

We had a good time while they were here! My Dad went to work installing an extra electrical outlet for us and opening up our hall closet to reveal extra storage room beneath our stairs. I think every time he comes to our house he figures out some way to improve it, it's great! We also took Kirsten to the Country Village in Bothell to play and shop at some cute stores.
She loved feeding the ducks!

See that gorgeous sunshine? October was a beautiful month in Seattle!

Kirsten and my Dad went through this enormous tunnel in the playground area!

She thought it was hilarious to peek through the little windows in the sides and see me and Stephen there.

She also rode this funny little merry-go-round.

And then we took this cute little train ride! Kirsten loved it!

She always has a blast when Grandma and Grandpa are around, that's for sure!

American Eagle. . . Still Love It!

When I was in college, I worked for a summer at an American Eagle store that was opening at our local mall in California. They give their employees a pretty amazing 50% off discount, so I bought ALL my clothes from there. Jeans, sweaters, T-shirts, you name it! Even when I stopped working there I still bought a huge majority of my wardrobe from that store.

It's been awhile since I bought anything from American Eagle, but we were at the mall tonight and noticed they had a buy one, get one half off special on all their sweaters and hoodies. I found this awesome sweater! I seriously love it, it fits so well and I got it in this color and also in solid black. I'm excited to wear them!Stephen is the KING of hoodies (seriously, he wears them almost all the time), so he found this really cool one there.

So when do you become too old to shop at stores like American Eagle and Aeropostale? A lot of their stuff looks too juvenile to me now (mostly their summer clothes) but they still have such nice winter clothing there!

Naughty Post-Halloween Antics!

Kirsten is definitely becoming more her own little person every day! She also seems to find more trouble to get into every day. All these things happened in the weekend right after Halloween:

*Kirsten got into the bowl of Halloween candy, found a few Dum-Dum suckers, and started sucking on them right through the paper. I took the paper off for her, and then she managed to get a sucker completely stuck in her hair! She was the stickiest girl EVER until her bath that night!
(By the way, our front entry is usually NOT messy like this! We're painting a new storage area inside our front hall closet, so all this stuff has to just sit there until the paint dries).

*She broke a ceramic pumpkin decoration on the wood floor. I don't know HOW she did it, she must have thrown it on the floor pretty hard for it to break. I heard the crash and came in to find her sitting among all the broken pieces, playing with them! Yikes! Luckily she didn't get hurt by anything, and Stephen was there to help me get everything cleaned up.

*She killed my cell phone! I always figured there was no harm in her playing with it as long as the phone was SHUT. She sent off a text message once before, but that's the extent of what she had done until that weekend. She was playing with the shut phone, and then I discovered the screen was completely blank and wouldn't turn back on at all. I took it to the Verizon store on Monday and they said the wetness indicator had gone off on the phone. Since she didn't have it near water, she must have had it in her mouth and actually got it wet enough to kill it! Isn't that nuts? I had no idea she could do that. They couldn't fix it, so I ended up having to pay $50 for a new phone and kept my old battery.

I sense I'll probably have many more stories like these as she gets older, won't I? :)

Trick Or Treating!

Here is she. . . my cute little Halloween bug! Last year she was a ladybug, this year she was a butterfly. . . hmm, next year I'll have to think of something less buggish for her. :) But isn't she the most adorable butterfly???This crazy-carved pumpkin was in the entryway to Stephen's work building. Microsoft does Halloween right!

Kirsten was thrilled to be in that entryway, because the first thing she saw and made a beeline for were the Halloween balloons. Her favorite thing!

She loved wearing her costume too! She liked the puffy skirt and wearing the antennas on her head.

I love those cute wings on the back of her costume!

I was a witch! My hat is WAY cooler than you can actually see in any of these pictures. It's kind of drooping to the side, but trust me when I say it was the best witches hat I've ever seen!

Stephen didn't wear a costume. Bummer, I know! But I didn't really see many Microsoft employees dressed up.

Trick-or-treating at Microsoft was WAY cooler than I thought it would be! There were tons of people there, and they decorated the buildings and had loads of candy! We filled up Kirsten's trick-or-treat bucket SO fast. She didn't understand the concept at all, so Stephen just carried her and I picked up candy for her and mostly manned the camera.
Check out how cool Stephen's building looked!

Okay. . . so his building was NOTHING compared to Building F. Stephen works in Building C, and Building F was decked out to the max!!! We headed over there, and it was seriously a maze of decorations. Some of it was pretty scary to me, but Kirsten wasn't even scared! She just looked at everything and thought it was all fascinating. Here's just a small sample of all the Halloween stuff in Building F:

Scary, I'd say so! At one point they had a larger-than-life werewolf howling and making growling noises. I kept waiting for Kirsten to cry, but she didn't! After that we entered into the Land of Oz (still in Building F!)

The Wicked Witch of the West jumped right out at Kirsten, and Kirsten just stared! She's brave. I would have cried for sure!

And the only time she cried, in the entire building, was when the Tin Man started talking to her. See that face mask he's wearing? I agree with Kirsten! Masks are the scariest, and he was the only character to wear one. The rest just had face paint. I didn't get a picture of her crying, but she does look pretty worried in this picture.

The Emerald City! See what I mean about this place? I just had no idea that trick-or-treating at the Microsoft buildings would be so great!

And on Halloween. . . I started looking pregnant. All of a sudden! Poof! Crazy, huh?

We didn't take Kirsten trick-or-treating anywhere else. She was on overload by the time we left! But it was such a fun Halloween and I'm sad that it's over!

Our Halloween Traditions!

Halloween dinner was SO yummy! The traditional dinner my mom made for us every Halloween when I was growing up is. . .
Witches Brew and homemade cornbread!
Witches Brew is a really awesome soup with the main ingredients being pork and beans, tomatoes in their juice, bacon pieces, different seasonings, and the BEST part. . . hot dog slices! It may sound weird, and it's supposed to look a little creepy because that's what makes it Halloween soup! But it has such an awesome flavor and it's just not Halloween for me without it! I've never gone a single year without eating it. Even as a college student at BYU I used to make it and invite friends over for dinner. It's always a big hit! And I smother my cornbread with honey too. It's the only way to eat it! We gave Kirsten her first taste of Witches Brew this year, and she loved it too!

We finally DID carve our pumpkin the night before Halloween!

I may not be the best pumpkin carver, but it looked great all lit up, as jack-o-lanterns always do!

After Halloween dinner, my other tradition is watching Disney's cartoon version of Legend of Sleepy Hollow AND the really old Disney's Halloween Treat that my mom taped off the Disney Channel in 1982, the year I was born! My family has had that VHS tape forever and we've always loved it. Disney hasn't ever released it on DVD (they should!) but my mom managed to copy it from VHS onto a DVD for me. It's awesome! Here is the video of the intro to it. Has anyone else ever seen it?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

The day has finally come! Has everyone started the day off right with some Halloween candy? I know I have!! Nothing like Reese's peanut butter cups and Kit-Kats first thing in the morning! I took these pictures of my little Halloween monster the other day with some crazy bat things on her head. She kept pulling them off, but I managed to get a few pictures in between.

This afternoon I'll be dressing Kirsten in her costume and taking her to see Daddy at work! Microsoft has trick-or-treating at all their offices and I've heard they did some decorating and everything, so it should be fun! It's a good thing we have an indoor place to trick-or-treat too, because it's a rainy Halloween here!

I'm REALLY excited for our traditional Halloween dinner tonight and Stephen is too! My family is the only one I know of who has the same dinner every single year for Halloween. I'll do a whole post later about our Halloween traditions and what our dinner is. I'd love to hear about everyone else's fun Halloween traditions too!

Whenever Kirsten manages to find a sucker she carries it around and starts sucking on it right through the paper. It's fine until the paper starts getting all soggy and then it turns into a sticky mess if I don't get it away from her immediately!

I hope you all have a really Happy Halloween! It's such a fun holiday!!!