dress giveaway

I love these dresses kirst made for the girls. They are my favorite outfit we own. Isn't she great for making TWO of them for me? I kind of hope she never has girls so that she will keep using my girls for all her fun girly projects. :) Anyway- over at the kojo blog we are giving away one of these little darlings for free this month! whoohoo! Click here to enter to win.

disciplined cookies

Kead loves baking these days and asks all the time if we can cook. I have actually gotten pretty good at my chocolate chip cookies, despite how awful I am at baking. Kead has always liked to help, but it wasn't until recently that she had been interested in helping start to finish.

A couple days ago she was helping me put the cookie dough on the sheet and was cracking me up. I would give her a ball of dough and she would cradle it in her hand and say "Hi cookie!" and then depending on the cookies "response" she would either set the dough in a clump with the rest of the cookies or she would say a slew of thing I always say like: "No, Ma'am" or "Look at my eyes when I'm talking to you" or "That is not you job" and then inevitably she would say: "You go in time out!"

Those poor little misbehaving cookies were placed on the far side of the cookie sheet, away from all their cookie friends! Isn't she a hoot? Can we say bossy?

harryween

Drew said it was more like a Harryween party the other day and I loved it! It was so true. I got pretty excited about my little Harry Potter accents all around the house (I even downloaded a Harry Potter font) and so I thought I'd share:

First the outfits:
I made our ties out of pillow cases from goodwill. For the badges I found the Gryffindor image online and printed it onto iron on fabric paper and then sewed it onto our vests. Drew used dowel rods to make our wands and I stained them to make them more authentic looking. :) I also made Sayla's costume out of a cute furry vest I found at Once Upon a Child. It was super easy, all I did was add the owl face ears and wings.

The Potions Lab:
I had SO much fun doing the potions lab. I found the Harry Potter Lexicon and the Harry Potter Wiki and used them to make all my labels. (I know, Kirst, you are rolling your eyes at how dorky I am. I still don't care.)

The sign said " Hogwarts Potion Lab: Treat yourself to some of the Half-blooded Prince's private supplies."

mandrake root- sundried tomatoes, doxy eggs- chocolate covered raisins

bobotubers: gummy worms boomslang skin: beef jerky

The small potions were Torani syrups, the medium ones were lemonade dyed all different colors, and the large ones were ice tea. All were mixable to make your own drink. I think if I did it again I would make a sign somewhere that said the true identity of the potions, as people seemed a little hesitant to drink them.

Here's a list of potions I had: Veritaserum, Woflsbane Potions, Garroting Gas, Draught of Living Death, Babbling Beverage, The Elixir of Life, Pepperup Potion, Felix Felicis, Polyjuice Potion and Amortentia. (If you can name where in the books at least 5 of them are used, you get bonus cool points!)

Ok moving on to Honeydukes:
I really wanted to do a Weasley Wizard Wheezes store, but that doesn't start with "H". I still had a Skiving Snackbox with a mixture of candies "to make the eater ill", but the store was Honeydukes (Quit rolling your eyes, Kirst!)

Honeydukes sign. Fizzing Whizzbees, Acid Pops, Sherbert Lemons, Pepper Imps (all candy from a mixed assortment bag we got mainly because it was cheap. I know there are more realistic canides for each of these, but I think it worked great!)

Take home bags- Bolts Every Flavored Beans- Cauldron Cakes (chocolate covered oreos)

Licorice Wands, Treacle Balls, Pumpkin Pasties, Bolts Every Flavor Beans, Droobles Best Blowing Gum, Exploding Bon-Bons. I didn't get a good picture of the Skiving Snackbox but that's ok, It was there, and it was awesome. :)

Oh- and I note on the Hogsmead Butter Beer. I tried this recipe and it was a pretty big let down, I think because I made a big batch and it wasn't possible to drink it right away. I thought there was WAY too much butter, It didn't taste as amazing as the books describe, so I will keep looking. :)

Ok so thats's it. I had SO much fun doing it and now an added bonus- I have an outfit to wear to the opening of the next movie! (Ok you can roll your eyes at that one!)

get your guns up raider red

I love this picture of Kead and Hays. In the car on the way to our fall festival for church kead said "I'm gonna jump in the bounce house with Hays cause he's my best friend...awww...isn't that sweet?"  I guess I say that a lot.

working mama

Not many of you know this, but I started a job today. It is a job that I didn't really see myself doing, but when the opportunity came to be able to bring in a little bit of income (other than kojo stuff) AND it worked with my scehdule - I took it! Say hello to (drum roll please)

Ace the Fox!

That's right friends, I am a part time mascot! (Laughed out loud now....)

Here's how it happened- Britt, one of my best friends, works for a food service company and they do the catering for the schools in Lubbock. One of their things is Ace; a Fox that eats healthy, exercises, get plenty of sleep and tries to inspire kids to do the same.  WELL- she called me to see if  Drew knew of any college guys that wanted to make a couple extra bucks dressing up as Ace for shows at different schools. She explained it as a job that will happen no more than a couple times a week, during lunch or breakfast hours AND you get $50 per an hour show. I said "ummm, I could do it." She might have thought I was joking, but I wasn't, and now I am Ace. (yes, you can keep laughing...)

I had my first show today and it was actually fun (other than having to be there at 6:30am). The kids LOVED it and I think I will have a good time doing it....and I will be making $50 an hour. :)

Here I am in my costume...kead was all about it, Sayla, well, hated it:

By the way you should check out my fan club by clicking on the picture above...it's awesome! It's like you know someone famous. 

"h" party

We had a wonderful halloween weekend full of parties, festivals, friends and fun! this post is dedicated to the first; the "h" party! We had a great time and had some CREATIVE costumes! Here's the invite:

We had a ton of "H" food like Hot dogs, Hummus, Haystack cookies, Harvest bread and Hogsmead butterbeer... but I only have pictures of the Hogwarts Potions Lab and the Honeyduke sweet shop:

(don't worry HP fans, there will be an entire post on these later...for the rest of you- you can skip that post when it comes.)

My favorite though was all the amazing costumes:

(from left) Hoopster, Hoax, Horse (his wife was a jockey) Hillbilly, Hen, Hemoglobin

Homemaker, Handyman, Hobbits (won overall best) Home schoolers* (won funniest)
*a note to kelli- I know you don't look like this. :)

Hoax (won most creative) Homecoming queen, Havasku Indian, Hicks, Harrison ford

H1N1, Hula girl, Hannah Montana, Habitual bridesmaid, Hagrid, Hot Pocket

another one of the Hicks and Hillbillies

Not shown: H1N1 vaccine, Hostage, Housewife, Hulk Hogan, Hippie, Hula Hoop girl, Hanyan (a friend), Heather (another friend), Hot dog, Hockey player. Aren't people so creative? We had so much fun! oh yeah- and we were:

Hagrid, Harry Potter, Hedwig (Harry's Owl) and Hermione!
(like I said, more on this to come later)