a glimpse to inspire any moms who have to dress 4 children year after year, posting costumes that were heavily recycled this year :) note- my 3 older children still like to dress up, just not the premade stuff at the store. so not only do i have to facilitate their desires, i have to be creative and thrifty. because i am thrifty and cheap and hate spending money on things that don't have value in the long run :)
els: "good witch that lives in a candy castle" (not to be mistaken at alllllll for a bad witch) witch costume from kira's a few years back. bought the 2 dollar hat and she put the jewels and KI stickers on herself, and whenever she wore the hat, she made sure the decorated part was in the front :) she did get new black maryjanes for the costume, that i told her she will be wearing at thanksgiving and christmas as well. see! thinking ahead! :)
caleb: "boy who got stuck in a spiderweb" he's at the age where he passes the premade stuff but wants to have fun and i guess--- be cool. so i handstitched the spiders on the shirt and put web all around him. easy. and after halloween i will cut all the spiders off and he will still have a wearable shirt :) i'm totally thrifty like that. cam: "tonight's dinner" :) chris didn't seem to get what cam was this year. lol. cam is in a funny stage where he comes up with the most ridiculous costume ideas... we were in the craft store and he wanted me to just stitch fake fruit all over his clothes. i'm like, what? lol. i love that this was totally free and that he thought i was brilliant :) hehehehe. i will note that we all voted for more food to go inside the bag but he said it'd be too hard to walk around in.
and kira. sigh. i love that she still loves to dress up. she was "peter pan" or "peter ma'am" as caleb called her. NOT to be mistaken for an elf or robin hood. LOL. I didn't get her full costume shot but chris did with his film camera. i will say that it pained me to cut up this shirt that will not be used in any way in the future but i am comforted that i bought it on clearance for 4 dollars. you didn't know i was so cheap huh? only my closest friends really do :)
and cousin jaeden tagged along. so glad she did! :)
so there is our halloween. you know your kids are growing up when our gang of trick or treaters go from 4 to 2 :( the 2 older kids decided to spend the nights with their friends. :( wah. and we only carved one pumpkin instead of the normal 4 we do. i didn't even bother to take a picture of it. geez. it seems ages ago when kira was 3 and she dressed up as barney :) sigh. it's all going so fast, hmph. wah. :(
she had her first performance at school today. we are ready for halloween, 2 days early too! i'm proud to say that we recycled lots and even cam's costume was completely FREE :) yay :)
and in case you missed this... we are super proud! and even here, it looks really cute there too :) poor chris, they said i took the pics- it was him! he's the one who hangs out, waiting for her to get off work. im so glad he does. i love these pics. :) he's been awesome at documenting where i've been slacking. xoxoox
temperatures in the 80's. a false hope of fall when we had a few days of rain. we bought our first pumpkin today- forcing the autumn-ness of the season to enter our home :)
in layouts this month!
for KI:
(i asked els if she looked different here and she said, yes. my hair is longer now and i used to eat more food back then.) wah, she's officially lost her babyfat :( makes me so sad!
for two peas:
(another baby/toddler picture!)
this one's title work was copied from a wells fargo ad. i guess it's supposed to be about saving money and retirement, i like mine better. -gosh that pic is horrible though. can you tell cali is starting to get some grey weather?!
and a halloween one of the boys from a few years ago. you know i love me some themed product :)
i cannot believe halloween is in a few weeks! i am a big fan of recycling costumes so i am HOPING the kids are gonna go for that too :) kira was jessi when she was 4 and i am so mad that we got rid of it as elsie is requesting jessi this year. ugh. out of the 15 princess dresses she has, she has to pick the cowgirl?
last weekend. he's been traveling quite a bit lately and it's good to have my other half back home with me! he walks and drives the kids to school for me in the morning so that i can stay indoors with elsie in our jammies. and while he was gone, racing to get everyone out the door- not an easy task. i always pack lunches in the morning, even though the night before would be more practical. i am not a morning person. i will tell you that i drive in my pajamas :) just getting out the door on time is good enough for me. and of course we happened to run out of coffee and instead of just ordering some online, i did the thing that we haven't done since july- go to starbucks! we got this machine and it has been so wonderful for us to just make our own coffee at home and not spend a fortune at starbucks every week. my week was just off. besides being exhausted in general- i tend to stay up till the wee hours and then have to wake up for school in the morning- vicious cycle...i found myself missing conversations. it's just not the same to converse over email and texting. i miss my daily need to unload every detail of my life and our kids lives to my husband. it was emotionally exhausting as well. thank goodness for my inlaws, who live nearby, i frequently visit them to keep my loneliness to a minimum. and to let elsie unload some of her energy and chattiness onto other family members :)
but ahhh all is well back in our household. we are complete.
that our new jac website and jac blog are live now. many days and nights were spent pouring over this project. happy to share now. the new blog will start to fill up as we post some shoots we've been saving up. and this one will too, as thoughts of the future of this blog are starting to emerge. :)
i wasn't going to put any pics up but blog posts always look lonely without them. she really was on the phone here. it's blurry because she moves alot when she talks. kinda like in a little dance way. she's genuinely happy here and that makes me happy.
the boots have returned.
the current hype with the new toy story movie coming out has our girl digging through the boy's toy story toys for jessi the cowgirl. much to her sadness, her pink cowgirl boots no longer fit, but she tells me these pink ones do. they are from the end of 2007! it's the end of 2009 now! they were big before so i am guessing they must still fit? whatever, they were the best $11.00 i've ever spent.
toy story brings back all kinds of memories for me! we own about 3 or 4 of those big buzz lightyears that talk. and nuuumerous other toy story memorabilia. the boys were born during the 1st and 2nd movie releases. i have vivid memories of sitting in our east coast apartment, watching them over and over as the weather was horrible and we only owned one car. i could still pretty much recite the movies by heart. :) i miss my boys being so little! sometimes :) they are turning into these little social and sporty boys these days, but neither of them never outgrowing giving mom and dad a hug and kiss. love that. :)
i'm sorta embarrassed to say elsie found this easter bunny in the freezer today. :)
and she ate it :)
not the whole thing, though she really wanted to! i had to portion him out for the next few days! :)
i also wanted to update y'all and say that i am temporarily saying goodbye to twitter and facebook. i think twitter will be completely gone but facebook will make it's way back in my life in a week or so?? i just found them to suck so much time out of my day and i was feeling horribly guilty. i'm hoping to not have my phone attached to my hip-- just be free of it and use it for what it's really for! i knew even BEFORE i got the iphone it'd be addicting and i was right! it's been allllmost a week and it's felt wonderful :) i realize that facebook can be a great tool- if i can keep a realistic balance. twitter, i find a hard time envisioning a balance as i am the kind of person to have all my emails read and unchecked within minutes of receiving them. with twitter, i can't stand to have more than a few 'tweets' that i haven't read. see the addiction? i'll have to break it to cam's teacher (who is trying twitter for the first time with his class' parents) that one of his 2 followers will no longer be following him, LOL.... chris and i felt so hip when we raised our hands in class that we knew what twitter was. :)
so there should be lots of updates via blog and scrapbooking from me, with all that free time and all :) and perhaps it's time to start sending letters in the mail, like real mail through the postal system- everyone loves happy mail for no reason, right?
ps: isn't it sad that it's october and we are still sporting sundresses and tank tops?! wah!
