Halloween Fun

Happy Halloween, Y'all!!

We had our annual Fall Festival at church on Wed night and it was a blast.  The weather was awesome!!  the food was awesome!!  the cotton candy was awesome!!  and the jumpy things were awesome!! 

Here's my little guy - I mean, here's the mean, scary dragon - and his beautiful high school musical singing sister.

Don't be confused.  He's not being uncooperative for the picture, he is showing you his mean, scary dragon face.  It always shows up when he pulls that hood up.

The dragon's favorite of the night.  He could get a lot of air under him bouncing down that thing!

Bouncing in the bouncy thing.  The wig didn't last long on her :).

 

Gotta have pictures up in the fire truck.

The "girl" pumpkin in the family.  Us girls carved that one - technically me because Julie got bored fast and went to play.  Can you tell who she is?

The "boy" pumpkin carved by the boys, er I mean men.  As you can see their design was not as difficult or beautiful as ours!

Hope you have a fun and happy Halloween!

I won, I won!!!

Remember the giveaway that I blogged about here?

Well, Guess what??

You guessed it - I WON!!!!! (I'm sure the title of this post had nothing to do with your guess.)

So I am going to get a free blog face lift from Designer Blogs.

I get to look through some pre-made designs and pick my favorite.  I'm so excited!!!!!  Be on the lookout for my new blog look.

Why I am Who I am

So you might be wondering, why would I call myself a "Stay in the Car Mom?"  Here's a brief story of me:

I started dating the love of my life in high school (so, yes, who you date in high school COULD be very important).  We went to the same college, got married after our junior year and then got our undergrad degrees in Engineering. Apparently, we defied statistics by going on to grad school (not many married couples end up doing that).  We both got Master's Degrees in Engineering and while we were doing that, I got pregnant.  When I graduated, I was 13 weeks pregnant and like a good little student, I had done my homework.  Businesses are not required by law to award maternity leave unless someone has been working there for a year.  So, even if I got a job, I may or may not be given maternity leave when my baby arrived.  Oh, don't worry, I was interviewing for jobs either way.  I just wasn't telling anyone I interviewed with that I was pregnant.  Anyway, to speed up this story, my supersmart, wonderful husband was offered a great job back in the town where we grew up, so we quickly (as in 21 days after the interview) moved back home so he could start work.

At that point, since I was very pregnant we agreed that I wouldn't look for a job until after all our kids were in school (which is next year, by the way).  And even then, it's my choice if I want to look for a job or not.  Still haven't decided but that's another post for another day :).  Back to the story:

So I became...(insert suspenseful music here) a stay at home mom.  Which is a great job, don't get me wrong.  I just wish it had a better title - like "all encompassing cook, chauffeur, laundress, housekeeper (although I'm not very good at that one), fashion consultant, party planner, vacation planner, bookkeeper, resident nurse, homeroom mom and photographer who requires no compensation except hugs, kisses and snuggles."  But of course, that would be too long.

So out of all those titles, I picked the one thing that I feel like I do ALL. THE. TIME!!!  And I dubbed myself a "Stay in the car mom" - and let me tell you, I have heard it only gets worse from this age on.  I don't think the mother's of non-driving teenagers ever leave the car!! 

That's where I am now and how I became a stay in the car mom.  I'd love to learn a little about you.  So write a blog post about yourself and put the link in a comment.  I'll come by and get to know you a little better.

Stay Tunes for Future posts:
A day in the life (and miles driven) of a stay in the car mom
My scrapbooking obsession hobby
What I like about me

Have a great Wednesday!!

Hair Creations by Julie

Well you have waited very patiently (you HAVE been patient, haven't you), but now she is here.

Our mysterious guest blogger.

Who is she?

She is the lovely...
independent...
6 year old...
that I call my daughter.

Her hobbies include:
playing school (after she gets home from the real school)...
bossing her little brother around...
and trying to imitate mommy (including blogging).
In her spare time, she likes to pose as my hair model for blog posts.


Being the independent, 6-going-on-16-year-old that she is, Julie decided she wanted to write up a blog post and let ME be the hair model for once.

So without further ado, here is her post in her words (note: she took the pictures herself as well):

1. I just wanted to do something cool around the head.  It was quite interesting.  First I did a braid on the left side.

 

2. Right beside that I did a ponytail.

3. Next to that I did a twist.

4. Then on the right side I did another ponytail.  It was interesting but looked pretty.  And mommy liked it too.

This is all of it.  Doesn't it look good?









There she is!  My mommy!  I love her!

(Stayinthecarmom again here) - Well, folks. There you have it, the future of blogging or whatever cool thing will be out by the time she grows up. I hope you enjoyed me looking so wonderful in my new hairdo. The guest blogger must go do her homework now.

This week's giveaways at great blogs

There are 2 great giveaways this week.  I almost don't want to tell you about them, because then you will enter and might win.  And if you win, I won't :(.

I'll be nice, though and tell you about them :).

1)  Stephanie at Somewhat Simple is giving away a blog facelift by Designer Blogs.

Who doesn't want a blog facelift????  I know I do.
So go on over to Somewhat Simple and check out the rules.

2)  Kathy at Creative Home Expressions is giving away a beautiful brown pillow from allmodern.com.

Go check out Kathy's post and see what you have to do to win (but that matches my couches, so I need to win, not you :)).

Hope you have a great Monday.  This is catchup day for me - meaning I must go do laundry and dishes and dusting (ugh!) and straightening and ... all the other never-ending chores.  Oh wait, that's all of them. 

Big Reveal soon

Just a quick note to let you know that I have not forgotten you. I have been painting my bedroom all weekend and it is almost done. I just have to get the bed moved and paint behind it, then all my antique white will be gone - yeah!!!! and all the walls will be green - double yeah!!!!  And, needless to say, that doesn't leave a lot of weekend blogging time.

In light of that, my 3D bedroom cleanup will be posted after the room is put back together. (By the way, this week's challenge is the last one and is any room in the house that you want. Check it out here.)



Also, my guest blogger should be in the house tomorrow afternoon. Keep your eyes peeled for that interesting and (dare I say, very funny) post.

Good night!

My first Blog Award

WooHoo!!!!

I've been given a blog award!! I'm so excited. If you know me, you know how much I LOOOVVVE awards!!

Kim at A Fist Full of Dandelions has given me a Best Blog Award. Thank you so much, Kim! I really am humbled by this. (This is also loads of fun for me! And... I think I've used more exclamation marks in this one post than in the rest of my life combined!!!!!)

The Best Blog Award rules are:
1) To accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his/her blog link.
2) Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you have recently discovered and think are great! Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Wow, now I get to choose 15 other blogs and tell them all about it. OK - here goes.

2toddlersandme
cutegirlshairstyles
controllingmychaos
Crystalscraftspot
itsalmostnaptime
itssoverycheri
mustardseedcreations
stretchmarkmama
tanjalasagna
thestoryofaprincessandherhair
Thriftydecorchick
Primfromscratch
YaYastuff
Ramblings

Whew! That was a long list. And there are so many other bloggers worthy of the award. (Oh and Hubby of mine, if you would ever write on your blog, then I would give you the award too - Love you!!)

Thanks you guys for being my followers. I'm in the process of becoming followers of everyone who follows me. If I haven't become your follower in the next few days, let me know.

Be on the lookout for a mysterious guest blogger coming to take over my site!!

Look what I did on Friday

Friday was such a great productive day (and yes, I realize it's aaaaaallllllllllll the way to Tuesday now and Friday was such a long time ago, but...I'm just now getting to this, so humor me).

To start off, we had some visitors to our yard. See that pole, that's our back deck. Look how close these young bucks came.




After all that fun and excitement, it's a wonder we got anything done! But there were projects to be done, so...

First off, remember my front door before? As great as it looked, I wanted to spruce up the wreath with some more colors.

Here is the wreath before:

I bought these for $1 each at Michaels. There were stems but those weren't working, so I cut them off with wire cutters.

Used my handy dandy hot glue gun.

And glued those babies to my wreath. There it is on my door. What do you think?

All right, on to the next project. I have to admit this was started before Friday (but finished on Friday). We got to go to Ikea one weekend in Sept when we went to visit my brother in Charlotte. My poor 6 year old had a new table but no chair to go with it. Keep in mind the table is hot pink and we wanted a chair to match. But we found this instead. I thought it was perfect because it was just the right height for her to use at the table, and she could store it underneath.

We got out the pieces, sanded them, primed them with this stuff.


Then for the magic touch - hot pink paint!!

Add that to a girl who's been begging to paint something...


A little boy who loves tools...

And a supervisor and you get...

A HOT PINK STOOL!!

Doesn't it look good with her table and all her myriads of pink stuff!!!!!! (Pay no attention to the mess. For a 6-year, that's no mess, it's important stuff.)

So there you go - productive Friday. How was your weekend? Do anything productive?

3D Office/Craft area Cleanup

Hey guys!!

First I want to say "Thanks" to ya'll for leaving comments on the circus post. I LOVE reading comments, so keep it coming!!

OK - on to this week's Charming Home Challenge given by Stephanie over at Somewhat Simple.

Update: Last week I posted on making my kitchen more charming. There has been a little bit of clutter added to my clean counter and island, but for the most part it still looks nice. That's the hard part - to not only clean up the clutter, but keep it clean. So that's my new goal - keep it clean.

This week Stephanie told us she would go easy on us and assigned a 3D cleanup (declutter, deep clean and decorate) to our craft area and office.

Stephanie obviously hasn't seen my house.

(Disclaimer: Readers who know me and think that I am organized are going to be utterly shocked at these pictures. Just remember this - trying to keep a house clean with children living in it is like trying to shovel snow in a blizzard. That's my excuse anyway.)


My scrapbook/craft table. It has the potential to be organized. See those lovely wooden boxes with shelves? My husband built those for me a couple of years ago. So, I'm supposed to keep it organized. It just doesn't really stay that way.

Pages in progress.

Close up of my hubby-built boxes.

OK - this is my desk/office area. All of those papers are in a "to be filed" pile. Plus there is added papers put there by my 6-yr old who LOVES to write on papers...and put them everywhere. So, as you can see, it needs work.


What did I do to clean it up? I sorted and filed all the papers (decluttering). I dusted the desk **shock**. (If you don't know this about me, I DESPISE!!! dusting.) Not only did I just dust. I dusted where I actually moved stuff and dusted under it. I good dusted!! (deep cleaning) Lastly, we were supposed to decorate. For this area, I just moved stuff around. The vase had been behind the monitors, so I moved it to the front so we could actually see the pretty flowers. I also moved some family pictures out front to be better seen.


Without further ado, here is the after:




Cleaning up the craft area: I sorted by project and tried to find space to store all those "in process" ones (declutter). I dusted it too **shock again** (deep clean). I didn't really do anything to decorate this. I thought a clean looking table was decoration enough :).

Here's how it looks now:





So there is my big cleanup for the week. Want to join me? This week's challenge is your bedroom. All you have to do is make a post and link up to Somewhat Simple. You can always use this button to get there.



I'm giving you a heads up that this week's challenge will be hard for me. I'm planning to paint my bedroom this week (don't worry, I'll do a post on it) so it will probably NOT get cleaned this week. But I may just clean one of the kids' rooms instead.

Have a great day!