HALLOWEEN

We are headed to a trunk or treat tonight. Aubrey is Rapunzel this year.

We'll see how long the wig stays on her head!

 I think she has longer eyelashes than I do!

AUBREY'S BIRTHDAY SHOOT

I think I'm finally caught up on editing my personal photos!

These are the last ones - Aubrey's photo shoot I did for her 4th birthday.

WEEKEND LONG BIRTHDAY!

Last Saturday night Jared's boss and co-worker went with us to take Aubrey to Chuck E. Cheese's (her first time -mine too maybe). She had a lot of fun. Then on Sunday was her real birthday where her Sunbeams teacher brought her cupcakes and a present. After church we picked up Jared's sister and brother in-law, Spencer from the airport. They were stopping here on their way to the Philippines the next day. Thank you to everyone who sent her presents!

 We made pizzas for dinner, had cake and then carved pumpkins.

 Thanks Grandpa Wight for the princess dishes, Grandma Wood for the owl night light and Eli Wight for the drawing and stickers!!

 We bought her a hair and accessories set, she's been doing everyone's hair.

I tried doing a picture on the cake using a tutorial I found online here. 

I should have picked a more simple larger picture. It worked in theory, just looks weird!

 

RAINY DAY

It was one of those sunny but rainy day and Aubrey was itching to go outside, so my camera and I followed her around our little neighborhood.

PUMPKIN PATCH

This last month we visited a little pumpkin patch on one of the warmest fall days I think we had. We were all over dressed!

 We went through the kid corn maze.

 I'm glad it wasn't a real maze with dead ends that you could get lost in. We would have for sure lost her!

 They had this weird spot in a barn with tractor trikes.

 The pumpkin patch was kind of disappointing. It was not a nice field full of pumpkins. More of a picked over weedy patch with already picked pumpkins on the side. Oh well, Aubrey still let me get a few shots of her in it.

 She was trying to pick her own pumpkins.

ANNIVERSARY

Yesterday was our 11th anniversary. Jared had the day off work so we started the day off with going out for breakfast at Portage Bay Cafe. They have the best french toast with a topping bar.

 Then we went to South Lake Union and explored a little

Then we took the street car downtown to do a little shopping.

 Aubrey is watching for the streetcar.

That evening we went out for dinner. We had so much time and we didn't know how to fill it!
We were so early that we walked around for a bit first, but all that was around was a Safeway - we read some magazines for a while!

 The restaurant where we ate. I liked how it was in an old house but was modern inside.

They brought us some salted caramels with our desserts.

After dinner we still had 2 hours to kill before picking up Aubrey from the sitter! We couldn't think of anything to do that didn't involve eating! We stopped at Archie McPhee's which is a store full of odd novelty items. We had some photo booth pics taken. The top one didn't work out to well with Jared wearing a horse head!

THRIFTING FOR HALLOWEEN . . . & CHRISTMAS!

Aubrey is going to be Rapunzel for Halloween this year. She already had a purple princess dress so I bought her a long blond adult wig from Target and braided it. She didn't like how scratchy it was so I had to make her a little hair cap out of stockings to protect her from it!

The last thing on her list was shoes. I've looked everywhere for some cheap princess shoes that aren't those plastic ones with heals -but no luck.

So today I took a pair of her plain black shoes that I got from the thrift store a while back (she has 2) and turned them into Rapunzel shoes:

 

I first unpicked the bows and then I modge podged purple fabric to the whole shoe. 

Then I painted the bows gold and painted some crocheted lace I had gold. I trimmed them with the gold lace and added a little pearl embellishment.  Now I have a comfortable warm pair of shoes for her costume.

While at the thrift store yesterday looking for shoes, I scanned the costume section and came across some Disney princess dresses so I bought all the ones I found and will be a Christmas present for Aubrey! For about $25 got her a Belle, Snow White, Little Mermaid, Tinker Bell and a cute vintage looking polka dot dress (Annie??). 

She is loving playing dress up these days and she has her Rapunzel dress already and was given a Cinderella dress for her birthday, so now come Christmas, she'll be set!

CHALKBOARDS

I was on a hunt for a chalkboard decal that I could put on the wall next to my computer so I could make lists of the photos I needed to edit to keep everything straight. 

I found this one at Michael's but even with a 50% off coupon, it was still $7 and I don't love how the chalk writes on it! And it's really hard to get it on the wall without any air bubbles!

I didn't like it in my desk area so I moved it to the broom closet door in the kitchen!

Then I remembered that any matte paint could be used for a chalkboard!

Since my wall above my desk is dark, I thought I would give it a try! Sure enough it works great. 

I use a damp cloth to erase to keep it looking clean and dust free.

SEATTLE SHOPPER

So before my shopping visitors left (back in September), I took a photo of them outside my place and I think it was Tracey's idea to make a magazine cover out if it, so here's my try:

and here's a couple other photos, one with me in it and one with Aubrey in it to!