Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving weekend started off with deep cleaning the house so I could put up Christmas decorations on Friday. What a fun way to spend Thanksgiving morning! Taylor was a big help though and helped me make these pumpkin oatmeal cookies that were delicious!

This is the picture from MyBakingAddiction.com where I got the recipe.
I forgot to take a picture of mine and Taylor's.

That afternoon, we headed to Mama Donna's for Thanksgiving dinner. There were over 20 people at her house and at least 7 people were missing! We have a BIG family!

Friday morning included a deep cleaning of the kitchen and then a little Black Friday shopping. We didn't go anywhere close to the big crowds though, I just can't handle it!

Once we got home, I got most of our Christmas decorations up. Our 'Bama tree isn't up yet, but I'm not sure I have the time to put it up.

On Saturday, we headed to Brad's for Thanksgiving with Adam's family and then to the Iron Bowl! It was a pretty fun Iron Bowl (for Alabama fans anyway)! You can't beat 49-0! We did have to bundle up because it was cold. We took 5 blankets to the game!

On Sunday, we went to church and then had Taylor's birthday party. Check out the last post for the fun pictures!

It was a great Thanksgiving weekend, but I was exhausted when it was over. Poor Taylor didn't get a nap the entire weekend and was a little bit of a drama queen before the weekend was over. I'll know better (as will Mama Donna) than to think she can make it without naps and going to bed late.

After that long weekend, I do have a (somewhat) clean house and Christmas decorations up to enjoy the rest of the Christmas season. I'm also in the process of getting a lot of Christmas shopping done online! I'll be done before long!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Halloween

Every year for Halloween we go to our friends' house to Trick or Treat. They live in THE neighborhood for trick or treating.

Amber made taco soup and below are pics of all the yummy treats we had to go along with them.

Taylor and I made this Pinterest creation. Vanilla pudding, sprinkles and crushed Oreos. 

Mummy dogs

Ghost (rice krispy) treats

We always get a picture of all the kids. Here's the one from last year.

Now, here are our attempts this year:

Missing Jules and Shook

Missing Shook and Taylor's not happy

Missing Taylor and Shook's not happy

Now he's really not happy!

We did get some cute pictures of all the families:

The Christie's, our hosts!

The Deckers

Taylor still did not want to take a picture. Right before this I said, "Taylor, are you listening to Mommy?" She turned around and smiled for 2 seconds and Wes snapped the picture. 

Next, we did our trick or treating while the boys stayed back and handed out candy.

Taylor and Jules had more fun giving out candy after we got back than they did trick or treating. It was so cute watching them! Jules was scared of some of the costumes, but they didn't bother Taylor. 

I can't believe next year we'll have another child in the pictures! 

Laundry Detergent

I've mentioned in several blog posts about Pinterest. It really is so great! One pin I found was about making your own laundry detergent, so a couple weekends ago, Adam and I tried it. The link said to get Borax, Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda and Fels Naptha Laundry Soap Bar. It said you could get all of this at your local store, but all we could find was the Borax. We ordered the other two things on Amazon. We also had to buy a 5 gallon bucket from Home Depot. I think our total spent was about $20, including the bucket.

We (Adam) cut up the soap bar and put it in a pot with ~4 cups of hot water. We boiled it over medium-low heat, stirring continuously, until all the soap flakes dissolved. I think it took around 10 minutes.

Then we (again, Adam) filled the 5 gallon bucket half full of hot water and poured in the soap mixture from above. We added 1 cup of the Super Washing Soda and a 1/2 cup of Borax and stirred all that together, then we filled the bucket with water until it was full.

We covered it with foil (because we didn't buy the lids to the buckets) and let it sit overnight. Well, we actually let it sit for a week because we didn't have time to do the next step, which took, oh, 5 minutes. 

Throughout the "sitting process" it gelled up, so we stirred it again before beginning to put it into the containers we'd been saving. The containers should be filled with half water and half soap. The link where I got the recipe from said she used 8 cups of each for the best mixture. We put in 8 cups of the detergent mixture and then I just filled them with water.

This should make about 10 gallons of detergent, but we only had 4 containers at the time. We'll continue filling containers until it's gone. The next time we make it, all we have to buy is the Fels Naptha laundry bar, which was about $4.00 on Amazon, although its apparently about $1.50 if you can find it in the grocery store.



I've used it on a couple of loads so far, and it seems great! The link above shows an experiment she did with her husband's old t-shirts and mustard. It appears that Tide and this detergent performed the same on getting the mustard out (neither got it out completely).

She says to use the soap, you should shake the container first and then use 1/4 cup for a front loading machine and 5/8 cup for a top-loading machine. It works out that I use two capfuls from the blue bottle, so that's easy enough!

One more Pinterest project down and several hundreds more to go!

Taylor's 2nd Birthday!

On Nov 20th we celebrated Taylor's 2nd birthday! I can't believe its been two years since my sweet girl was born! Time flies!

This cute shirt was made just for her party by Jennymo Designs http://www.jennymo.com/

I searched and searched trying to come up with a cute theme for her birthday. She loves Dora and Elmo, but I felt those were used a ton and I wanted something different. She loves to "lellow", so I finally decided on a color themed birthday party. (I think the first color they taught her at school was yellow. She is finally starting to say something more like color, instead of "lellow").

Her party was a blast! A big thanks to family showing up early the day of the party to help peel and cut fruit and veggies, pick up balloons and help do any other last minute things that needed to be done.

Not too long before her party, I finally broke down and joined Pinterest. I'm so glad I did, I got some great ideas from there!

The table was set up with butcher paper as a table cloth and crayons so kids could color.

Thanks to my wonderful Aunt Cathy all the fruit and veggies were cut, peeled and separated by color to continue the theme! Aunt Cathy and I even separated the goldfish by color!
I know, I'm crazy!

 Based on a couple of ideas off Pinterest, we set up butcher paper along the fence and wrote all the kids names in painters tape. There was plenty of paint and the kids had a blast painting over their name. Once it was all dry (thanks to Adam getting out an extension cord and blow dryer), we pulled the tape off and everyone had their own artwork to take home from the party. Unfortuately, I don't have a picture of the finished product, but here's lots of pictures of the painting.

Wishing it would dry...also wish I had a picture of Adam
with the blow dryer, trying to get it dry. That was a sight!

 While the paint dried, we played in the sand, slid and played Peek-a-Boo with the parents!

We finally made it to cake time and enjoyed this amazing cake!

Louise's Cakes and Things did a fabulous job! http://cakes-n-things.com/
My friend just bought this bakery from Ms. Louise in November.

Then it was time for presents! Oh, the many presents. We will definitely be putting "No gifts" on the invitation next year. We don't have room for so many gifts!

And, finally for the big present from Mom, Dad, Nannie, Papa, Mama Donna, and Papa Rex...a Barbie jeep! After her initial head first dive into the Jeep, each friend got to take a turn riding in it.

When the party ended, all the kids went home with their name artwork and coloring books featuring themselves as the main character (thanks to Crayola Story Studio). We had also spent the week before her party melting down crayons and creating unique crayons for all the children to take home with their coloring book.

We had so much fun and were so grateful for all the friends and family that came and celebrated Taylor's birthday!