Did you enjoy your Thanksgiving this year?  We had a wonderful time!  We alternate years between my mom & dad’s house and this year we were at my Dad’s.  It was a nice, intimate celebration for us and we got to spend some quality time with my step-mom and Dad.

Tyson had some Thanksgiving homework (writing down our menu, word puzzles, etc.) and he started off the day by getting that done.  The food was great (I LOVE Thanksgiving food!) and I was happy to bring the Green Bean Casserole, one of my personal faves.

We also sipped on some Chocolate Martinis, MAN were they good (as pictured below!)

I can’t believe it’s already Christmastime!  This year is SO much different with me being home and able to gradually decorate and bake.  I’m wrapping up another BUSY fall season with Ten Tiny Toes, but it’s been the best year yet!  Looking forward to taking some much needed time to slow down and enjoy this season.  I’m taking part in a “Picture the Holidays” Project where you take one photo each day (they send you a prompt) and I’m hoping this will refocus me on the little things about this time of year that I love.  If you’d like to join in (you do NOT need a DSLR or need to be a photographer to join in) you can find more info here: http://www.papercoterie.com/signup/picture-the-holidays/

Time to say Grace!

Thanksgiving \Thanks“giv‘ing\, n.

1. The act of rending thanks, or expressing gratitude for favors or mercies. [1913 Webster]

I know it’s cliche, but we have SO much to be thankful for.  We have a happy, healthy family with two wonderful children and couldn’t ask for a more supportive and giving extended family.  We are so blessed!

Each year we alternate Thanksgiving between my Mom’s & Dad’s house each year, so this was the year at my mom’s house!  It’s always so fun to see everyone that we don’t get to see as often as we’d like.  Of course the food is always one of the best parts of this holiday as well, and what T’giving post would be complete without some food preparation shots?!  LOL

The food was amazing and while I usually bring the old traditional version of Green Bean Casserole, this year I decided to try out a new version of it.  I made the Pioneer Woman’s Green Bean Casserole and I have to say, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the old kind.  This was SO much yummier and fancy holiday worthy!

I also have decided that Thanksgiving must be Bailey’s favorite holiday.  You see, this girl can EAT.  Like, a lot.  She eats more than Tyson on a daily basis.  So, she was LOVING this day (despite not ever taking a nap too)!

Tyson’s feast consisted of turkey and grapes…need I say more?

Then, we have the Chocolate Turkey.  I will preface this by saying that this was NOT my idea.  In fact, I knew it was trouble from the moment I saw it sitting on the table.  And she spotted it on the table about 2.5 seconds after we got there too.

Here’s Grandma, in all her glory letting B indulge in the chocolate turkey.  Good thing her dress is brown.  You’ll see why in a moment…

And then the sucking began.  She sucked and sucked on it for a good 10 minutes and WOULD NOT take it away from her mouth.  It was like a pacifier!

And this is the end result…brown dress is good…

Finger lickin’ good…headless turkey…

Hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving as well!

One of my favorite things to do in all of my spare time (ha!) is to look for fun and unique things online.  While I’ve been doing my Christmas shopping online, I’ve come across a few things that I thought were so cool and unique and would be fun to share and maybe give you some gift ideas!

Uncommon Goods is one of my FAVORITE places to find unique items!  It’s the place I go when I have to get something for the person that has everything, you know we all have at least one!

1.  The first thing I found from there is this cool Grandparents Journal.  I have lost all of my grandparents, and Tony only has one grandparent still living and one ofour favorite keepsakes is a book that was written by an author that interviewed his Grandpa about his life.  He put it together and we all got copies and it’s justone of the most valuable keepsakes we have.   So, I know that someday our children will appreciate having something along these lines as well as a keepsake and to know more about their heritage and family history.

2.  Another find from the same site is for the golfers in your life (and we have a LOT in our lives!)  It’s this neat little Golf Scorecard Keeper.  You can attach your scorecards from your best rounds or famous courses you’ve played and jot down a few notes from the round as well.

3.  If you know me at all, you know that I am obsessed with Etsy.  For Mother’s day, I bought myself got a mother’s necklace from the Vintage Pearl.  I just love having it with the kids’ names on it and their birth stones.  This would make an awesome gift for any mommy for Christmas morning! 

4.  The last find for today are these great little storage/totes/containers from Baffin Bags.  I have several of these that I use in my office and they’re great for the bathroom to hold toilet paper, toiletries, or just about anything else that you want to have available, but concealed in a fashionable way.  She even has some holiday stylesa available now as well!

I’m hoping to be able to post some Fun Finds on a regular basis, so stay tuned and I’d love to hear about what Fun Finds you have found too!

We’re back and ready to rock & roll! It’s been a whirlwind of a summer for us and the fall is equally as busy.  I might try and play catch up, I might not. I haven’t decided quite yet.  ;-)

I thought I would start with a Halloween post.  We were very excited for Halloween this year in our new neighborhood.  At our old house, we would maybe have 30 or so kids and go through about 2 bags of candy.  But the kids in that ‘hood were mostly older elementary age.

But, in our new ‘hood there are a LOT of young families (definitely our favorite thing!) and so we were hopeful that it would be a bit busier.  Well, be careful what you wish for!  We went through TEN bags of candy!!!  It was insane!  The sidewalks were lined with families and cute little kiddos in their costumes and many of the houses were decorated in all their Halloween glory with candy distributors hanging on the front porch.

I think we hit up about 30 houses with the kids, we also had some of our friends over for a small Halloween Party.  The weather was actually quite nice, not too windy and only about 40 degrees, so it was one of our nicer Halloweens (I was a bride the year of the 1991 Halloween Blizzard!)

Bon Jovi

Of course one of the best parts of Halloween is the costumes!  Gone are the days where Tyson lets me choose his costume, so I was very sure when I asked him back in July what he wanted to be, that he was going to say “Batman” or some other commercial character.  But, like he usually does, he surprised me when he said he wanted to be Jon Bon Jovi!  How many five year olds actually know who Bon Jovi even is?  Well, ours has a poster of them up in his room! LOL

So, Bon Jovi he was, and it was so fun to come up with his costume.  I found this great kids faux leather jacket, circa 1980’s and we threw on a pair of skinny jeans and Chucks.  Then we had to figure out the hair.  Because we were going to for the old school rocker Bon Jovi style.  So, I found a kids Mullet’ish wig (which is not an easy task I might add!) and gave it a good trim with some layers and poofed up the top a bit.  Now, I will say, he did look a bit like George Washington with the wig, but it kind of worked out.  :-P

I took a few shots of him up in my studio when I was playing with some off camera flash the other day, these are minus the wig, but I still love them and wanted to share

Hello GQ!

Here are some shots of him in action Trick or Treating.  I made a Bon Jovi playlist and put it on my iPod so he could have a little soundtrack playing.  That seemed to be a big hit with the adults giving out candy!  And then every so often, he would randomly bust out and start singing along, it was so funny!

Here he is busting a move in someone’s driveway, LOL

Tricks or treats?

The T-o-T’ing clan (Bailey was there too, but in the stroller)

Olivia the Pig

If you aren’t familiar with Olivia the Pig, you’re totally missing out!  She is the character in a popular children’s book series and there is also now a show about her on Nick Jr.  Bailey is in LOVE with her.  She lovingly refers to her as “Ee Ah”.  I got the idea for her to be Olivia after we bought her a little stuffed Olivia and she was so excited about it.  But, the problem is that there aren’t really any commercial Olivia costumes out there, so I had to get a bit creative.

I decided to make her a red velvet dress myself, had to dust off the old sewing machine.  I bought a pattern from this Etsy shop and it was actually pretty easy to make the dress!  I might have to make her another one at some point too, I was really happy with how it turned out!  I ended up finding some striped leggings and then this shop on Etsy had Olivia pig ears on a headband and the collar.

So, here she is in all her Ee-Ah glory!  She really loved it once she saw herself in the mirror and realized that she was Olivia.  I might try and get it on her again at some point to take some studio shots of her too.

We had to bring Oliva with us trick or treating as well (total accident that the stroller matched too! LOL)

Ee-Ah managed to sneak into big brothers candy too…yeah, things are SO different with your 2nd child!

Hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween!

This will probably be the last year that we’ll be in our little house for the Holidays (more to come on that soon I’m hoping!)  So, it was very bittersweet digging out all of our Christmas stuff.  We are taking it easy this year and I’m not putting up my Christmas in the City village, but it will definitely be up in our new house next year.   Tony was VERY happy to be digging everything out of the crawl space for the LAST time.  He only said maybe 15 curse words this year instead of the usual 50 or so

Tyson was AWESOME at decorating the tree this year.  As you may recall last year, he concentrated the majority of the bulbs in ONE spot on the tree.  But this year, he was a decorating rock star and even wanted to put the star on the top on (which I tried to let him help with, but it’s Swarovski, man!)

Here’s Tyson hard at work and VERy focused

And since his Daddy was making weird faces and poses for the camera, guess who else had to do it??!

And I’m SO proud of myself for taking all of these without any flash (yay, me!)

More focus and concentration…

That smile…and my attempt at getting some Xmas tree bokeh!

What the Princess thinks of our Xmas tree…let’s pray she doesn’t start crawling until after it’s all down because then I think she’ll LOVE it!

And I’m in LOVE with our new stockings that I splurged on this year.  And it was awesome to finally be able to use the 5th stocking holder that I’ve had for the last 5 years

Had SO much fun taking this pic, I’ve always wanted to get one with the “glow” of the Christmas Tree.  It took my tripod and lots of test shots, but I LOVE it!

It’s been so awesome getting these annual ornaments, someday I’ll have a whole tree full I hope!