Happy Halloweenie!

So I had this great plan where I take a photo of Bella in her hot dog costume and say, "Happy Halloweenie!" It was a great plan, but I failed to remember that actually making that happen was a little above and beyond what I could handle. Big fail. Let's all pretend that it actually happened shall we?

Once I get some photos of Eden in her costume I will post them, but for today I figured I would FINALLY show you all that I did in fact embrace the fall spirit and put a little decor around the house. Nothing exciting, but hey, I tried. Oh and I discovered this year that I actually don't like Halloween. I think I just don't get it. Why would I want to decorate with fake spiders all over my house (we have plenty of live ones in our basement), dress up in weird clothing, watch movies that make me pee my pants, engorge myself in candy, and embrace dead people? I just don't get it. However, I did get enough of the spirit to take Eden to a couple of houses for fun. More on her experience on this day at a later time...let's just say she is all too happy embracing this holiday a lot more than I am.

As usual, for the decor, I stuck mostly to the mantle. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE having a mantle? It has been my dream for so long to be able to have one to decorate and hang stockings from. The bad news is I don't have the money to buy anything for said mantle, so I just have to shop around my house. This wouldn't really be bad news except that I don't have much to use as it is. 

It is definitely more...cluttered...than I usually would be comfortable with. I like clean, simple, bare and this is most certainly none of that. It is kind of fun though and I am happy enough with it. I really do need to come up with a new look for the mantle for Christmas. I have pretty much continued keeping that old window with photos in the center and books on the side for the better part of a year.

I am in major obsessive love with my gold pumpkins. If I were a good blogger I would have taken before photos, but I'm not, so I am asking you to use your imagination. I bought these two pumpkins at the Dollar Tree. Which means I spent $2 for two foam pumpkins. Way better than the prices I had seen at a certain craft store. I originally planned on getting them all glittered up like I had done in years past, but after I had painted them up with some gold spray paint I realized I was quite happy with the result and left them as is. Maybe next year I will need a little more bling, but for now I am just loving them as is. 

Hope you all enjoyed yourselves on this Halloween! Want to know a fun fact? Today marked our 5 year dating anniversary. Yep, we started dating "officially" on Halloween in 2006. Our date consisted of LOTS of  scary movies. No, seriously. We watched the entire Halloween movie marathon until 3 a.m. Good to know we bonded over blood and guts. How romantic.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 

Patching The Pumpkin

During a bout of AMAZINGLY gorgeous fall weather here in Oregon, we decided a trip to the pumpkin patch was most definitely in order. We followed tradition this year and returned to Bauman Farms. We seriously love that place. I mostly just appreciate that we don't get charged a million and one dollars to enter a farm with a young child who really can't do a whole lot of activities anyway. Honestly, some of those farms out there are getting crazy expensive. It's pure insanity I tell you. I thought it would be fun to compare this years pictures to last year's since Eden was only a month old last year during her first trip to the pumpkin patch and was 13 months this year. It is so fun to look back and see how much she has changed. Oh and also to laugh at ourselves for forcing a newborn to pose behind a wood cutout. 

Last Year

This Year

Last Year

This Year

Last Year

This Year

Last Year

This Year

Wasn't that a fun little trip down memory lane? Here are a few more fun photos from our little farm trip.

Is this not the cutest calf nose you ever saw? You can't see it here, but Eden kept putting her hand through the fence and petting it's soft little nose. We were all in love with the baby cowie. 

As you can see our daughter has my love for animals. Good thing we want a farm. I never thought I would want a goat, but this girl LOVED feeding the goat. Maybe I'll get over my memories of goats eating my favorite shirts when I was younger...I mean, its only been 20 years since that happened. Geez.

We wanted to get a photo of her standing in front of this measuring stick, but unfortunately Eden thought that  was rather boring and off she went. 

 We took a little walk through the pumpkin patch. We didn't find the unique pumpkins we were looking for, but Eden sure had fun. Oh and ridiculous side note...I had no idea that Eden had found the CUTEST pumpkin ever while I was taking photos. I was so busy holding the big black box in front of my face, snapping away, that I never even saw it. Needless to say I threw a fit after I saw these photos and realized we didn't buy it for her. Don't worry, we ran to the store and bought her one! 

This girl loved petting the hay on this pumpkin dude. Don't know why, but apparently it was rather entertaining. 

We had a great time at the farm. Our only regret was that we went right at closing so we were sad to have to leave. I am honestly so excited for next fall just so we can go again! Wow..never thought I would be excited for fall, but things sure have changed this year. 

A Forgotten Trip + Photo Overload = Seattle.

Eden and I took a trip to Seattle with my parents. She was 10 months old. Whoops. I had been editing the 50,001,212 photos I took on the trip and got bored with it and then just never posted anything about it. So lame. This was the very first time I went on a trip as a "single" mom. In fact, it was also Eden's first time staying in a hotel (which was interesting). My thoughts on staying in a hotel with a baby...no big deal if you are lucky enough to have one of those babies that actually goes to bed without SCREAMING. Not so great if you don't. It turned out that she wouldn't fall asleep unless she wore herself out by crawling around in my GIANT King sized bed. I had no problems with this at all, I am always looking for an excuse to snuggle my girl. Oh, and about the bed, it was heavenly. Full of pillows. Luxury I tell you. It was also nice because my parents were just down the hall so they could help me out as needed. It was needed. A lot.

So, what were we doing up in Seattle? Well, visiting my younger sister! Okay, technically she lived in Bellevue, but let's not get technical.

That's my baby sister, Brooke. Well, yeah she's not a baby anymore. She's all growed up.

We got to spend lots of time exploring with my sister. Well, as much as Eden and I could handle. Sometimes she and I would just lay around the room while I crossed my fingers for her to fall asleep. It was also vital in ensuring that she ate because this girl DID NOT eat in public. Yes, it was the longest year of my life, but it was worth it. Or at least I tell myself it was. 

This was the view from our room. Not too bad right? If you went down the hall to my parents you would see Mt. Rainier. It looked so close I wanted to reach out and touch it.

We got to go visit this very old and gorgeous building that had been converted into apartments. My sister was taking a tour as a potential place to live (she didn't end up moving there but it's fun to look at nonetheless). 

One of our stops during the day at this fun guitar shop in downtown Seattle. Guitars are cool.

That's Eden's future guitar. You know the one.

Oh, hello cute bookstore that belongs in an equally cute and cheesy romantic film. Well, if you erase the graffiti.

At one point we took a little trip to Kirkland. If you haven't been please go. I want to move there. They also have an amazing burger place. Not kidding. Plus they use local organic meat. That's a win in my book. Oh and if you really want to know I think it was called The Sip. Could be wrong.

This is not the burger place I just mentioned. Who can resist a restaurant called Olive You?

We had a random photo shoot on the water.

Oooh, sparkly duck.

Check out those sparkly pink TOM's. This is back when she needed assistance to walk, so weird.

The best part of the trip? Eden's first time in a pool! She is a water baby. SO not like her mom. She loved it.

Swimming made her very tired.

Other highlights included a pizza place that made me wish I could marry it. If you ask me the name I'll just say I don't know, because I really don't know. Same thing happened when I decided I wanted to marry Josh, I didn't know his name. Ask me about it sometime. We also enjoyed a whole lot of Starbucks. Oh and I got a delivery of a Top Pot donut. My favorite. We went to a really fun new church called Rain City Church. If you live nearby, check it out. Eden played in their nursery and loved it. Also, it was located in a movie theater. I craved popcorn through the whole service. We did a whole lot of other stuff, but that would require me to remember and that's not happening 3 whole months later.

All in all I will say I survived my first trip without Josh. Eden survived too. I actually didn't want to come home which surprised me. Obviously I missed Josh, but I just wished he could have come up and had fun with us. It was a great trip and sorry it took me an extremely long time to blog about it. Hopefully that's not the same fate for Eden's party...

13 Months

Look who is 13 months (well, 2 days ago)! This past month Eden worked on perfecting her walking skills and now can do so very confidently...and is even working on running. One BIG exciting change was finding a TOOTH! I was able to cease looking for toddler dentures which was a huge sigh of relief. There were about two days of some serious crankiness and then she was back to her happy self. 

Things you love:

Walking everywhere

Waking up your dada

Playing with Bella

Farm Animals

Throwing things

EATING (she officially eats more than me now)

Apples (applesauce, apple cider, green apples...)

Feeding Bella

Swings

Playing in the park

Talking, singing, and shrieking everywhere you go

Dancing

Reading every book in the house

Sorting + organizing toys, shoes, etc.

Things you don't love:

Getting told "no"

The nursery at church (she used to LOVE it so much, hoping it's short lived)

When mommy leaves for the weekend

Not getting to eat everything that you want

The sun in your eyes

Yep.

Trader Joe's organic animal crackers...with us wherever we go.

So much for a toy basket.

This girls loves shoes + organizing. Put them together and well, you have this.

Showing off her church outfit

This was taken immediately after that last one. This was also during teething. Can you say MOOD SWINGS?!

*Sorry about the quality of the photos. I dropped my beloved nifty fifty lens (otherwise known as the 50mm 1.8) during Eden's birthday party and it has never been the same. It makes me so sad. In fact, I almost can't handle the sadness. At least the subject of the photos makes me smile!

UPDATE: Thank you everyone for your prayers regarding my little scare last week. The good news is it was just an infection and I am all done with my crazy medication. Thankfully the medication didn't make me sick (despite the 50 million warnings that it would make me very ill) and I can certainly attribute that to lots of prayer and my miracle product, Kefir. Hopefully I'll get a chance to tell you all about that soon. Not being sick was a major blessing since I had my very first weekend away with the ladies of my church so I was so glad that I didn't have to worry about that! You all made me feel so loved and comforted, so thank you from the bottom of my heart!