baby shower for gretchen & tate

On Tuesday, October 26th, I helped put together a baby shower for Gretchen & baby Tate.


The idea for the cute lanterns came from here. Becca & I whipped them out & they looked so good...next time I won't use scotch tape to hang them. ;)

Lots of people helped bring the yummy food!

Lots of sweet gifts.

Kelly, Becca, Gretchen & I
Kelly headed up the planning of the shower & really wanted to make it extra special for Gretchen! :)

Opening gifts

The gift from my co-workers. :)

Patty (Josh's mom), Amy (Josh's sister), & Gretchen

Katrina, Gretchen, Mom & Becca

Our friend Sheila is due just one day apart from Gretchen!

barn party

Another trip to the Barn Party! It's one of the highlights of our Fall. :) Kenton was a Kung Fu master, Finn a ninja, I was a gardener & Cedar was a rooster (a borrowed costume from Griffin). :)

The Chase family
Becca the hobo, Aaron's a shark, Cohen's Karate kids, Tyler's an Elvish Avenger, & Sadie is a pink fairy (I think)

The Ruddicks
Ronan's a rock star & Griffin is a tiger

Finn played all the games & really liked the rope swing! He kept cutting in line inadvertently. :\ Everyone was so nice to our little ninja!

The Green Family
Spiderman-Ethan, Kitty-Macey & Pumpkin-Emma :)

A battle between Kung Fu-Kenton & Karate-Justin!

Cute Malia was a bunch of grapes!

And Finn was trying to sweet talk his way into getting some of Ava's candy. Don't think she was giving in. ;)

Blurry Finn with Miss Chelsea dressed as Dora. So cute!

last comic standing

Kenton bought us tickets to see the top 5 finalists from last season's Last Comic Standing for our anniversary. So on Thursday, October 21st, Carolyn watched our boys so that could go out to eat & to the performance.

We ate dinner at Steelhead Brewery. Possibly not the best choice on the evening of a Duck football game, but the food was great...loud, cheering fans, not so much. ;)

We had great seats in the balcony!

We were pretty excited to see our favorite comics & they didn't disappoint!

Of course, I didn't actually take any pictures of the comics themselves. I was too busy enjoying the performance. It was a fun night & definitely something out of the ordinary!

pumpkin carving

We had our annual pumpkin carving night with our Bible study group on Tuesday, October 19th. We've been doing this every year for probably 6 years! The experience has changed a bit since adding kids to the mix...

...but we all manage to carve or paint a pumpkin & have a great time!

Finn really wanted to help this year. Luckily, the carving set we have is not too sharp.

I broke out the power tool this year to make polka dots.

All lit up.

And with the lights off.

The kids (minus Cedar)
Macey, Ethan, Finn, Ava, & Emma

diy vintage bus roll

After seeing a few sources of inspiration online (here & here) & realizing I had a place for one of my own, I decided to make my own "vintage" bus roll. I couldn't find any sources online for how to make my own (in the style that I liked) & was tempted to have one printed for me, but just felt like I wanted to make it myself...even if it would take 5 hours (eek!). :P So here's how I did it!


I had Kenton cut an extra piece of ply wood to my specified dimensions (20"x55") & then I spray painted it black.

I also took advantage of his access to a copy machine & 11"x17" paper at work & had him print out my city names. I did all of the formatting on Adobe InDesign & chose Lucida as my font.

I taped all of the pages together & moved words around as needed, since I'm not all that savvy with InDesign (I wanted "VIA" to be lined up with the top of the word instead of the bottom of the word).

Next, I used white chalk (colored chalk would have been better) & covered the backside of the words with a nice layer.

Then I laid that whole thing down & taped it in place. I traced the words using a colored pencil (anything would work, but it's what I had on hand), peeking a tiny bit along to way to make sure it was leaving a chalk outline on the board.

I was so relieved to see this when I lifted the papers off! Now for the detail work. :)

Using some extra interior white paint that I had in the garage, I filled in the outlined city names.

The chalk stayed in place really well & didn't rub off instantly when I touched it. I was afraid it would just brush away, but it held up perfectly!

First coat!
I ended up going over the words again with a second coat (which took much less time) because the black showed through a little more than I wanted.

The results!

The list is the order in which Kenton & I traveled through Europe the summer before we got married. I didn't include every city (some were left out intentionally, some by accident) but I'm mostly happy with the results. There are some things that bother me (of course) but...c'est la vie!

Hanging in place, a little blocked by a shadow...but otherwise, pretty much the look I was going for! :)

I'm sharing this on The Shabby Nest! Check it out for lots of frugal inspiration!

corvallis

On Saturday, October 16th, Carolyn & Jesse invited me & the boys to drive to Corvallis with them. Kenton was out of town for the day for a Heroscape Tournament, so we took them up on their offer & headed back to my college town for a quick visit. :)

We had fun exploring underneath the GIANT Cedar trees. :)

Big boy with a new haircut!

(Photos by Jesse, by the way) :)

So happy to have quality time with my sons...& to have friends to help entertain all of us! ;)

Always up for climbing!

Carolyn, Cedar, Finn & Katrina

Gathering acorns to add to my home decor! ;)

I had eager helpers.

Proof that Jesse was there! :P

We spent some time at Central Park so the boys could run around before dinner.

Cedar looks so different to me, now that he has shorter hair.

He loved climbing on the truck! One of his favorite things & favorite words to say ("Cuh-cuh"). :)

More climbing on the truck.

After the park, we went to Bomb's Away for dinner. The kids both ate really well & it was not nearly as stressful as eating out can be. Especially with the extra help! Thanks for the fun trip, Carolyn & Jesse! Corvallis is always a great idea. :)