A Happy Halloween

Today was a good day.  It's pretty hard to not be happy on Halloween.  The biggest bummer of the day was that we still haven't closed on the house.  We are *STILL* waiting on the paperwork from the underwriters in Georgia.  At this pace it would be faster for me to drive to Georgia and bring it back myself.

 

I had to cancel the locksmith for tomorrow.  It's hard to rekey a house when you don't have the keys.  We also had to postpone the start-up of the utilities.  Ugh.  Could I just own this home already?  I did go ahead and buy a new welcome mat for the front door.  I have confidence that I'll be able to put it down very soon.

 

Elliott wore his My First Halloween onesie today.  He was cute, but that's to be expected.

Spencer wore his new Halloween shirt today.  He wore his old one to school on Monday.  It's the same shirt he's been wearing since he was 2.  I washed it and it's finally going into the clothes box for Elliott.  It still fits Spencer, but the sleeves are ridiculously short.

 

Brothers

 

This is what I put on facebook.

 

My sister in law is in town.  She had an interview at the Mayo Clinic today.  Kendra is close to being done with her oncology fellowship and hospitals around the country want her.  Since we didn't have to be out signing paperwork and since Kendra's hotel is a good hour drive from our house we decided to eat dinner at home instead of going out.  We went to Fresh and Easy to get some stuff.  When we got home we got the pumpkins out into the driveway.

 

We had a quick dinner and then it was time for costumes.

 

Elliott was the world's most adorable Winnie the Pooh.  He even had his best friend Piglet. 

 

Spencer was a very convincing Elmo.  He got lots and lots of comments on his costume tonight.

 

Love these kids.

 

Kendra dressed up as an Aunt. 

I forgot to take any pictures of the actual trick-or-treating until the very end.  This was like 4 houses from ours and we had been out for an hour.  Spencer had much more endurance last year.  I think he wasn't as hot (that Elmo head is toasty) plus his asthma is really bad right now.

 

 

I took this picture and then I was disturbed because Kendra looks like the mama.

I wore that orange jack-o-lantern shirt to work on Tuesday.  I ended up being in meetings with parents all day.  Professional, huh?

 

 

Auntie Kendra being an aunt.

 

Elliott was less than impressed.

 

We're happy to report that Spencer now calls her Aunt Kendra and not Uncle Kendra or Aunt Kenja.

 

One last look at the pumpkins before they go in the trash.

 

Spencer's loot.  He was a happy kid.

 

Guess what.  New Year's Eve is in 2 months.  Chew on that one for a while.

Halloween Eve

Elliott ate raspberries for the first time tonight.  That has nothing to do with Halloween Eve, I just thought you might want to know.

 

He liked them.  A lot.

Oh.  And huge news.  Elliott has his first tooth.  Ignore the pieces of raspberry on his lips that look like boils.  Do you see it?   

 No?  You can't see it, you say?

 

Well.  Let me give you an idea of what we're looking at.

 

In a world where this is Elliott's tooth, 

 

 

and this color red represents Elliott's gums,

 

if we were to zoom in on the red line/gums, this is what Elliott's tooth would look like. 

It's there.  I promise. 

 

Spencer got his first tooth (the left central incisor) 4 days before he turned 11 months.  Elliott got his first tooth (the right central incisor) 18 days before turning 11 months. 

 

Moving on. 

 

We ended up NOT closing today because the paperwork didn't get here from the underwriters in time.  Apparently somebody was sick last week and nobody stepped in to do their work.  Thanks a lot random, unknown person in Georgia.  We did the final walk through and inspection today and we'll sign everything tomorrow.  It was actually OK, because it left more time this evening for pumpkin carving.

 

Spencer and his pumpkin

 

Elliott and his

 

Spencer was ready to get right in there and start yanking.

 

He was not a huge fan of how it felt though. 

I thought that pumpkin guts were the perfect sensory experience for a little person with no pumpkin experience.

 

 

And yes.  He tried to eat it.  A few times.

Spencer just couldn't stand it that Elliott was in only a diaper, so he stripped down so they could match.

 

Elliott had to take a break for his Vitamin D drops.

 

Spencer and I clean out the pumpkins every year, but Michael is our actual carver.  The system works.  Why mess with it?

 

This is from a commercially available pattern.

 

This is from a Michael exclusive pattern.

 

Tomorrow is going to be so busy it makes my head spin.

 

This is what needs to be done. 

 

Lay in bed and ignore the alarm or Elliott- whichever sounds first- and beg for 2 more minutes.

Cuddle with 1 or more kid.

Feed the kids breakfast.

Take a shower.

Play with the kids.

Call the electric company to get the power turned on in our name in the new house.

Take Halloween pictures of the boys in their Halloween shirts.

Post pictures on facebook

Feed Spencer lunch.

Take Spencer to school.

Get Elliott down for a nap.

Pick Spencer up from school.

Feed Elliott lunch.

Meet Michael to sign all of the paperwork.

Go to dinner with my sister-in-law who is in town for a job interview.

Get the kids dressed in their costumes.

Take pictures.

Post more pictures on facebook

Go trick-or-treating.

 

Throw in nursing Elliott and providing on-going care for the dog (in the form of just making sure she is still breathing during her naps) and that's a jam-packed day.

Plan, plan, plan

 I have put a lot of effort into making the main living spaces of our homes look nice and feel cozy since we bought our first home in 2006.  This was done for obvious reasons: everyone that visits spends time in the main living spaces. 

 

My Aunt Janis is an interior designer.  She ran a very successful business until she semi-retired a few years ago.  Aunt Janis helped me to pick my design colors when we first moved in and gave me the advice to stick to the color board whenever buying something new.  I have always done that and the result is a home that flows from one room to the next.  I can take a piece of art from any room in the house and move it and it will work.

 

I had just gotten to the point where the formal living room and dining room in our old house were feeling complete.  And then we moved.

 

Everything came with us though, so setting up a new living and dining room wasn't difficult.

 

Our master bedroom in our old house was pretty.  Not perfect, but I certainly wasn't embarassed by it.  We painted it a beautiful color and we had nice bedding. I just can't seem to find a single picture of it right now.  Total fail.

 

One room of our rental house that I have totally neglected is the master bedroom.

 

These pictures are from January 2011.  The room looks nothing like this now.  It doesn't matter though, because what it looks like isn't great. 

 

My latest obsession is in planning our new master bedroom.  We close on the house tomorrow and then we will get the keys on Wednesday.  Then we can start doing whatever we want.

 

The husband of a friend of mine paints as a part time job.  He's painting all of the main living areas and the master bedroom for us.  All of the main living areas will be this color:

(Bradstreet Beige- we used it in our previous house too)

 

I really want to do something different in the master bedroom though.

 

This is the new bed that we got.  I got off-white sheers to hang from the canopy.

 

 This is our new bedding.  The guy at Bed, Bath and Beyond had to get a 414 foot tall ladder to get it off the very top shelf of the store. 



 

I bought this painting (and by painting, I mean cheap print from Kirkland's) to go on the wall behind the bed. It is ginormous, yet it weighs like 2 ounces.  That's how cheap it is.

I bought this "painting" (again, cheapy cheap from Kirkland's) to go somewhere else in the master bedroom.

 

This is our actual bedding. It weighs about as much as a pygmy hippopotamus.

 

This is the actual print.

 

And this is the other actual print.

 

This is the color we're thinking of doing behind the bed.  It's called Dinner Party.

 

This is what it looks like in a real room.

 

I'm stuck on what color to do on the other walls.

 

A goldy neutral like Goldtone?

 

A darker tan like Saddle Tan? 

Or a taupey brown like Taupetone?

 

I want the room to look rich and saturated.  Red can go clownish pretty easily, but the wall behind the bed has two windows (one on either side of the bed) that we will cover with drapes.   That, along with the huge picture in the middle and the bed itself will limit the amount of red that is actually in there. 

 

Luckily my aunt will be in town this weekend so we can get everything figured out so it can be painted next week.  I am putting far too much energy into all of this.   It will be nice when some decisions are made and everything is done so I can just, you know, GO TO SLEEP IN MY NEW BEDROOM.  That will hopefully not look like a red and yellow McDonald's.