October is strangely one of the busiest months of the year around here. I think it is because it is the first month that we are guaranteed that it won’t be like living on the surface of the sun so everyone plans events. This year, we’ve had the most pleasant late summer and autumn. It almost felt like being back north. So fabulous. Now it is cold, as it should be in November. I’m loving it less but it is nice to have what feels like normal seasons to this Yankee.

October was filled with homework (first grade is hard y’all), crafty fun, fall parties, lots of soup, and I can’t even tell you what else. Steve and I celebrated our 8th anniversary of wedded bliss. Sabrina was Cinderella for Halloween and Tessa was a butterfly for the second year in a row. Also, I just want to announce that as of October 29th, I finished our Christmas cards AND ordered them. How about I just share a few photos?

I think I’m going to work on canvases this winter and then do a craft show in the spring and see if anyone likes them enough to buy them. I thought about one this fall but it was coming up really fast and I would have had to work furiously to have enough. Part of the allure of this is that it is fun. I don’t want it to not be fun so spring seemed like a more reasonable time frame.

I made a wedding gift for one of Steve’s co-workers. I hope they liked it.

A gift for a sweet friend:

And for my kitchen. My own Beyonce. Knock Knock. I kind of love her. I smile every time I see her.

I made my girlfriends thank you cards after my birthday. I might have a problem. I can’t stop doing crafty things. They are so cute, I can’t stop.

For a friend with 2 adorable little girls:

For a friend who just bought a new house:

A friend who is a photog (and hasn’t received this yet since she didn’t come to Bunco…ahem)

And another friend who just bought a new house:

Steve said I should sell them on Etsy. That would be fun but with the amount of time required to do them, I would have to charge more than anyone would want to pay for a greeting card to make it worth my while. But having fun being crafty.

I can’t wait to see that same look on her teenaged face because you know she will give me that same “go to hell” look. Often. Without the cute pigtails and probably a lot of black eyeliner.

So. Potty training. I’ve talked about it here a few times but it has consumed our house for way too long. Tessa finally decided she was on board. And then she decided she wasn’t. And now she is again. We’ve been accident free for weeks. AND she has declared she will wear panties at night and has done so successfully for 3 nights in a row. Huh. Success, as predicted, had nothing to do with us and everything to do with Tessa deciding she would do it. She day trained 2 years after Sabrina but night trained 2 years earlier. I’m not even going to pretend that evens out. But for the first time in memory, we have been to Sam’s Club and not purchased wipes or diapers or pull ups. Of course, the speed with which we are now going through toilet paper is rather mind boggling but I will take that over diapers any day. So I am going to call it. And you can all laugh at me when I come back here and eat humble pie for jinxing things:

I NO LONGER CARRY A DIAPER BAG. I NO LONGER CHANGE DIAPERS. I HAVE 2 POTTY TRAINED CHILDREN. 

Go ahead Karma…here is where you kick me in the teeth.

Sabrina turned 6. I’m not sure how that happened so don’t ask. She is 6 and in the first grade. Makes my brain hurt to realize how quickly the years have passed. She is currently a huge fan of My Little Ponies. She asked for Rainbow Dash party. She ended up having a small sleepover (who knew those started so early? she was the only sleep over virgin of the 3 of them) so there was no themed party (phew). As a consolation, I offered to make rainbow cupcakes to take into her class on her birthday. My only guide was that my friend Michelle, from Burgh Baby, said it was easy and just to separate into bowls and color then pour. But she is one of those over-achieving birthday moms who makes cupcake masterpieces for her daughter to take to school every year. And I don’t bake. Seriously, I ended up in tears over the stupid Christmas cookie exchange for my mom’s club last year. I think the source of my baking failure is that I don’t follow directions well. But look how pretty (I showed them off on Facebook so don’t roll your eyes if we are friends there):

For anyone who would like to wow your children with similar lovely treats, it really was simple. I mixed up 2 boxes of white cake mix and split it between 6 smaller plastic bowls.  I added sufficient food coloring to turn them bright red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I layered them in the rainbow cupcake liners and baked. I was afraid the colors would run together. They didn’t.

I frosted them with Ducan Hines new mix-ins frosting – cotton candy flavor. (Not a paid shout out. And seriously not as icky as it sounds…didn’t taste bad at all.)  Then I topped with a strip of sour fruit strips. The kids at school and the birthday girl were all quite impressed. And I, obviously, was quite impressed with how well they turned out. Hence my repeated showing off of the pretty cupcakes.

Cupcakes aside, Sabrina had a great birthday. The sleepover went okay. I don’t think we’ll have another for awhile but the girls had fun overall.

Her other piece of excitement this month was a brush with cheerleading. She took a 1 afternoon cheerleading clinic at the local high school and then got to cheer during half time at the football game. She was nervous and excited and thought it was all quite cool. She didn’t really bother to learn the little routine but instead spent most of her time on the field trying to do a handstand. But she had a great time. Tessa thought it was cool and cheer for Sabrina the whole time. “Go  Sabrina!” It was all a lot of cute.

 This head thrown back laughter is the essence of Sabrina.

 ”Yay Sabrina!”

Otherwise we are just trying to keep up with site words and book reading and math and homework for the first grade. Sabrina needs to work a little harder to master the skills required. If things are hard or not fun, she tends to give up. As a result, she doesn’t test well at school. They sent home a report that she didn’t do well in number recognition. Looking at the test (assessment not graded test), I could see exactly where she lost interest and just started throwing out random guesses so she could stop doing it. I’m not sure how to motivate her but we keep working. Her reading improves each week – unless she isn’t in the mood to do it and then she pretends to not know a single word.

I’m spending way too much of my time lately with a paint brush (or marker or scissors or paper) in my hands. I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with all of the canvases I am producing.

I can’t seem to stay out of Hobby Lobby. Good thing my girl friends got me gift cards for my birthday.

Well. The big day is here. That birthday that I’ve dreaded and joked about since I remember my mother turning it. The big 4-0. Forty. Four decades. 14600 days. (My husband will likely point out I didn’t include the extra days for leap years. He would be correct.) And honestly? Today will just be another day. My youngest is home with me. My oldest is in school. Husband at work. But the day will end with my favorite annual treat. (Usually bi-annual but our Bruster’s closed and just re-opened a month ago so I didn’t get my Mother’s Day ice cream cake – can you believe he refused to drive to Chattanooga to get me one?) So there is that to look forward to – coffee ripple ice cream with chocolate cake. Yum! And my girlfriends want to go out this weekend for a little celebration. Another thing to look forward to. My husband and some friends surprised me with a celebration last weekend at a local winery that we’ve been talking about visiting for years. The weather was A-MAZ-ING. The vineyard (Arrington – owned by Kix Brooks if you are a country fan) was lovely. The wine was flowing freely. And I was surrounded by some of my favorite people. It was a great night. (Photo taken by a friend’s husband. After multiple bottles of wine had been consumed.)

It was a great way to ring in a new decade. And I look forward to some other faces joining the celebration this weekend.

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Remember back in May, I said I was going to do 40 random acts of kindness before my 40th birthday? I said I would document them and share. I started to do that (the documenting). Then I realized that while I was documenting these things, they stopped feeling so random and started feeling rather self congratulatory. I was thinking about things I could do that would make good blog fodder. That was so not the point of that. So I stopped the documenting and just starting doing them when opportunities occurred. I completed #40 this weekend. The recipient of that act may not realize that she was part of my birthday goal but I was happy with my final act. I’m not going to list them all here as I originally intended but some examples: complimenting random strangers, paying for the Starbucks order behind me in the drive thru, leaving a handmade gift for someone who was struggling, mailing some surprises to folks who could use a pick-me-up, taking carts left in the parking lot back to the store, and other small gestures. None of them were huge. But they all likely made someone smile. My favorite was standing outside of Aldi’s and handing out quarters to women digging in their bags for one. (You have to have a quarter to get a shopping cart at Aldi’s. It is a pain in the butt if you aren’t prepared ahead of time.)  It was just a quarter but several people just lit up (others were very confused). I had fun with it and it made me feel a little better as I approached this big day.

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I’ll get a post up soon about Sabrina’s 6th birthday which was last week. Going out of order is just how we roll around here.

I haven’t done one of these posts in awhile (hell, I haven’t done much posting in awhile). So I thought I would share some things I’m loving these days. I always love hearing unpaid endorsements of products (these are not affiliate links and no one gave me/paid me anything to post about these products but thanks for checking in FCC).

I fell in love with salted caramel ice cream while we were in Asheville this summer. There was a local place that made it in house and it was amazing. Sadly, no brands in the store seem to understand the perfection of the salted caramel ice cream so I haven’t had any to love since coming home.  But. But. I found a sea salt caramel gelato at our Super Target. It doesn’t have that slight salty crunch that it should but the flavor is amazing. I am in love. I’m going to have to severely limit my purchases because I’ll never be able to put on my pants again and it ain’t the cheapest stuff.

Dry shampoo. When I think of it, I think of Laverne & Shirley. Do you remember the episode? They have a big double date and Shirley decides to use Quickie Poo? Disaster ensues. But we had a My Favorite Things party (think Oprah but with a $5 limit) on Friday and someone brought Suave dry shampoo. I had been wanting to try it so I was excited to hear her endorsement. She said she had tried several other brands but liked Suave best. I often shower at night and my hair gets oily quickly so I love spraying a little of this in my hair in the morning when I get up. I’m a fan. (Admittedly, right now, I’m not styling my hair – hello twisted up in a clip – so I can’t say what it does if I wanted it to actually DO something.)

First let me say, I’m not a huge fan of Larabars. I love the simple ingredients but the taste? Not so much. They are all okay (except ginerbread – that was awful) but not great and not worth the price (for me). But enter Larabar Uber Bars. They were giving away samples at Target of the Apple Turnover and the Bananas Foster. Wow. They were fabulous. The Apple Turnover was my favorite. The bananas foster was good too (think banana walnut bread flavor). And the girls loved them. I try to keep some sort of bar in my purse for emergencies. (Someone in the family might have a bad habit of not eating breakfast and suddenly starving and shaking at 2pm but let’s not mention names *cough* me *cough*.)  This is one that tastes great and isn’t horrible for you. (Not low calorie…just not full of junk.) Wish I could afford to keep them around as regular snacks for my girls but they are a little pricey and they are little snack monsters. So I will selfishly save them for mommy.

I’ve started using liquid eyeliner for the first time in my life. I got a sample in my Birchbox*** one month (the Stila brand – love it but it is very glittery and not appropriate for car rider line). I was afraid of it but tried it and loved how easy it was to use. Who knew? So I tried a few brands. I love the Cover Girl applicator. It is like a felt tip pen. But it dries out too quickly and I end up desperately shaking it to finish the second eye. I love the Avon applicator even more (it is like a sponge) but it is so flaky that by the time I have my eyes done, I have flakes all over my cheeks. (See the last photo of the set. That is just from putting it on the counter to take a photo. And it was that way when I received it so it shouldn’t be old.) And when I wipe off the flakes, they streak down my face. The Stila applicator is the best of the bunch but the glittery gold isn’t appropriate for my day time life. Strangely, I settled on Elf as a favorite. It is a plain old tiny paint brush which I was fearful of using but turns out it isn’t so hard after all. And you can’t beat the $1 price tag. (Sorry for photo quality…took those with my phone.)

I tried making my own yogurt. I liked it but the kids refused to eat it. I couldn’t eat it fast enough by myself so I’m back to buying it. I’m currently in love with Dannon Pure. Have you tried it? I don’t normally wax poetic about yogurt but it tastes close to what I make only with fruit flavor. I crave it. Try it. (Lame web page Dannon. And don’t think you are tricking us about your “low price” that we are supposed to love – your little containers are only 4oz which is 1/2 of what yogurt used to be and 2/3 of what most yogurts are now. But you are so yummy I mostly forgive you.)

I have dark circles. No really – you might think you have dark circles but I’m almost certain I have you beat. For most of my life, people have asked if I have a black eye if I’m not wearing make up. It gets worse with lack of sleep or poor diet but even at its best, it isn’t pretty. My dark circles are the reason I wear make up when leaving the house. I don’t pay much attention until I see a photo of myself and think “Yikes!” I’ve not ever had any success with make up covering or creams lightening. Most make up just highlights the fact that I now have bags joining the party. But someone let me try a sample of Arbonne’s RE9 Corrective Eye Cream. I ended up buying some when I was offered 40% or 50% off. Is it a miracle? Nope. But I do  notice my eyes being somewhat lighter and less baggy. I’ve been using it for a month (you use a tiny bit so it lasts forever) and I’ve started noticing a little difference. Likely, no one else would see the difference. It could be all in my head but it makes me feel like I’m doing something so it is good either way.

Last, but by no means least, my new love of Mod Podge. I mentioned in my last post that I am digging some mixed media on canvas art right now. Mod Podge figures heavily in that. It is so much fun!  This stuff can do almost anything and makes collage art so much easier.

***I thought about including Birchbox on this list but…I’ll make it a footnote instead. It is a fun thing that you pay $10 a month and they send you a box of (mostly) beauty samples every month. Some months I love it and other months I’m all “Meh” about it. Last month was meh so it gets a foot note instead of a full entry. I tend to be frugal and when I find a product I like, I stick with it because I hate to pay for a lipstick or eyeliner and hate it. So Birchbox breaks me out of my rut. I love tinted moisturizer (haven’t worn foundation in years) and they’ve sent 2 that I really liked. And the liquid eyeliner. And they sent me a larabar uber bar before Target gave me a sample. But I guess they can’t all be winners and last month was heavy on self tanners which I don’t tend to use so I was all sad panda about my box. Every time I get a disappointing box, I think I’m going to cancel it then the next month it does something to suck me back in. Birchbox – you are on notice. Last month was kind of sucky so September better be great or I might decide to save the $10.

Have any of you discovered any great products lately? 

Some how, even without a job, life is busy. Nothing earth shattering but a million little things add up to busy days. I dreamed of having endless hobbies when I became a stay at home mom. Quit laughing – I didn’t know. But I do try to fit in some things for me. I read whenever I have a moment. And I’ve been cooking up a storm this summer with all of our CSA goodies. I’ve also been feeling all artsy fartsy lately. I’m dabbling with mixed media on canvas and having lots of fun. I want to just keep doing and doing…but I don’t have places to put it all so no idea what I’ll do with it all. Hey family – guess what you are getting for Christmas? Here is the one I just finished. I kind of dig it but have lots to learn as I play around more.

Speaking of painting, we painted the kitchen. You might recall that just before I announced we were selling the house and moving back north, I asked for color assistance. I finally found a color that didn’t clash with the weird yellow in my eat in and sun room area. But Steve hated it. So we decided to just paint over that color and paint it all a different yellow. I’m not convinced that I love the yellow I ended up picking. It is aggressively cheerful in the morning instead of warm and glow-y like I anticipated. But it is so much better than the brown. The kitchen looks even larger. As for the eat in area and sunroom, we are going 1 shade darker on the paint swatch because I can’t handle that much cheerful in my face in the morning. Before and after:

Steve’s parents came for a visit. The girls love spending time with them. They also love that their hotel has a pool. Sabrina started out the week rather fearful but got pretty brave by the end of it. Tessa is just fearless (which is terrifying).

Sabrina enjoyed some dance lessons from both Grandma and Pap pap.

There was also a late (Tessa) and early (Sabrina) celebration while Grandma and Pap pap were here.

Then the first day of school happened. Sabrina is started the 1st grade and Tessa started her second year of preschool. Both girls seem to be enjoying it so far.

We thought we had the potty training thing licked. But we should never underestimate the level of Tessa’s stubborn. Our family vacation seemed to throw her off and she quit making much effort. We had tried everything I could think of. Nothing was motivating her. So we went to the extreme. We took away Froggie (her bestest friend). It broke my heart but it was the only thing that made her want to try. After a very unsuccessful day, we left Froggie on top of the red cabinet over night. Our hope was that seeing him would motivate her. We got up the next morning and found this:

Someone pushed the table over and climbed on top of it in order to get Froggie. We turned a corner after we finally told her she was going to be a baby and go back to diapers or be a big girl and wear panties full time. She chose panties and hasn’t had an accident in 6 days. I guess the ambiguity of pull ups didn’t work for her. Child is going to keep us on our toes.

I can’t believe my baby is 4 today. The day she was born remains the highest traffic day in my blog’s history.

Tessa is going to be interesting and challenging to raise. She is a lot like me in all of the best and worst ways. She makes me laugh and think. She is joyful and cranky – often within seconds of each other. She is smart, funny, difficult, and beautiful. She marches to her own beat. She rarely follows a direction the first time it is given. She is fiercely independent but also the baby of the family. She gives the best hugs and cuddles. I am terrified and excited to see what the years ahead will bring.

We decided to change the venue of our usual annual vacation with Steve’s side of the family. We normally head to Corolla in the Outer Banks but the traffic last year made everyone vote to try somewhere new. After much googling and discussion, we settled on Asheville, NC. We found a house at the top of a mountain that suited our needs and had a swimming pool for the kiddos to enjoy.

Steve and I were ridiculously excited to only have a 6 hour drive versus the 14+ hr to Corolla. We took the scenic route and enjoyed the sights through the Cherokee National Forest. We were pleased to find the vacation house was truly off the beaten path and at the top of a mountain. The views were AMAZING. I plopped myself in an adirondack chair on the deck and declared I wasn’t moving all week. (Spoiler alert: I did move. For 2 reasons: it rained and the bugs were horrible.) I loved the view from the deck. I spent a good bit of time out there until by the end of the week I couldn’t stand to add another bug bite to my growing collection. I loved watching the changing view. In the morning, the clouds were heavy and the city was obscured. By late morning it would burn off and we could see the city again.

Steve and I fell in love with Asheville. The people, the weather, the food, the laid back vibe, the artists, the mountains, the green-ness of the city – everything suited us. If we didn’t own a house and I didn’t shudder at the thought of moving again, we could happily live there. Since we won’t be residents, we hope to be frequent visitors.

 Proof my children aren’t orphans. Making an effort to be on the other side of the camera now and then.

I’m not sure the rest of the family love the city as much as we did. The weather certainly put a damper on the kids’ plans. They, of course, planned to spend most of the week in the pool. But the weather at the top of the mountain was so cool that they didn’t get much pool time. (Much warmer down in the city.) The grownups loved the cool breezes but the kids were getting bored by the end of the week since they couldn’t be fish. And the bugs were horrendous. Most of us left with dozens of bites all over us.

Steve and I took a walking food tour of downtown. It was very yummy and we would definitely recommend it to anyone who is visiting the city. We spent our days wandering around, eating good food, hanging out with family. It wasn’t the most relaxing vacation (on the go more than a beach trip) we’ve ever taken but it was very enjoyable. My mother in law and I went to an arts and craft show – lots of talented folks in and around Asheville.

Thanks to recommendations of friends we wandered into several places we probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Highly recommend the shrimp and grits and the fried green tomatoes at Tupelo Honey Cafe. Mast General Store is worth a stop – the barrels of candy brought back childhood memories. And the Woolworth lunch counter (old Woolworth building…now a place for artists to sell their wares…skip the downstairs that is where they stick the bad art) is very nostalgic.

 The girls and I at Tupelo Honey Cafe

 Woolworth lunch counter

We skipped the Biltmore. The girls wouldn’t have liked it and the admission was pretty steep ($59 per adult and I didn’t even look at kids admission). I would like to visit it some time – but there just wasn’t time this trip.

 Me on the other side of the camera again

 My sister in law, the photographer, took a family photo. Thanks Krista!