Camping!

This weekend Dave and I went out to Holly, MI for our last campout of the year. I'm always a little sad for the very last camping trip, but I looove this trip so much as fall weather is pretty much the best.

The Halloween campout is with my mom's family, and every year we do all sorts of fall/Halloweeney things like a chili cook-off, sometimes we carve pumpkins, we have delicious warm drinks and a costume contest! Most campgrounds have a costume contest for their Halloween campout and we tend to win group contest a lot, I think it's just because there are so many of us and there's power in numbers, you know?

My sister came up with the good idea of Pacman and ghosts for our costumes this year. I had made a joke that I was the right shape for Mrs. Pacman... and won myself that costume. Of course this meant Dave had to Mr. Pacman, which he wasn't all that thrilled about. (he tends to opt out of the costume contest :) If he knew I was posting these pictures, he might be kind of ticked.... but I'd rather ask for forgiveness than permission. :)

My aunts, sister, cousins and mom worked so hard on these costumes, they turned out really great! We won group contest and the grand prize was.... a variety pack of carabiners! Woo hoo! Honestly, the weirdest prize ever, but it's not about the prize :)

What are you (or your cutie patootie kids) being for Halloween this year?

I love my family :)

Cutest couple on the block... totally

Craft #2

Two completed crafts in a month? Whaaaaat? Yes, it's true. This one took be a bit of time to complete, but mostly because I'm a procrastinator, I could have actually busted this out in a weekend if I would have just buckled down.

Since I started planning the baby's room, I've been kind of obsessed with what mobile I was going to put up. I'm not sure why this was so heavily in the front of my mind, but I think it may have been because I knew I didn't want a traditional mobile. I wanted something above the baby's crib for it to look at, but I also knew I didn't want a plastic noisemaker with smiling animals and flashing lights......

 

case in point.... *shudder*

Where is a girl to turn when she wants something that can't be found in stores? Etsy of course, but its seems that every cute mobile on that site cost at least $50, which I also really wasn't down for. So all my hunting around the internet lead me to find these cutie things, which inspired the mobile I made:

These mobiles were found here, here and here.

I'm pretty darn pleased with the way this mobile turned out. I think it goes well with the "feel" I have going on in the baby's room, I made it myself - which always feels good, and it will offer some contrast and visual interest for Baby to look at. 

I'm not going to lie, this thing was kind of a pain in the butt to make, but mostly because it was messy and involved a lot of steps. Once I got into the swing of things I actually got it done pretty quickly, and I think I would make one of these again. :)

Sunday Funday

I still have a mile long to-do list for all the preparations we need to make before B arrives. Do you think I did any of those things this weekend? No! But it was such a nice, relaxing weekend I can forgive myself :)

What did I do on this blissful Sunday, you ask yourself...

I joined the rest of the United States and read "The Help" (I may have just started reading it Friday night...). This book was so good! I've read so many books lately on how to be pregnant like a rockstar, how to give birth like a rockstar, how to get your baby to sleep like a rockstar... I just can't handle all that baby/pregnancy business anymore, I needed to read a "real" book.

I started this book knowing nothing about the plot other than it gave the perspective of African American house maids in the '60's, that is literally all I knew about it other than everyone was flipping their lids over it. I think I might have been the only person left who didn't know anything about this book, and IMDB just confirmed that there was a movie made of this book.... last year... so I'm not going to get into the plot here, but read it!

What else did I do?

I bought some pumpkins for my yard (even got one for the baby :), picked a whole pile of mostly green tomatoes - I need to find something to do with those bad boys, ate a yummy pot pie and finally went to the orchard for apples and cinnamon doughnuts. Oh there will be pies... and applesauce.... and it will be amazing!

Also, what is up with this weather, Michigan??? It was a solid 68 degrees all day. Last week it frosted just about every day, we turned on the heat, my tomato plants are so dead (hence all the green tomatoes I picked), I had to scrape my car windows every morning, now it's time for late summer temperatures again?

Due to this crazy (but I guess not that surprising) weather there was a thunder storm near my house last night, after the first clap of thunder rolled through I went outside because I thought an explosion had happened. In my brain an explosion was more likely in mid-October than a thunderstorm, and that was the first logical conclusion it jumped to. (Also, this could just be crazy pregnancy brain, but we'll chalk it up to the weather being crazy and not me :)

Travelin'

For our anniversary, last weekend Dave and I headed out to the west coast (of Michigan....). I love lake Michigan this time of year - colorful trees, crisp air, usually good temperatures and all the towns are far less crowded than the summer. We spent the weekend hanging out in Holland, Saugatuck and Grand Rapids, which are all kind of in the general area of right here:

The weather was a bit cold and cloudy, but overall still really great. Holland and Saugatuck were their usual adorable, kitchy, quaint selves. I had never spent much time in Grand Rapids.... but it was kind of weird. I mean, we only spent a few hours there trolling around the downtown area, so maybe we were missing out on the awesomeness that is Grand Rapids, but it was kind of like Detroit had a baby with Ann Arbor or Royal Oak - it wanted so badly to be this cool, artsy downtown.... but something was just missing. If you have suggestions on things not to miss/do in Grand Rapids, let me know! I don't want to write off that city so soon. :)

It was a great weekend full of lots of good food and good beer (good beer for Dave... never hit up areas known for their good beer when you're pregnant, so terrible :)

Dave became quite the little shutterbug on this trip, which I loved! Between the two of us we took around 300 pics, so here are just a handful:

 There were cool sculptures everywhere you looked, I loved it!

 We're kind of a big deal around here...

 Freezing my tush off on the beach! The rest of the trip was not this cold or windy :)

 My favorite picture Dave took :)

 All those steps + being out of shape + being almost 8 months pregnant = holy moly

 We hiked this big trail through the woods that spit us out in Holland State Park. This adorable jack-o-lantern was left over from their Halloween campout, I just loved it! Some kid worked really hard on this :)

 Shadowy fun :)

 Grand Rapids was wrapping up Art Prize 2012, so we got to see some of the exhibits left. These flowers were all made of pop bottles! "Floral Flourish"

This is a bronze (?) looking sculpture of a man hanging from a wire, suspended between two buildings. Definitely caught my eye and surprised me! The name of the piece is "Gravity Matters Little".

 "Atmosphere", a collection of iPhone pictures of the sky and clouds. The overall effect of this was really stunning.

Happy Anniversary!

10/3/12 was my two year wedding anniversary, it's so hard to believe it's been that long already. (Which I know is not all that long at all :) I get a little sad because I feel like I can't remember big chunks of my wedding already, and it makes me wonder what my memory is going to be like 5 years from now! ( I also found out Dave and I share a wedding anniversary with a certain President and First Lady)

I was not in love with our wedding photographer (which I kind of didn't realize until our wedding day), so looking through my wedding pics actually kind of bums me out a little. One day I need to just buckle down and weed through the hundreds of pictures I have and save only the wedding pictures I actually like! For now, here are a few I love:

 Freshly married, straight from the aisle :)

This is by far my favorite picture

To the tons of people I know who are getting married this weekend and next - Happy Wedding Day! It seems like these first couple weekends of October are becoming so crazy popular. The weather is going to be just perfect and the trees outside could not be more gorgeous right now!

Life is Good

1. Marley the explorer | 2. Homemade zucchini bread and apple cider (pasteurized!) for breakfast? Yes please! | 3. A new painted lion in Detroit, I like his eyes, they are a silhouette of the Detroit skyline! | 4. Nothing like a little 3 bean chili and some yummy bread on a chilly fall night | 5. Marley's football day treat from Three Dog Bakery | 6. My only Tiger's game this year and it got rained out, boo! | 7. View of Woodward Avenue from Comerica Park, love it | 8. It's a Voldy in a box | 9. Me "helping" my dad install the floor in the baby's room. I held up a crowbar so it looked like I was doing something.