We have been having the most gorgeous autumn here. The weather has been absolutely fabulous. Lots of sunshine, chilly mornings but then it warms up to about 80 degrees by the afternoon. I LOVE autumn and this autumn has been nearly perfect! Our garden is still going strong as we haven't had freezing weather yet. The strawberries are confused and just started blooming again! And our tomatoes are trying to ripen as well as 3 or four cantaloupes. I'm hoping the weather holds until everything can ripen on the vine.
So, anyway, yesterday we went to a local farm's Fall Festival. You might remember a couple years ago I posted about MoMo's field trip to the pumpkin patch. This is the place where the festival was held. So the kids got a ride on the cow train.
Then we took a hayride out to the pumpkin patch where we picked out pumpkins.
We also browsed the huge selection of produce. Wow! They had so many different kinds of squash and gourds! Butternut squash, acorn squash, several varieties of spaghetti squash...and many that I did not know the names of. But there was one type of pie pumpkin that really amazed me. I don't remember the name but they were very long and tubular. These in the picture are still green. They do turn orange when ripe. It's hard to tell in the picture how big they are. But they are about 2 to 2 1/2 feet long. One would make enough pumpkin puree to make a LOT of pumpkin pies. Oh, and we found a couple of conjoined squash.
They also have gourds of all colors and shapes, smooth and bumpy.
There were some other really cool gourds but unfortunately the camera malfunctioned so we weren't able to get pictures.
And there was the tower of jack o lanterns.And they had a scarecrow factory. MoMo and I made up a scarecrow. Hubby and Big R opted to sit out for the scarecrow making. Here's our scarecrow hanging out at home.So, altogether it was a wonderful outing. Hope you enjoyed reading about it. Maybe I'll actually get Halloween blogged, too, next week!

Once again, I have to apologize for being away so long. But, you know we were busy living life. The kids and spent 6 weeks this summer away from home visiting family, camping and having lots of fun. Blogging pretty much was not a priority. but, lucky you, today you get not just one but two blog posts!
My MoMo just had a birthday! Well, it was almost a month ago but I've got some pictures to share. And as most of you know, she's a unique mixture of girly girl and tomboy so there was a corresponding mixture of Hello Kitty and Lego presents!
And, of course, Grandma R made her a dress!
I can't believe she's 7! She wanted a Super Mario Brothers themed birthday and unfortunately when I went to the Big City and looked at the two party supply stores I couldn't find any Super Mario stuff. So I ended up making up some 1-up mushrooms and stars and things for decorations. And, of course, I made a Super Mario cake. I made up the fondant decorations and the kids placed them on the cake.
Alright, well, that pretty much covers the birthday. I'll be back shortly with another post for you!

Ok, so today I have a project to share that I've been working on. It all started when I saw this circle quilt here. I fell in love the design and decided I HAD to make one. Then our friend Eric and his wife found out they were having a baby girl. I decided that I would make the circle quilt for his baby. So then I found this incredibly fabulous line of fabric called Sultry by Moda. You can check out its lusciousness here. Isn't it gorgeous? The quilt itself is pretty simple to make. I simply cut 6" squares of white fabric. Then using an old CD for a template, I placed the CD on the fabric and cut around the CD to make my circles. The circles are stitched onto the white squares with a zig zag stitch and then all the blocks are sewn together into the quilt top. I added the pink border and then stitched together strips to make the piano key border around the outside edge. I had this top done fairly quickly but then the quilting was what gave me problems. See, my old sewing machine was giving me fits when I tried to free motion quilt. It was bad, with the thread on the bottom coming out loopy and ugly. So frustrating! But my wonderful mother gave me an early birthday present-a new sewing machine! It is so awesome! I LOVE it! (Thank you, Mom!) I figured my quilting problems were over but no. I didn't have the proper foot for my new machine. :( But after figuring out what foot I needed and ordering it, I finally got my new machine set up and got to quilting! Hooray! :) This brings me to the nearly finished product.
I almost don't want to give it away. The last part to do to finish it all up is to trim the edges, removing the excess batting and backing fabric then sew on the binding. I'm on the home stretch. Good thing, too, because little Raquel, the recipient, was born about a month ago. She was over 9 lbs at birth so I better get it to her before she outgrows it! ;)

This week we had a birthday at our house! Yes, Hubby celebrated his birthday on Wednesday. His choice of cake is always chocolate cake with chocolate frosting so, of course, that's what I made. I tried a new recipe that I found on Our Best Bites.com, which was actually from Cook's Illustrated. Seriously, the best chocolate cake I have ever had! Here's the recipe in case you need to try it. And trust me you do! Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake I made the chocolate frosting that goes with it but I have to say I'm not sold on it. It was ok, but not my favorite. But the cake! I could totally eat that without any frosting at all. (and actually, I did as I was trying to level the layers. All those scraps were too delicious to waste) It is more work than just mixing up a box mix but so worth it! Anyway, enough about the cake, here are a few pictures.
And, you know, we didn't really do anything else exciting like a pinata or pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Though we did BBQ out in the rain/thunder/lightening/hail. Living dangerously! LOL We had such crazy weather. Went from rain/snow/hail to 80 degrees back to cold rain/hail/thunderstorms in a matter of days. Really wish it would warm up and STAY warm! It killed off my two little tomato plants. :(
Anyway, I also want to wish my BIL, KT, and my ONLY niece, AMT, happy birthday as well! They had birthdays in the last week or so, too. So, I guess that about covers it for now. Till next time...

We had a mountain of aluminum cans and plastic bottles in our backyard that we had been saving for almost a year. Hubby promised the kids that if they helped to gather and sort them he would give them the money he got when he took them to the recycling center. Saturday we all pitched in to sort them and load them up the back of his truck. This is the amount of money that each of the kids received. Not too bad, considering we don't have CRV or anything here. Aluminum is only 70 cents a pound and plastic is 40 cents a pound. We ended up recycling around 14 pounds of cans and 15 pounds of plastic.This is the pile of tabs that we took off all those cans to give to Ronald McDonald House.
Anyone care to venture a guess as to how many tabs there are?

Somebody lost another tooth last night! Our house is sure keeping the Tooth Fairy busy!

This has been an exciting week here! My (not so) little MoMo lost her first tooth! The Tooth Fairy actually had to make two trips to our house as Big R lost a tooth this week as well. Though he's already at #6. But here's a picture of MoMo with one less tooth.
In addition, this week was the annual Spring Wings festival here. This is the first time we have actually gone to it. Big R's class went on a field trip during the week to Spring Wings and he was excited to go on Saturday to the family day. They had booths set up with information on birds and conservation as well as crafts for the kids to make. There was even a local falconer and her apprentice there with their red tailed hawk. We also saw a presentation with a rescued great horned owl which is being rehabilitated for release into the wild. In addition, they offer guided tours of different bird watching areas with BLM and Fish and Game personnel. We didn't do that this year but maybe next year we will! I have some pictures to share. These first two are the red tailed hawk.
Next, we have the kids decorating a bird inspired card.
And Big R throwing spears at a bear target. It was a little tricky but he did hit "bear" a couple of times! (ooops! I accidentally published before I was ready!) Here's the rest of the post...
And then some pictures of the owl presentation.
So, there you have it. Lost teeth and Spring Wings!