Happy Halloween!

Traditions

The holidays are just around the corner and this year I have been trying to think about them a little differently. My favorite part about the holidays (well along with the decorations, gifts and food) are the traditions that surround them. Our family was always great at doing silly {yet meaningful} traditions. We have plenty of home videos to prove it. Some of the traditions are the most fun when kids are young. Well maybe not as young as Kate, but it's fun to think about it anyway. I've been reading this book Parenting with Spirit that was recommended to me. It's a really great book that gives lots of practical suggestions on how to have a more spiritual home. It's written by a liberal christian but many of the suggestions she gives are things that I was brought up on. Saying grace, family meetings, prayer as a family, talking about a supreme being. Along with all of those things she suggests that traditions {or rituals is how she refers to them} really help to bring a family together spiritually. A few that I really like and hope to incorporate into our family are:

At Thanksgiving time tell each member of the family why you are thankful for them, instead of just saying what you are thankful for. This could take a while if you have a big group, but will make you think about each person individually.

At Christmastime instead of (or in addition to) giving a material gift, give a service gift to each sibling. For example, I will make your bed or help you with your homework. This would be great for younger kids. Also, it takes pressure off spending money.

At New Year's tell each family member a 'wish' you have for them in the coming year. Something you hope they accomplish or success in something.

For Mother's Day and Father's Day create a "Thank You Jar". You set the jar out the week before the holiday and during that week family members write reasons they are thankful for mommy or daddy. Then on the holiday you read them aloud. The mom would organize this for Father's Day and vice verse.

On Birthday's after you sing happy birthday, everyone there tells the birthday girl or boy something good about them to make them feel extra special.

Make a dinner conversation jar. Label the outside “talk, talk, talk”. On the inside put colored slips of paper with different questions. Every night at dinner each person picks one piece of paper and answers that question, then the others answer. Examples of questions she gives: “If you could change places with one other person alive today, who would it be?” and “Who makes you laugh?”. Keep blank pieces in the jar and family members can add questions whenever one occurs to them.

A lot of these are similar and the idea is to make everyone feel loved and to realize that small moments can bring a family together spiritually. We'll see how many of these we actually do, but I like the idea of them and especially the idea of having a lot of family traditions. I feel lucky to have grown up with some great traditions that make for great memories. Some of my favorites:

Singing the 12 days of Christmas on Christmas Eve, each member of the family had a different "day" and Grandpa always had "5 golden rings".
Secretly doing the "12 days of Christmas" for someone who may have had a rough year. We left something on their porch during the 12 days leading up to Christmas and a short poem to go along with it.
Big breakfasts after Sunday morning General Conference.
Girl's night out during the church's father and sons outing (i know everyone does this, but I always remember loving it).
The birthday mug we got to drink out of at breakfast on our birthdays.

What are some of your family's favorite traditions?

Our marshmallow

...is ready for winter

Blowin' in the wind

We frequently pull kate’s highchair into the hallway by the bathroom while we are getting ready in the morning and she eats her cheerios. We’ve discovered she loves it when we point the hair dryer in her face. She waves her arms up and down and opens her mouth wide, I guess trying to “eat” the air. We think it’s pretty cute. {But then again we think most things she does are pretty cute}.

Meet Peanut

My latest sewing project. I used a pattern from Wee Wonderfuls in the book "Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts". She makes the great doll patterns I still want to try, and the book is full of cute projects. I was happy with the way it turned out although kate hasn't shown much interest. Maybe we'll give him away.

Scheduling your somedays

So lately I've been reading this blog called LifeHacker and there was a link to this article about scheduling your "somedays." Your somedays are things that you've been wanting to do but keep procrastinating. Eventually, we'll run out of time to do our somedays, so the author suggests we schedule our somedays and make them real days. Putting them on the calendar at least materializes them to something we can move around and accomplish given our schedules.

Here's an excerpt from the original article:

You need to make a list of your Somedays and convert it into real days. I mean
that literally. Sit down and make a list of all the things you want to do
someday and start scheduling them.

Don’t worry about how silly or trivial they might sound. Don’t think about how ‘unimportant’ they are. If you genuinely want to do them they are neither silly, trivial or unimportant. Instead start thinking about what you can do to make them real, and realizable. Turn them into real goals with real deadline, just like any other important project. And don’t feel like a failure if some of the items on your Someday list turn out to be not so attractive when you try them. Some of them undoubtedly will be things that aren’t nearly as important when you try to do them instead of daydreaming about them. That’s fine. But you’d never have known in you hadn’t tried.

On a related note, you might have seen the recent press Randy Pausch, a professor from Carnegie Mellon, has been getting about his final lecture. He has pancreatic cancer and has 3 months to live, but instead of feeling sorry for himself, he's inspiring everyone to follow their childhood dreams, take advantage of every day, and let their kids paint on the walls. His lecture can be seen here or on Oprah.com.

So lets take advantage of every day we have and schedule those somedays!

Leaf Peeping

Funny term, huh? I learned the term when we first moved to the East Coast. People actually plan entire vacations on ‘peeping’ leaves. And after being ‘peepers’ today ourselves, we can see why. The pictures don’t do the colors justice.






After the jack-o-lantern blaze we spent the night in Danbury. We took our time coming home today and drove for about 5 hours--it was entertaining the whole way. That and we were being silly making fun of ourselves as leaf 'peepers'. Kate likes her new car seat and took 2 naps in it today. She really is a good little traveler and puts up with us dragging her everywhere when all she wants to do now is crawl around and explore.

The Great Jack-o-lantern Blaze

We just got back from the Jack-o-lantern blaze in Sleepy Hollow, NY. It was really cool. 4,000 carved pumpkins situated on the bank of the Hudson River.

Kate liked looking at all the pumpkins. We captured this picture of her getting a little spooked out!

our brown-eyed girl

isn't she cute?

Gotta love a sale

I’ve been eyeing these shirts from Shade clothing and was about to bite the bullet and buy them for myself. Then I got an email that everything's on sale for 20% off at shade and knew I couldn’t pass them up. This is the first time I have bought actual shirts from them, in the past I’ve only purchased undershirts. I’ve already worn both shirts and love them! I got the ¾ sleeve one in blue and the long sleeved in ivory. They are so soft and just the right length. Also they aren’t too tight—I was worried that they might be super tight like the undershirts. The sale is still going on for a limited time… tempting, I know!

Good Idea

We found this cute idea to “Boo” your neighbors and thought it would be fun to do this year. We made the cones tonight and left them on two of our neighbors doorknobs, rang the bell and ran away. It was fun to watch them come out and get the treat. Here is what the poem says:

...
Since this is the time for goblins and bats
Halloween spirits and ghosts and cats
Happenings are weird and witches make brew
The following are the things I wish for you.
May the only spirit you chance to meet
Be thee spirit of love and friends that are sweet.
May the only goblin that comes your way
Be the neighborhood phantom, the breeze takes away.
So by tomorrow, pick a friend down the street
And give to them a Halloween treat.
Fill this cone with goodies galore,
Then hang it on their front door.
You only have one day to do this, so hurry
Leave treats on their door and run in a flurry
As this cone moves along from friend to friend,
All good wishes go on and never end
HAPPY HALLOWEEN

...

You can find more pictures and poem downloads if you want to do it yourself here.

Jill's {cook}book club

Well my virtual {cook}book club now has 2 members—myself included. Thanks Alicia for the recommendation. Membership is still open, so post a cookbook in the comments to join! I checked this cookbook out from the library and have been enjoying trying new recipes. At first glance I wasn’t too impressed. There aren’t pictures of all of the recipes and some recipes start at the bottom of one page and you have to turn the page to see the rest of the recipe—kind of annoying while you’re trying to cook. However, after trying a few of the recipes, my opinion has changed. My favorites so far have been the Curried Chicken Salad and Merle’s Beef Brisket. This week I plan to try the Broiled Salmon with BBQ Sauce. At the beginning of each recipe the author writes a short paragraph on why she likes the recipe or where it came from or what time of year they cook it, etc. It gives it a familiar feeling, like maybe a friend recommended the recipe instead of some cookbook. Anyway, it’s worth a try. We had some friends over for dinner tonight and I promised to post the brisket recipe. Now that I am a Tanner, I feel obligated to know how to cook a good brisket. Leslie has a great Teriyaki Brisket recipe. Maybe this one will be mine.

3 T garlic powder
3 T onion powder (I left this out—it wasn’t in our pantry)
1 T salt
1 t pepper
Beef Brisket (Ours was about 3.5 pounds)
3 cups canned tomato sauce
4 yellow onions, sliced into thin rings
8 potatoes, cut into quarters (we used new red potatoes, the recipe called for Yukon gold—you choose)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine garlic powder, onion powder (we left this out), salt and pepper in a small bowl. The rub seasoning mixture all over brisket.
3. Place brisket, fat side up, in a heavy ovenproof pan/pot with a tight-fitting lid. Pour the tomato sauce over the meat and scatter the onion rings on top. Cover the pot.
4. Bake brisket for 3 hours, then check it and add ¼ c water if the sauce is too dry. (we didn’t have to.) Arrange the potatoes around the brisket, replace the cover and cook until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork, 60-70 mins longer.
5. Let brisket stand for 5-10 mins. Trim fat off the top. Slice across the grain. Serve with potatoes.

...

See this post for the first {cook}book club review.

Recipe for a perfect Fall afternoon

Mix together:

laughter
pumpkins on the vine
a beautiful baby
one handsome husband
impressive scenery

...

then add:

Colorful leaves
Blue sky
58 degree weather
Fresh Apple cider
Warm cinnamon apple cider donuts

...

what a fun afternoon!

kate's new friend

she likes to give her kisses

Halloween Preparations

I always loved Halloween growing up, but the past few years Halloween has come and gone without much thought. We put up a few decorations and passed out candy one year to our 4 trick-or-treaters. I make my pumpkin chili for dinner and Paul and I watch Hocus Pocus. Now that we have Kate it seems a little more exciting and I look forward to celebrating the holiday and starting traditions. Although she won't know the difference for a few more years, it's fun to dress her up and pretend. We're also trying to take advantage of living in New England. This year we decided to take a trip to Sleepy Hollow. It's in upstate New York, only about an hour and a half from here. In preparation for our trip I read the short story today. I found it in the children’s section of the library, although to me it didn't read like a children’s story at all.

“From the listless repose of the place and the peculiar character of it’s inhabitants…this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land and pervade the very atmosphere.”

Maybe I am just used to “Sam, I am”. It was an interesting and quick read about the tale of the headless horseman and Ichabod Crane. While I was familiar with the overall concept, I don’t think I had ever read the story before. We also have the movie at the top of our NetFlix queue, so if I can get Paul to stop watching Heroes, we will watch it soon.

We just bought tickets to go to the Great Jack-o-Lantern Blaze in Sleepy Hollow country. There are over 4,000 jack-o-lanterns and it sells out every year. We’ll see if it lives up to the hype.

We also did a little bit of Halloween decorating around here.Our “little pumpkin” Kate likes to help. Too bad she can’t eat any Halloween candy this year. I guess we’ll have to eat it for her.

Small Milestones

Around here we get excited about small milestones.













For example, this weekend Kate graduated from bathing in the kitchen sink to the real bathtub! (I know, it's a little late for that, but we have a really big kitchen sink and it's much easier on your back.) We figured it was time when she was able to get herself out of the sink and onto the kitchen counter. Probably not the safest. She loved having so much room to splash around.
She also graduated from her infant carseat to a convertible carseat that will last her until she is 65 pounds! I can't even imagine when that will be. She looks so small in it, but not long ago she seemed so small in her infant carseat and now she's too big for it. I know they are silly milestones, but when it's your first, everything is exciting!


Here Kate is cruising in a plastic car at a BBQ with a few other School of Management babies and moms.

Halloween Feet

I love holiday socks. My mom used to always buy me socks to go with the holidays. Heart socks for Valentine's Day, Santa socks at Christmas and of course pumpkin socks at Halloween. Also something about nurses, they always wear funky socks. Maybe because scrubs can be so stodgy, socks are a way of expressing oneself. So I couldn't resist when I saw these baby Halloween socks at Target the other day. That and they were only $1. Now we match. Happy October!

Thanks Grandma

Grandma Fernley first taught me how to use a sewing machine. It was on an old singer, circa 1900, the kind that are built into the table. It was pure metal and weighed a ton. It could only do a straight stitch, but still sewed like butter even though it was 90 years old. It's hard to come by quality like that these days. I had to post my latest sewing project to show it off for Grandma. Hopefully she reads this post and smiles. I'm still quite an amateur but I'm having fun learning. While my mom never took up sewing and claims all she can do it sew a button on a shirt, I've been lucky to marry well--my mother-in-law Leslie happens to be an excellent seamstress. It's nice to know talented women.

We've had this old chair in Kate's room. I sit in it while I'm nursing her. I know it's not much, but it's an upgrade from the toilet. (Remember the NYC days of sleeping in the bathtub.) We figure we'll get a nice rocker when we have another baby because unfortunately Kate is quickly outgrowing the cuddly stage and now wants to be on the move. So this chair will have to do for now. I found some cute fabric and covered it. Now it's a little more girly.

Here it is in Kate's room.