Big day for Rylan

Look who learned how to ride his bike without training wheels this week!

Perfect Park Day

Rylan learned how to ride his bike without training wheels, and that warranted a trip to the park this evening! It couldn't have been a more beautiful evening.

Rylan only flew off the spinning thing a couple of times….seriously.

Nothing cooler than finding a stick!


Apparently the sun was blinding.

We love our beautiful Glenwood Lake Park!

Rode around the lake a couple of times.

There was some pretty serious competition between Rylan and Bree to try and pass each other on their bikes.

You can totally make that!

This week's project has been Rylan and Grant's room. We've made some steady progress and I've had a fun week of creating(actually just stealing other people's ideas).

I made a banner to match their quilts and got some great decorations at Hobby Lobby for 50% off. An old green dresser we got off of craigslist years ago got a new coat of paint and new knobs(also 50% off). I found the old ladder in the barn. My favorite find though, is the cute antique fan. Got it at Joe's in the Old Market for $5.00.

I found an adorable paper airplane mobile on Etsy.com It was made from scrapbook paper. Could I make that? Heck yeah! Maybe not quite identical to the one online, but considering I used scraps of paper I already had in my scrap paper box, I think mine will do just fine.

Etsy: $36.00 for 5 planes

Mine: $0.00 Remember I used scraps I already had? Score!

Rylan has been begging for one of these little "Ugly Dolls" from Land of Nod.

They carry them at a store in the Old Market and he's a little obsessed.

Land of Nod: $19.95

Mine: $0.75

Two squares of felt at 4/$1.00, plus some stuffing.

Also, mine actually matches their room.

A 'crispy' sort of day

A cool and crisp Fall day! Aaron's working so the kids and I made mini apple crisps. We used tasty new crop Jonathan apples. So yummy and tart!

Getting ready to bake them!

...and after much anticipation(seriously, there were tears during the LENGTHY 20 minute baking time)....Ta Da!

Projects

The Fall season has begun and that means it's time to start up house projects again! I haven't really done any projects or decorating since Spring. It was nice to take several months off and just enjoy family time in the Summer, but I'm happy to get going on the house again. Since we found out that we're having another girl we decided to move everyone in to different rooms. That means months of decorating for me....YAY!

Here are a couple of things we've been working on these last two weeks.

I'll start with the worst. This is the girls' room. It's going to be blue/grey and white with some touches of green. I want it to have a very french influence with lots of cute little birds. We started last night by taking down 2 layers of ugly border. By we, I mean my mom. Thanks Mom! The color is not quite correct in the picture but the original wall color is a brown squashy color. We're painting all the trim white because it's so mismatched and pieced together.

The new wall color is a really really light blue. Almost white, actually. I just painted the one wall so far. I want some light brown and white tree silhouettes painted on the biggest wall and it dawned on me last night that I should take advantage of Loyal being here, so I hurriedly put two coats on so he could paint the trees before he leaves. He is a professional artist and travels all over the country with an art company that does insanely huge murals and sculptures for mega churches. Pretty neat stuff. I'm really excited that he can paint the trees for me because I cannot draw a tree to save my life! I'll post pics of the trees tomorrow.

Here's the inspiration for the trees

The steps. Still very much a work in progress. I stripped the tops of the steps of two layers of paint and we've stained a couple. The wall obviously still needs to be sanded and painted and it's a big project but it's coming along. I just sanded the fronts of the steps last week, painted them white and added the numbers.

Our bedroom: Almost done! Repainted everything including the floor. My good friend Leia is coming sometime soon to help me paint the floor with a diamond pattern. It will be greyish blue and white. I cannot wait to see how it turns out!!! As you can see, I also still need to get knobs for a couple of the dresser drawers.

It's been a busy couple of weekends for weddings.

This first bouquet was for Jacob and Becca's wedding, a couple from our church.

And this one was for Andy and Sarah Kate, some friends from "way back when." How lucky for me that I got to do TWO hydrangea weddings in a row! I just love hydrangeas!

First day of Fall at the zoo

What do you do on a beautiful Fall day? Go to the zoo! We try not to go too often during the Summer because it's just too hot and crowded. Seems like as soon as September hits the crowds leave and the weather is just perfect. As an added bonus, Loyal is visiting us this week and he hadn't been to the zoo in like 5 years, so it was a great time to go!

Can you believe they are ALL looking at the camera!?!

Trying to reach pennies, I think. :)

Lemurs at the Madagascar Exhibit. Grant was pretty fascinated.

Elle admiring a tortoise after she got over her initial fear of such a scary creature.

Happy birthday to our sweeties!

Last night we had a double birthday party for Elle and Grant. It was such a beautiful week so we decided to take advantage of the gorgeous Fall weather and have the party at the lake. Grandma and Grandpa, Michelle, Wyatt and Chase came, along with the Mike and Leia, and The Mackeys. Aunt Marilyn stopped in too!

Michelle made adorable little cakes for Elle and Grant

Our theme was ice cream!

Elle was not too sure how she felt about everyone singing to her.

Elle and Isabel - the Frenemies. Playing together very nicely, actually! They had a blast running around and playing in the sand.

Rylan and our big One Year Old!