Pumpkin Carving

The girls and I picked out pumpkins yesterday with the plans of carving them for family night. Well, Ty has to work tomorrow, so we thought it'd be fun to do it tonight. We haven't carved pumpkins in a long time, so it was a fun messy family event.

I'm sure you'll be very surprised to learn that the girls refused to touch the gooey middle of the pumpkin. Don't ask me why they are wearing leotards, they just wanted to

We had stencil books for the carving, which I used for mine, but I found Disney stencils online. We decided to have the girls' pumpkins match their costumes! So I did Lindsey's Nemo and Ty free handed his pumpkin and did Whitney's Snow White

Our finished products!

Here are some close ups:

Tyler just copied a picture he saw of a flaming jack-o-lantern, but Whitney kept insisting it was a girl with eyelashes haha

We sprinkled them with cayenne pepper hoping the squirrels will leave them alone. (they ate the top of the two smaller pumpkins we got in Brigham City)
Our not-so spooky porch:

To finish out the night we enjoyed pumpkin cheesecake. (A must have for this time of year!)

Are you ready for Halloween? Do you prefer to free hand or stencil your pumpkins?

Magical Weekend

If you know me at all, you know I love all things Disney. Well, every year they do a Halloween dress rehearsal. I wasn't planning on going this year, because the closest Disney store is in Denver. Whitney got the idea of wanting to be Snow White for Halloween. We tried for weeks to talk her into something cheaper, but she was really set on it, so we decided to head up and buy her the dress on the day of the dress rehearsal. Lindsey chose to be Nemo, a costume we already had. They were super cute and were very excited to make their Monsters Inc bags:

 Of course the workers are always so nice, we heard many Finding Nemo jokes:

 Trick or treating around the store:

In true Colorado fashion, we even had strangers chatting it up with us. This particular lady works at the store, but it was her day off and she still came in to see the festivities. I really love this place:

 They had coloring:

 Who wouldn't feel like a princess here:

 It was so fun and I highly recommend it to anyone. You don't have to be in their costumes or costumes at all. It's just a fun event!

Afterwards we headed into the heart of Denver and decided to try out a little place called Big Fat Cupcakes. It was kinda small, so we went to a beautiful park in Washington Park. My sister, Wendy, was here for the weekend so we wanted to give her a good experience in hopes she wants to come back to visit soon.

 There were lots of acorns on the ground, so we brought one back for the squirrels in our yard.

 The scenery was so pretty and the neighborhood around the park is so amazing.

 Sorry for all the pictures, they were too pretty to leave out!

 We came home to a pretty sunset:

 Whitney was thrilled to have a matching sweater Aunt Wendy got her. She wore it the rest of the weekend:

Are you all ready for Halloween? What is your favorite tradition for this time of year?

New project

This past weekend was Super Saturday (craft day) at church. I bought these 8x10 metal sheets that I thought the girls would like to play with. Well, the Relief Society president showed me this bag that she had made for her grandson to store the metal in:

Challenge Accepted! Haha no, but I thought it'd be perfect for the girls for church and our endless road trips/plane rides. I took the girls to Wal-mart and let them choose out some cute fabric, which made them pretty excited for the project.
For conference last week I had made this activity for the girls to have fun while the apostles were talking.

Well, since I'm making these bags for church, I turned the activity into magnets so Lindsey can learn the apostles and Whitney can refresh her knowledge of them. I'm also searching for other fun magnet games I could make. 

I took the fabric and left about an inch leeway on each side of the metal. I pinned the right sides together and sewed the two long sides and one short side.

 Then I made casing for the ribbon and threaded the ribbon through with a safety pin. Here's our finished project:

 I added duct tape to the corners because they were a little sharp. I also added foam sticker letters to the top of each board. I was going to do vinyl lettering, but I wanted to cut down on cost, and I know eventually whatever I put on there will be pulled off anyway.

I used iron on letters on the front. I know I could've sewed something on, but I haven't done that and wanted to make it a bit easier.

Garden of the Gods

 Yesterday we decided to go up the mountain to see some fall foliage. On our way out of the neighborhood we saw these awesome Halloween decorations:

It was really windy and they looked like dementors flying in the sky. It was seriously so cool, although the kids didn't really appreciate it.

 I think we were a couple weeks too early to see all the changing leaves, but we saw a few vibrant trees.

 We started up the canyon and then saw signs saying that the road was closed due to flood damage. :-(

 We headed back down and saw some cool views of Colorado Springs:

 We decided to head to Garden of the Gods. On our way, we had to head through this quaint little town of Manitou Springs. Later in the day we found out about the coffin races they do there for Halloween and the legend of Emma Crawford, this lady was buried on the hill and her coffin got washed away by a bad rainstorm, and the coffin came down the hill and into the city. Read more here. I think it's pretty cool.

 The crazy thing about the Garden of the Gods is how diverse the landscape is. There's red rock and then evergreen trees then changing leaves in bushes and trees. It's super pretty:

 There's a cool view of Pikes Peak. The only mountain with snow on it right now

 Then look down and you see cacti. Crazy place!

 Silly faces:

 Here's even more diverse landscape, burn scars on the mountains from last year:

I guess it was an unconscious last family outing before Tyler starts work today. I'm extremely happy he'll be working but, of course, it's been fun spending so much time together. I'm also happy we did this exploring yesterday when the weather was beautiful because now I can't see the mountains due to the clouds and sprinkling snow.