Extreme Room Makeover

Move over, butterflies and flowers! As our condo is only a two bedroom, Emma will soon be sharing her room with "baby brother". Her room was decorated in girly colors featuring butterflies and flowers on the walls matching with the Pottery Barn bedding. So it was time to make a change to a more gender-neutral theme. I've always loved Classic Pooh (it was between that and a cowboy/cowgirl theme), and was convinced Pooh would be fun this time around. Emma was given a cute Classic Pooh quilt, made by Grandma Di when she was born, I've always wanted to use it, and now we get to. So we began a few months ago, buying fun decorations (Grandma Sue was excited when she found out how we would decorate it, she loves Classic Pooh also and went hog wild buying fun things). We picked out a fun, light yellow color to paint the room, which Grandma and Grandpa Stoddard did a few months ago (they were worried about me inhaling the paint fumes. He he! Paint is not the same as it used to be). My mom and I have done lots of sewing. Well, she's done more than me, as she just wants to get it done, but I've been getting some great sewing practice in. We made pillows for Emma's bed, the quilt for the crib, and we're almost done with the crib bumpers, and curtain. Last weekend, we painted a large tree mural on the wall that fits the Classic Pooh style, and put some Pooh character 3-D wall hangings on it. I thought it turned out really well! Then we hung the rest of the pictures and Pooh decor. Emma loves her new mural, she loves looking at it, even sings songs about it. I love decorating, it's a lot of fun, and I'm grateful to my Mom who has helped me out so much with this project! See for yourself what you think!

A Blue Halloween!

On Halloween Day, Emma and I went to my parents house to help set up for the dinner. We helped make the Haunted Gingerbread House, which was fun. My mom always goes all out, and this year was no exception. Emma and I carved our pumpkins that afternoon. She had a great time pulling out all of the guts and seeds (which she called ‘pumpkin nuts’)! We made a Sleeping Beauty castle pumpkin, and a polka-dot pumpkin. We helped set the table and put up the rest of the decorations for the party. We picked Dave up from work, where they had a mechanical bull outside for their party. I couldn’t ride though, and Emma didn’t really want to, so we just watched for a while. Then it was time to get in costume. We dressed up as the Blue Man Group this year. If you don’t know who they are, look them up, they’re awesome! The makeup took a while to apply, but it was worth it. The first time Emma saw Dave with his blue face, she looked around for the real Dave and yelled out “I want to hold Daddy!” She wasn’t too sure of me, either at first. We painted her face last, Dave was paranoid about her, and didn’t want to get it too close to her mouth and eyes, so we didn’t put nearly as much on her. I thought she looked so sad with all of the makeup applied, and it took her about an hour before she wanted to talk. It’s funny how dressing up does make you feel differently. We went with Jerry, Stacy, Tayla (Dorothy) and Kaison (the Lion) to Main Street in Bountiful for their Trick-Or-Treating. That was pretty fun, but not as big as last year. All of the adults and older kids were like “Woa! The Blue Man Group!” and would make comments on our costumes. But the little kids just gave us weird looks like we were crazy. Dave played some Blue Man Group music on his iPhone which was in his pocket to add to the mood. We tried to stay in character and keep straight faces and not talk a ton, but that was too hard! Try not smiling for that long, you’d go crazy! Emma liked the trick-or-treating thing, she had been talking about it for weeks as we had tried to explain to her what it is and what you did. She always said “Trick-or-treat!” enthusiastically and then thanked the person who gave her a treat. Then Emma and Tayla had a fun time playing in the leaves by the Bountiful Tabernacle after the trick-or-treating for a while. Then it was off to my parents for our traditional Chili dinner. Grammie, neighbor Bro. Schroeder, Amy & Kolby, and my parents were all there. We the chili, breadstick broomsticks, chips and dip from the chip graveyard, and veggies and dip. Then we had dessert, which the brownies underneath the gingerbread haunted house and ice-cream. We played pin the nose on the pumpkin and the ghost dart board. When the doorbell rang with trick-or-treaters at the door, Emma ran to it, and loved giving the kids candy. After that, we were back to the Ryerse’s, where we were going to go visit a few of their neighbors, but it started raining really hard, so we decided to go crash Uncle Brian’s party at his bachelor pad. They had a pretty good party going with Rock Band, food, games, and pumpkin carving. Then we ate pie and watched “Hocus Pocus”, which I fell asleep during. It was a great Halloween, and we’re already planning our costumes for next year, it is only 359 days away!

Halloween Carnival

On the 30th, we went to a Halloween Carnival, at Tolman Elementary, where my mother-in-law, Sue works. We stood in line for the spook alley for about 45 minutes, but it was well worth the wait! Sue was dressed up as the Spider Lady, Aunt Julie as a zombie, Grandpa Dan as Frankenstein, and Uncle Brian as a mad scientist. There were other people as well, like a lady that popped out of an old coffin, a guy in a mask that popped out of the wall, a dot guy, car headlights coming for you with a loud honk, and more. The props, lighting and sound effects were all very impressive! Half of them were Sue’s, as she is huge into Halloween! I swear half of their storage is Halloween stuff. It’s fun though. Emma was holding onto Dave very tight the whole time. She knew her family members, as she watched them get ready and put the makeup on so was used to the idea, but got very scared especially by the face that came out of the wall, and dug her fingernails into Dave. Poor thing! “I don’t like it!” is what she said after we got out. And whenever we passed the entrance of it the rest of the night, she would say “No, I don’t want to go!” But she enjoyed the rest of the carnival events – the fish pond, bean bag toss, cake walk, carnival food, sucker pull, stick the eyeball on the skull, and the duck pond. They had Halloween ducks in a kiddie pool, and when the lady running it said “Go!” Emma started getting in the pool, sticking one leg in before we could stop her. She knew what pools are for and went for it. We dried her off the best we could, and then the game began. Emma won, and got pretty excited about that. It was fun seeing all of the kids dressed up in their costumes. There were some cute ones! That is probably my favorite part about Halloween!