Birthday Fun and More

~Pretty~

Samuel just had his first birthday party (Pixar's Up themed) and I loved how the decorations came out! Mostly thanks to my crafty sister and her new Cricut (that I gave her for Christmas... definitely not in order to extort cute decorations from her).

The banner says "Adventure is out there." I saved it to go up in Samuel's room.

And here's one of the birthday boy and his floating house:

Carl Fredricksen never looked this cute.  Do you see the adorable "Grape Soda" bottle cap cutout?  It was all just so darn cute.

~Happy~

I mentioned in my last post that we got a new Peter Rabbit teapot and have been having tea parties in the afternoons.  I actually got the idea from the Ambleside website. The essay suggested an afternoon tea to help with the evening pre-dinner sugar crash as well as to sneak in some poetry and conversation. I loved the idea so much I implemented it immediately.  Here is Juliana with her very own teacup listening to some Beatrix Potter (appropriately enough).

And she only spilled three times!

~Funny~

I don't know why she does this.  Do your toddlers do this??

Yes, that is our dog's bedtime crate. She loves to go in it. So. Weird.

~Real~

I recently had the really brilliant idea of letting my two year old finger paint inside ("Well, that's understandable, it had to be inside," you're thinking, "it's winter!" Nope. California. It's 82 outside.).  At the kitchen table, which is white, without paying much attention to what she was doing (I was painting too).  I looked over after about 10 minutes, and this is what I saw:

I just. I mean. I really should have seen this coming.

So, you know, business as usual around here.

Go see Leila for everyone else's pretty, happy, funny and real this week.

{pretty, happy, funny, real} ~ Birthday Fun

We've had lots of happy, funny and real with plenty of pretty thrown in lately.  October ends with my birthday and Juliana's birthday so we've been go-go-going the past few weeks.

{happy}

For my birthday we went to a pumpkin patch that had hayrides and a real working farm and a maize maze and pumpkin chucker and a hay pyramid (I didn't know this was a thing).  We had a blast!  We ended up with one of my favorite family shots we've taken in a while:

So happy!!  They're hard to see, but note her pigtails.  They stick straight up... hilarious.

{funny}

Once we brought our pumpkins home (note: we didn't buy that giant one above... that thing was just monstrous) J decided they were for eating.  Just the stems, though.

{real}

I posted yesterday about her Halloween costume and she looked SO cute in it, but it took lots of prep.  She has a whole team:

Cuteness like this takes time.

Go check out Like Mother, Like Daughter for more {p,h,f,r}!

Birthday Dinner

Photo credit:  The Pioneer Woman

Today is my hubs's birthday.  He is 3 cubed and he is psyched about it.  He got a composter for his birthday (yes, I am that romantic) and we are having  possibly definitely the best steak and sauce/side combo ever for dinner.  It's going to be legendary.  PW is not messing around.  I wouldn't lie to you.  It is spectacular and if you haven't made it I implore you to do so.  I don't even like blue cheese and I could put this stuff on my ice cream, it's that good.

Try it.  Trust.

PS- Where would you be without me to guide you to these little known sites like "YouTube" and "Pioneer Woman"?