Halloween/Birthday Party

I have been planning this Halloween/Birthday party for well over a month now. What was going to be a low key few people party turned into a bit bigger of a shin dig. I have always wanted to throw a Halloween party and what better timing then to throw and Halloween themed birthday party?? So I started planning and looking on line and kept a whole notebook full of ideas and lists of things I needed to do. I first started by making lots of decorations for my house that would be fun for the party. I blogged about most of those craft and decoration ideas earlier on here. Then when the time got closer I started buying all the food and things for the party. I wanted to make most of the food because I figured that would help bring down the cost of the party. So I made a menu. Again, it started out small and the list gradually grew. So Friday and Saturday were spent by me running around the house like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get everything ready all while also entertaining and taking care of my kids (not as easy task when I have a to do list a mile long.) So just to give you a little overview; the plan was to have dinner at 5:30 then let the kids play a bean bag toss game that I had made and sewn bean bags for, then to make Halloween finger puppets that I had gotten a kit for at Michaels, then play pumpkin bowling (which actually got skipped over) eat cupcakes, open presents, and visit. It all went by in a flash but I was very happy with how it all ended up and we had a good turn out of friends. The menu and the decorations are the two things that I had spent the most time on and that I was very proud of. I made "spooky" food labels for all the food on the table to add to eeriness of the party. The menu was:
Hamburgers (Brain-Burgers)
Hot dogs wrapped in bread stick dough (Mummy dogs)
Tortilla chips and Bean Dip (Bone Chips and spider nest)
Potato Salad (Monster Mash)
Veggie Tray (Swamp Fixins)
Baked Beans (Ghoul Stool)
Homemade Caramel Popcorn (Caramelized Bat Brains)
Pumpkin Pie Dip with Tortilla shape cut outs sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar (Arsenic Dip and Goblins)
Veggie Straws (Splintered Cat Bones)
Jello Blood Worms-made by pouring jello into flexible straws (blood worms)
Tropical Hawaiian Punch (Witches Brew)
And last but not least Cupcakes (didn't put a spooky name with these)

I got the idea to make the Jello Blood worms from:
http://www.theidearoom.net/2009/09/jell-o-blood-worms.html

And I got the idea for the pumpkin dip and goblins from a Taste of Home Magazine.

I also made frozen Cranberry juice/frozen raspberry hands to put into the witches brew. Those looked pretty awesome! They helped to keep the punch cold because they were frozen, but because they were made with gelatin, they don't melt so it keeps its shape. I got that idea from

http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/witches-brew/Detail.aspx

All in all I was very please with how everything turned out and I hope that everyone that came had a good time.

Chase's Birthday!

My baby boy turned one on Wednesday. Time flies by with the second one. We had a low key day because next weekend we will celebrate with a big Halloween/birthday party for him. Here are a few pictures from his birthday and such.

We went to the park on his birthday to get out and play. We got to see lots of turtles and geese. It was a lot of fun

Halloween Crafts...

With Halloween right around the corner I have had the "craft bug" again and have been trying to think of some inexpensive ways to decorate my house for Halloween. We love Halloween over here. It is Phillip's favorite holiday. I have been scouring the internet to find stuff for our costumes and haven't had the best of luck so hopefully it will all come together soon. Anyway, here are just a few pictures of some of the things that I have made to spook-i-fy our house :)

Candy Corn wreath. I bought the wreath at the dollar store and painted it black. I hot glued candy corns all around and hung it with some ribbon. I got this ideas from this blog
http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/

Empty milk cartons with faces colored on them. We cut large holes in the back and stuffed a string of orange lights in all of them. I got this idea too from this blog http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/

Halloween banner I made with scrap fabric I had...it is also reversible. It says "Merry Christmas" on the other side. This is for sale on our etsy shop!

Ok so I made this last year....but its up again this year :)

Halloween "subway art"...I made with some friends the other day and LOVE the way it turned out...I'm selling this on etsy too...just in case anyone cared :)

Creepy apothecary jars. One is filled with "werewolf eyes" and the others I just filled with different colored water (not shown in this picture)

I linked up my crafts and decorations on this blog:

Half Marathon

Over a year ago my brother in law Jared asked if I wanted to run a half marathon with him and I flat out laughed at him. Me? Run? Hahaha that was funny. At the start of this year when I was working out on my own at the gym I decided to take on the challenge.  Never in my entire life have I been a runner. In fact I have always hated running. I dreaded the few days a year in PE class when they would make us run a mile. When we started training I could barely make it a mile and a half before I felt like dying. Soon enough I sucked it up, put my mind on a goal and went for it. It was hard, challenging, tiring and I wanted to give up many times.  I finally learned how to push myself farther and harder then I ever had before. I realized that its all mental. Even when my body would beg me to stop because my legs or knees hurt like crazy, or I was bored or tired, I learned how to push past that and keep going.  After about 4 months of training we made it to the race. The energy and atmosphere of all the people there about to do the same crazy thing we were made it kind of exciting. I was extremely nervous for the actual "race."  I put it in quotes because I was not "racing" anyone. My ultimate goal was just to make it to the end. My other goal was to be able to jog the entire 13.1 miles and to get under 3 hours. We were nervous about the altitude change from Vegas to Park City, but luckily it really didn't seem to bother us much. The weather was absolutely gorgeous up there. It was a bit cold when we started but we warmed right up, and it was warm when we finished. The trail we followed was beautiful and it helped to slightly keep our mind sane. It was much more entertaining then running laps on the track at the gym.  It was frustrating when people that were speed walking parts of the marathon and it seemed like it would take me forever to catch up to them. Phillip and Jared were pretty far ahead of me for the entire race. At about 7 miles the course looped around and we headed back. I saw Jared and Phillip while they were already heading back and I still had yet to loop around.  Somehow when I run my longer distances the last mile and a half or so I am finally able to pick up my pace. This is usually when people are losing all their energy and slowing down. So because of this I was actually able to catch up to Phillip at the last mile. I was so excited! Haha. Once we saw that finish line we gave it our all (which by that point was basically nothing) and run through the finish line together. Luckily you couldn't see the finish line till the last maybe 100 yards of the run. If I has seen it any earlier I probably would have tried to push it too hard from too far and not made it to the end. :) The whole thing was a very neat experience and I am very glad that we did it.  It was really cool having something to work towards and for and then the feeling of accomplishment when we crossed the finish line was amazing.  Even though my time was super slow I am just proud that I finished. Here's to our next half marathon! :)

                                                    Before the marathon....nervous as can be

                                                                              Stretching....

                                                                              Brothers

                Looking kinda tired...didn't sleep well the night before and the race started at 6:45 AM

                                                                ....And we're off......

              There was a lot of time in between...but there we are coming down the finish line...

                                                  

                                                                           WE DID IT!!!!!

                                                                  We ALL did it!!! YAY!!!

Time Flies.....

When you have an iPhone and never use your desktop computer anymore to look things up or upload pictures :) haha....We haven't really even turned our computer on since we got our phones several weeks ago but we have been taking lots of pictures and uploading them to facebook :) Anyway....sorry....its going to be picture overload...

Playing around with the front camera on the phone

 Went to see the midnight showing of "Eclipse" with the ladies from my ward....it was a lot of fun! Even with the tattle tale in line behind us :)

 My little guy is into the curious stage and getting into everything. I think you're supposed to be in this Chase, not under it

    One day I was just thinking about when we should lower his crib and then that day when he woke up from his nap, he was standing up and about to fall out, so I guess it was time to lower it. Since then he has been so excited to pull himself up everywhere.

My family came into town on their way to and from Utah for my nieces baptism. So on their way back down my sister and her kids caravan-ed with my parents down to Cali. They all stopped here for 4th of July night and the next morning we all got up and me and the kids hopped in her van and went with them for a few day trip. It was a full car of 5 kids and two adults....and traffic! Here is my cutie niece Brooklyn watching the fireworks, apparently she wasn't assumed :)

   Kaitlin, Dad, Mom, and Dylan as we did fireworks in the street

     I was playing around with a picture editing thing on my phone but here is a cute picture of Abby and a few of my nieces and nephew.

                                                                        Playing at the park

On our way to the beach....crowded van!

  It was freezing at the beach...but it was lovely to escape the 100+ weather in Vegas

     My brother Ammon and his family live who live in Orem Utah also were down for the week in Cali. So one night we had a family dinner at my parents. 13 out of 15 grand kids were there. And 11 of them with two adults went for a swim in my parents spa...haha

   The day before we drove back home we were fortunate enough to go to Disneyland. The weather was wonderful and it was pretty crowded but not terrible and the kids all did really well for being there for about 10 hrs.

Proof to show daddy that both kids were asleep at the same time in the double stroller, it was a miracle....that only lasted about 30 minutes...haha

 After our fun filled week of the beach and Disneyland, we came home and I put the two to work :) Chase loves to climb up on the dishwasher and Abby likes to help me clean. I knew I had kids for a reason...to put them to work! :)