Happy Halloween!

Trick or Treat! Here's a preview of Molly's costume. She's our little punkin! I think we'll take her around to a few houses in the neighborhood and call it good.
Festive Halloween cookies!
I had these black and orange sprinkles I bought a couple of years ago that I never used, so yesterday I finally decided to make something. I looked up a cookie recipe with sprinkles on allrecipes.com and found this one. They were really good!


Chocolate Chip Sprinkle Cookies

INGREDIENTS
2 cups butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
1/2 cup crisp rice cereal
1/2 cup colored candy sprinkles
1/2 cup chopped pecans

DIRECTIONS
In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture. Stir in remaining ingredients. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls 2 in. apart onto greased baking sheets. Bake at 375 degrees F for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool.

And here's the link if you'd rather have it: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chocolate-Chip-Sprinkle-Cookies/Detail.aspx
They were really easy and very yummy! I left the pecans out and forgot the oats, but they were still great!

Happy Halloween!

Grandpa time

In the course of a week I was able to see both of my grandfathers. This isn't terribly out of the ordinary, seeing as we all live in the same state and near proximity, but they are 93 and 92 years old and both live in retirement homes.

Last Thursday I went with my mom and Molly down to see her dad in Orem. We took him to his favorite place for lunch-Chucky's aka Chuck a Rama! He loves that place! After we went back to his place and decorated his door for Halloween. It sounds like they are having a door decorating contest. It looks very festive now! And I think he liked it. He is doing well. His memory isn't quite as great as in the past, but he is still walking pretty well (with his walker) and remembers most things.

Sunday for dinner, we invited Grandpa Galbraith over. He lives about 15-20 minutes away, so we invite him over quite often. He is in fantastic shape! After dinner we were talking and discussed his grandmother who was born in Sweden. He knew the name of the city, but wasn't quite sure how to spell it. We decided it would be fun for him to have a little lesson on computers and the internet. We looked up the city, found it, and then proceeded to the city's website. It is a beautiful city! There are waterfalls and a lock system that has been developed there. They shoot many motion pictures there as well. We watched a movie about the city and he was really impressed! He was blown away by the information we have at our fingertips! It was a really fun experience! I love my grandpas!

Finito! My latest projects...

Here are my latest projects that I thought I'd share.

I saw this countdown calendar last year on my cousin Erin and her sister Emily's blogs. I thought they were so cute so I printed out the instructions and started working on it. Then Christmas came and I wasn't even close to done, so I decided to wait til this year to finish it up. I recently pulled it back out and decided to get it done so I wouldn't remember last minute. If I had a good camera, it would only take one pic to see it, but I took a few and hopefully you get an idea of what it looks like. This pic turned out a bit yellow-y.
And the flash on this one is obviously messed up, but you can see that it really is more white here.

Here's a close up of some of the numbers. These are favor tins that will be filled with candy. The little tins are velcroed on. The original idea came from a Stampin Up lady I believe.

Next--my brother Ryan had a whole bunch of swatches from his work that he no longer needed, so Becky and I raided them one day and I got several including these:

With these I decided to make this:

I actually got the idea from the most adorable little coat that Heather Bailey (a fabric designer) made for her daughter. Hers is way cuter, but hey, for making up the pattern myself, I am pretty impressed with myself! ha! I just took a couple of Molly's jackets and with paper and a pencil I made up a pattern.

A close up of the buttons and the little flower.

Lastly--

Aren't these hair clips adorable? I'll tell you my secret-STICKERS! They work great for hair clips! I bought these on clearance. They have adhesive on the back, so I just put some fabric over and then glued on the little clip. Quick and cheap!

Gardiner Village

I'm a little late on blogging lately, so here's what we did last weekend. We headed to Gardiner Village for the little witches weekend. Man, it was crazy! We went on Saturday afternoon and there were so many people there. But it was still fun. It was just the girls and the kids. Most of the men in the family were in North Carolina for furniture market (minus Justin and Todd) so we thought it would be fun to check out all of the witches.

The main thing we did was check out the petting zoo. I would take Molly's hand and pet the animal, but then she would shake and get scared! But Major on the other hand was LOVING it! It was so cute. He was running everywhere checking everything out. Lexie was a bit unsure and Mitt liked it too.

Me, Molly and Mitt

Becky, Shay, Emily, Lexie, me and Molly. I think Natalie was getting Mitt in line for the pony rides so she wasn't in the picture. And my mom came as well. It was fun, even with all the crowds.

Toddler food

We are in the delightul period of time where Molly refuses to eat her mashed baby food (ie 1st, 2nd and 3rd foods by gerber) and only wants to eat what we eat and ice cream! So I've talked to a few people about this and have applied their advice.

Today we tried the following: graduates sticks-the chicken kind. She doesn't like them. We also tried mandarin oranges. Another no. We tried lunchables with ham, cheese and the crackers. She likes them! So I guess we'll stick with those for a while and see if we can add some of the ones she didn't like and maybe she eventually will like them.

Man, it's one thing for me to decide what I feel like for dinner, but completely another to figure out what my 12 month old wants! And she will certainly not allow you to spoon feed her anymore! Oh the joys :)

Aida

Last night Justin and I went with Ryan and Brooke to see Aida at the Orem Hale Center Theater. I had never seen the musical before and honestly didn't really even know the storyline, but I loved it! The music was great, the actors were very good and it was very entertaining! My friend Sara was in it, so that was the main reason for going and we weren't disappointed. Although the stage is really small, it was amazing how they were able to use it so it didn't seem that way. And Sara, you were awesome! If you live close, you should definitely check it out. It runs for about another month.

Pumpkin Patch

We went to the pumpkin patch yesterday with my mom, Ryan and Becky and their girls. It was a really cute place and very kid/picture friendly.

They had these rows of pumpkins and then they had tractors all lined up in front.

Grandma with the kiddos

All of us minus mom. We had a really fun time.

Tag

While blogging about Molly's bday and checking out other blogs, I realized that I've been tagged. And not just once, but twice! How weird is that? I've decided to indulge you two, so here goes, one at a time.

Tag 1

THE RULES: You have to post the 4th picture in the 4th folder in your pictures folder. Then give a brief description before you tag a few others. So here it goes!

This is a pic of Molly taken on March 5th, 2008. There are so many pics of Molly that I decided to tweak the tag a bit. So to make it a bit more interesting, I changed the numbers from 4 to 3. I chose the 3rd folder, 3rd folder (we have a bunch of subfolders) and 3rd picture.

Viola! Much more interesting, right? This definitely requires a description!! This is Alan, from our cruise in 2007. We were at a karaoke contest one night that my SIL, Sunny, sang in.Tthis man also sand and won!! What's even funnier is that he was in our elevator one day after and we said, "hey, you're the guy who won karaoke! Nice job!" His response was, "oh, I was drunk that night." Ha ha. So there you go. I think that was a bit more interesting.

Moving right along

Tag 2

Crazy Eights

8 TV shows I like to watch-

1-What Not to Wear

2-Iron Chef America

3-The Office

4-American Idol

5-So You Think You Can Dance

6-Kitchen Nightmares

7-Friends

8-The News? I really don't watch that much!

8 Favorite Restaurants-

1-Olive Garden

2-Zupa's

3-Outback Steakhouse

4-Nordstrom Cafe

5-The Pizza/Pasta Factory

6-PF Chang's

7-Paradise Bakery

8-Nielsen's (ice cream)

8 things that happened yesterday-

1-helped Becky finish the binding on her quilt

2-watched 3 little girls

3-heated up leftover enchiladas

4-did laundry

5-sewed a flower to go on Molly's coat

6-ate ice cream

7-had fhe

8-gave Molly a bath

8 things I'm looking forward to-

1-Emily's wedding!

2-Law school-hopefully next fall

3-The pumpkin patch tomorrow

4-Making more projects!

5-When Molly has all her teeth and can eat everything

6-When Justin gets a raise or a better job that he actually likes! (That sounds mean and I don't mean it to be mean...but he gets paid nothing and he is having a hard time finding a better job!)

7-Taking Molly trick or treating for the first time

8-Seeing Sara in Aida this weekend!

8 things on my wish list-

1-World peace! ha ha

2-That Justin will get into a top law school (like BYU)

3- That we'll be able to make it to AZ for the Pendleton family vacation. If you have a hook up, let me know! We're going to Tucson and we don't want to drive it!

4-To live in our own house :)

5-To have a grand piano in my home one day.

6-To see Wicked one day.

7-To visit NYC since I've never been.

8-To color my hair again...I miss the blond sometimes!

Birthday Party 2

Alright, well Molly had another party this past Friday night with the Pendletons. It was a lot of fun! We had dinner, followed by presents and cake. Then we put Molly to bed and the rest of us played a couple of games including the sign game--it was pretty hilarious and really fun.

The decorated ping pong table. At first I didn't think I'd really love having the ping pong table down here, but it's the greatest thing ever! It worked here as a display table for Molly's gift and cake and it also is my craft/cutting table! The banner here says Happy Birthday and you can see that I made a similar castle cake. At least that's over with! And I think I liked the first one better...probably because I love funfetti cake over strawberry cake!

Sorry about the glare here but this was what Molly liked the most this day: the ice cream popsicles we had with her cake.

Little Laney! Isn't she adorable? She's about a month old now.

Grandma and Grandpa got this caterpillar for Molly and she absolutely loves it! It was a big, big hit.

Molly liked her first piggy bank too.

And her Cosmo the Cougar book from Scott and Brooke.

Here's the gang. Left to right: Andrea (Mark's friend), Mark, Brooke, Laney, Scott, Val and Shelley. This really isn't the best pic. I should've had everyone look, but oh well! We missed Sunny and Kyle and of course Brad (mission)!

Happy Birthday!

Happy 1st Birthday Molly! We can't believe it's already been a year! We love you so much. A few of our favorite things about Molly are: her happy personality, her fun sounds and words, her smile, and the cute way she cuddles with her stuffed animals when she goes to sleep.

We celebrated her birthday with the Galbraith clan on Sunday.

She was very excited about this horse.

And she even was somewhat interested in opening her presents.

This was quite the hit with ALL the grandkids! Once it was open and we had set it up, all the kids were trying to get on it!

We had a princess theme, so all the kids had crowns. Cute Lexie.

Mitt and Major. We had a scavenger hunt and Mitt found all the clues.

The cake. Thanks to my cousin Wendy for all of the ideas!

I think she liked it :)

Wenda the Witch

Yay! I finished my witch doll! Here she is--

And she doubles as a cat!

I've named her Wenda the Witch.

For the record, I had no idea it would take me as long as it did to finish the doll! It was pretty tedious because she has so much detail. But I had never made a doll and thought this one was so cute. I love the end result!