tree is up. house is somewhat decorated. fireplace lit every night. lots of snuggles in bed. scarves everyday. the rain stinks but hopefully there's a little snow at the mountains so we can drive up sometime soon. i love the age where the kids are at- they decorated this all on their own.

i don't have to stress at all about prepping or how anything turns out. they are happy with it just as it is! i just get to do the clean up! i love their fake smiles and how cam doesn't even bother 🙂 ha! these are funny because els is witnessing cam begin eating the house. she's in shock! (els decorated that light fixture all by herself, she was so proud and i love it!) we've started wrapping presents with lots of scraps we have around the house. trying to do a lot of handmade gifts this year. either by me or my addiction to etsy 🙂 we're gonna bake and eat by the fire all weekend. i have been drinking an insane amount of this tea and lattes. love my weekly visits to dots to have my favorite fleur de sel. so in love with that flavor. salt and caramel. mmmmmm. lots of phone call chats with sister in law who's coming to town soon. kira's on the high school soccer team and has been playing in freeeeezing weather, even tonight it's raining and they are still playing! love seeing the differences between me and her, you couldn't pay me to do something like that in high school 🙂 or even today really! skipping out on christmas cards agaaaain this year. just don't want to fill my plate up with too much. just trying to enjoy it all and be less grinchlike 🙂

have a good weekend!

a glimpse to inspire any moms who have to dress 4 children year after year, posting costumes that were heavily recycled this year 🙂 note- my 3 older children still like to dress up, just not the premade stuff at the store. so not only do i have to facilitate their desires, i have to be creative and thrifty. because i am thrifty and cheap and hate spending money on things that don't have value in the long run 🙂

els: "good witch that lives in a candy castle" (not to be mistaken at alllllll for a bad witch) witch costume from kira's a few years back. bought the 2 dollar hat and she put the jewels and KI stickers on herself, and whenever she wore the hat, she made sure the decorated part was in the front 🙂 she did get new black maryjanes for the costume, that i told her she will be wearing at thanksgiving and christmas as well. see! thinking ahead! 🙂

caleb: "boy who got stuck in a spiderweb" he's at the age where he passes the premade stuff but wants to have fun and i guess— be cool. so i handstitched the spiders on the shirt and put web all around him. easy. and after halloween i will cut all the spiders off and he will still have a wearable shirt 🙂 i'm totally thrifty like that. cam: "tonight's dinner" 🙂 chris didn't seem to get what cam was this year. lol. cam is in a funny stage where he comes up with the most ridiculous costume ideas… we were in the craft store and he wanted me to just stitch fake fruit all over his clothes. i'm like, what? lol. i love that this was totally free and that he thought i was brilliant 🙂 hehehehe. i will note that we all voted for more food to go inside the bag but he said it'd be too hard to walk around in.  

and kira. sigh. i love that she still loves to dress up. she was "peter pan" or "peter ma'am" as caleb called her. NOT to be mistaken for an elf or robin hood. LOL. I didn't get her full costume shot but chris did with his film camera. i will say that it pained me to cut up this shirt that will not be used in any way in the future but i am comforted that i bought it on clearance for 4 dollars. you didn't know i was so cheap huh? only my closest friends really do 🙂

and cousin jaeden tagged along. so glad she did! 🙂
so there is our halloween. you know your kids are growing up when our gang of trick or treaters go from 4 to 2 😦 the 2 older kids decided to spend the nights with their friends. 😦 wah. and we only carved one pumpkin instead of the normal 4 we do. i didn't even bother to take a picture of it. geez. it seems ages ago when kira was 3 and she dressed up as barney 🙂 sigh. it's all going so fast, hmph. wah. 😦