Everyday Live Happy

Halloween means dressing up. We take this seriously at our house. In fact the main reason I bought a sewing machine was so I could make costumes for this girl. (For some reason my 14 year old son doesn't want me to make him costumes...) This year she was a mummy obviously. But we did a little bit different take on it.  First I tea dyed her long sleeved shirt, leggings and a cream colored sheet, so they would have an old look to them. You can't really tell from the picture but they aren't the white color that they appear to be.  Then I cut the sheet into strips and randomly sewed them onto her shirt. Focusing more on her torso. There is also some ribbon and gold tulle mixed into the wraps. I did add a few more wraps around the arm after she put it on so that some of the strips wrapped around her hands. Those strips I just safety pinned on. The skirt is made from the sheet with lace sewed on the bottom. Then strips of fabric hang down with gold tulle sewe...

My cute husband indulges my love of decorating for holidays. He never complains and often helps me get things done. Luckily for him he likes Halloween. His birthday is at the first part of October and he always asks for a different kind of cake. This year though my daughter and I decided that he was going to get a Halloween themed cake. We even picked out a monster looking one that we wanted to try. Then my husband decided that he wanted to have a cake that we refer to as Brownie Delight. It is yummy layers of yumminess! But it has to be made in a regular cake pan. So our monster idea was out. But I was still determined to add a little Halloween to it. We decided to make a graveyard on top, but weren't exactly sure what we were going to do when we started to make the cake. The entire recipe is at the bottom of this post but here's how it goes together. I forgot to take a picture of the first layer. It is just a brownie layer. In fact the recipe calls for your favorit...

It is finally October! It is one of my favorite times of the year. It is finally fall. The leaves are changing color. It is sweater and boots season. And most importantly, it is time to celebrate Halloween! I LOVE Halloween! I'm not exactly sure when this obsession started. As a kid I loved dressing up and going trick or treating and carving jack-o-lanterns. Now I try to decide for months what I'm going to be for Halloween and what costume I'm going to make for my daughter. We have it narrowed down to a couple of options. I have all of my decorations (and there are many!) up by the end of September. We go to the pumpkin patch near our home complete with a hay wagon ride around a field of pumpkins. We have a get together with friends to decorate Halloween houses. (Think gingerbread house except with graham cracker house creations and decorated to look like a haunted house! It is great!) Of course with the invention of Pinterest my daughter and I have already come up with...

We always love going to other places and seeing what is there. I've been to New York and seen the sights there. I've been to California and spent time on the beach and at theme parks. I've been to many other states and visited the sights there. Something that I'm not very good at is exploring my own backyard. There are many places in Utah that I've never been to or that I haven't been to since I was a kid. That means my own children have never been to these places either. Not okay! There are people from all over the world to coma and see all the parks in Utah. So I've been trying to do more seeing whats in my backyard. This week we went to a place that isn't a national park. No one will come to see it from other countries, but it is somewhere that we had yet to explore. About 2 years ago a small community next to our small community built a fun playground and splash pad. Now my daughter thought that she was too old to go to a playground on her own, but...

Summer always seems like it goes by way too fast. Maybe it's because we enjoy having lazy days without school. Maybe it's because we enjoy the warm weather. Maybe it's because we try to pack in as much fun as possible. I'm not sure which one it is, but I'm pretty sure that it is a combination of all of them. We love staying up late talking and watching movies.and then sleeping in. We love being outside in the warm sun. We love trying to fulfill each days fun "schedule." It seems like time is always flying by. I'm not sure who said that my kids could grow up so fast. It seems like every time I blink another year goes by. I heard recently that we only have 18 summers with each of our children. That scares me! I did not agree to only 18 summers. That is not enough. That makes me want to cram even more into our summers than I already do. It can start to drive me crazy! That is not what I or my family want. I'm working on enjoying the moment and letti...

When I was a kid we didn't take very many "big" vacations. We did however take lots of day trips and "staycations." (A vacation close to home.) We live in a state with lots of national parks. Those were common destinations for us. We'd take a picnic lunch and spend the day outside hiking and enjoying the weather and being together. As a parent now we have taken both kinds of vacations. Last year we hit the beach and went to Disneyland. So this year we are staying closer to home. We still want to have fun and do things though. This past weekend we went to a national park that we haven't been to in a long time. We went to Mount Timpanogos. You have to hike a trail up a mountain that is only about 1 1/2 miles, but it is uphill. Crazy uphill in most places. There was some complaining about how much harder it was than we remember. (I will admit that some of that complaining came from me.)

Friday was a great day for us. We went to an area amusement park - Lagoon. That meant a day of rides for our family and my brother-in-law and his son and niece. We discovered pretty quickly that my nephew and his cousin did not think the big rides were fun. So they mostly hung out in the kid ride area. Luckily lots of the kids rides are for parents to ride with them. My husband and our kids love rides! There are a few different degrees of what people will do, but all of us will do most of the rides. My older daughter and son did the biggest roller coaster there. The rest of us weren't quite ready for the crazy high roller coaster called "Cannibal." Maybe another day for that one. We went on all the rest of the rides though. We had fun riding roller coasters, swings, pirate ships and a river ride that left most of us soaked. There were lots of screams and a whole lot more laughs. Then throw in some treats too. Nothing better than that for a truly fun Friday!