A Halloween Treat

A couple months ago, my sister in law told me about GIANT marshmallows. She told me that you can take the giant marshmallows, stick a popscicle stick in them, dip them in chocolate and then roll them in nuts or crushed graham crackers. YUM!

This last week as I was trying to come up with a spooky treat to bring to a Halloween party, I conjured up a variation on the jumbo Smores idea. I decided to cover the marshmallows in Vanilla Flavored Coating (it's a lot cheaper than white chocolate) dyed with green or orange food coloring.







Then I decorated them--not without a lot of "help" from this guy. -->











Yesterday, I was pretty busy, so I only had a couple hours to complete them. So this is what I ended up with. Little Frankensteins and pumpkins. The pumpkins could be a lot cuter, I know, but I ran out of time. It was a mad dash to get out the door.

This is the House that Grandma Built

A couple days after we returned from Florida, Grandma Pearson came out for a visit. It was so wonderful to have her here. She was more than willing to watch MVP while I worked from home during the day. I was able to get a lot done and get all caught up on work that had piled up while I was on vacation. Lately, MVP has not been very good at taking naps. He seems to think that two, 20- to 40-minute naps per day are all that he needs. On the one hand, as long as he continues sleeping through the night, I don't care what he does during the day. But on the other hand, it makes it really hard for me to get work done while having to keep an eye on him at the same time. This is especially hard now that he is getting mobile. He's been scooting around like a little combat soldier since we returned from Florida.

Several months ago, I came across an adorable felt playhouse designed to slip on over a kitchen table. I showed some pictures to Carol and she got excited about it too. So while she was here, we started working on a playhouse but decided to make it out of fabric since it will last a lot longer. There are still a few things we're working on, but this is what we have so far...

We will be attaching a huge button to the door as a doorknob. The flower stems have pipe cleaners in them and are detachable (thanks to Velcro). The mail box can also be opened and you can insert mail too. Now we know where to send all our bills.

The swing is certainly not able to support a kid, but hopefully stuffed animals will be the only ones to try it out--wishful thinking, I know. I might add a bird and nest to the tree as well.

The garden will soon have some carrots and a watermelon. There will also be more leaves with a second set of autumn-colored leaves. The lettuce and tree leaves are detachable.

This last side has a fire pit, but I'm thinking about changing it to a Weber grill. That way, he can grill up some of his veggies when the weather is nice.

One of the best features of this house is that it is expandable. There's a seam hidden by the roof shingles that is concealing another 5 inches of fabric so that if we ever get rid of this table, we can build a frame out of PVC pipe or something.

Maybe some day I will work on the inside of the house and make picture frames or have a deer's head mounted above a fireplace. I can't wait for MVP to get big enough to really play with it and let his imagination run wild.

Arts and Crafts

Over the past few weeks, I've been working on a few baby-related projects. Last month, one of Andy's co-workers gave us a crib. I had my heart set on a white crib so it would match the rest of the furniture in the baby's room. Andy was kind enough to indulge me. He doesn't understand why all the furniture needs to match, so considering the time we've spent preparing and painting the crib, I'm very grateful. Here's a picture of the crib once we had moved it into the room, but hadn't quite put it together yet.

During the whole process of taking the crib apart and putting it back together, we discovered that it was missing a few screws. Fortunately, we were able to get some replacement parts at our local hardware store. Here's a picture of the crib AFTER we sanded, primed and painted it.

I've also been sewing some burp cloths. I found an easy tutorial on a blog. I got most of the ribbon at Big Lots (4 rolls for $2-$3).

I then found another tutorial on how to make pacifier clips on a different blog. This was perfect because I was able to use up the remaining ribbon from the burp cloths by making pacifier clips. I also have a friend who will be selling candles at an upcoming craft fair this weekend. She offered to try and sell some of the clips for me there. Maybe I'll throw in some burp cloth / pacifier clip combos. If that doesn't work, then I have a bunch of gifts for all the upcoming baby showers I'll be going to in the coming months.

I had a doctor's appointment last week and things seem to be progressing as normal. My swollen feet are within the normal range for how far along I am (about 30 weeks), I got my seasonal flu vaccination and the heartburn and leg cramps are somewhat under control. Considering the symptoms some women have when they are pregnant, I'm grateful that I'm feeling as well as I am.