Life As We Know It

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

HALLOWEEN 2011

The build up to Halloween this year was huge for our little household! William became infatuated with the "blow up decorations" that began littering the lawn's of our neighbors after Thanksgiving. We literally had to drive around 3-4 nights a week to check out peoples decorations for the last few weeks leading up to OCT 31. I broke down and decided that I may save on gas if I just bought a "blow up Decoration" for our front lawn. The plan kinda back-fired, because not only were we still scoping out every blow up Halloween decoration in our town, we also had daily "discussions" (several times a day) on when our blow up candy-corn decoration was to be turned on, and who was going to do it.

(our Blow up 'Candy Corn)

We carved pumpkins when my parents came up the weekend before the 'BIG DAY' and headed to the AJ center for the kid's Halloween party.

Then the day arrived! William wore his costume all day on the 31st at his babysitters for there costume party, then promptly blew out of his pull up when we got home so we had to do emergency laundry prior to heading out on our first official trick or treating adventure!

William and his friends quickly got the hang of it, and soon William didn't even wait for people to open the door before he opened it and tried walking in! The kids did well, made it over 1/2 way around the block before melt downs started and the temperature dropped below freezing. Surprisingly William could have at least half of his trick-or-treating candy with his allergies! So that left a little for Clay and my self to pick at, plus all the extra stuff I collected in case William was allergic to the candy he got.

As you can see we did a theme, this year. We had the boys as the Super Mario brothers. I dressed up as the Piranha Plant and my friend wore a "GAME OVER" sign. For some reason I don't have any pictures of my costume... I'm always behind the Camera!

Halloween decorations came down today, and William and I had the discussion of why no more blow-up decorations are up. We most likely will continue to have this conversation daily until all the Christmas stuff is up. Oh GOD HELP ME!

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Before and After: The Summer/Fall Edition

Its officially FALL! The trees have turned, the air is crisp and the Harvest is winding down. I had a busy ushering in of Fall this year thanks to our hard work during the spring and summer my garden did extremely well... Actually maybe a little too well!! With my hubby gone to Fort St John, BC for work since the beginning of august I was left to labor independently in the yard this fall. Of course being the crazy person that I am I may have over committed a couple times with little "side" projects. However its over now and I have learnt some valuable lessons, including what I can handle and what I want to do! (In regards to yard work and projects ;))

Here is a before and after look at the Russell family's Summer/Fall.

Yard/Garden-

BEFORE

AFTER

Nominated for our Community in Bloom competition. We didn't win but got a free meal!

The tip of the ice burg!!!!

HARVEST PROJECTS-

Salsa and Apple sauce. To help control the tomato harvest, I made 2 batches of salsa, have froze/gave away tomatoes and still have 1/2 a Superstore bin left of tomatoes!

An example of me over committing. My friend and I decided to make Apple jelly/ Apple sauce. We picked 4-5gallon buckets of crab apples from our friends tree. In hindsight 2 buckets would have been sufficient. And yes that is smoke. We had a COUPLE mishaps with boiling jelly over... Thanks Joe and Tiff for your hard work cleaning up!