IT'S FALL Y'ALL!!

As soon as the calendar says First Day of Autumn, or as soon as I feel a chill in the air--which here in ATX means it's under 75 degrees in the morning--I want to get the FALL decorations out of storage!  I LOVE FALL, It's my favorite season!  I love FOOTBALL, pumpkins, cooler weather, the crisp smell in the air, Thanksgiving, EVERYTHING pumpkin or caramel or chi latte flavored (or scented), I LOVE FALL!

Sunday was one of these glorious days--in the 70s and cloudy.  So, I opened the doors to let the cool air in the house and lugged my 4 boxes of Halloween/Thanksgiving crap out of the garage.  First, I had to pack away my box of seashells and starfish and beach stuff and my wonderfully tacky turquoise SUMMER wreath.  And my Summer flags and giant metal flower yard art--you get the picture.  Notice that I replaced the Summer wreath with my huge, tacky homemade Halloween wreath!  I started making wreaths a few years ago and now have a HUGE tacky one for each Season/Holiday.  AND I love them!!

I also popped the Apple Cinnamon Crumble wax into the Scentsy to get the smell in tune with the decor and mood.  The kids immediately started looking for the apple cider and pumpkin ANYTHING--bread, muffins, SOMETHING MOM!!!  Bummer, no today I'm just decorating!

The 4 boxes of crap are now nicely spread around the house and porch as you see there is much more in the yard).  Those 4 boxes have nothing on the 4+ Christmas trees and 30 boxes of Christmas crap that will have to be lovingly unpacked all too soon.  I go with mainly pumpkins and all non-scary Halloween stuff (I really don't want a dead looking skeleton on my yard, just my preference.  Plus with toddlers, no need to scare them!).  The pumpkins stay up until Thanksgiving and I just add in some turkeys and put up the other Halloween stuff as soon as Nov 1 hits.

Now, the forecast still shows 90s all week in the afternoon, but it's officially FALL at our house!  The kids wore jeans to school today and we are not looking back ;)

Kids Say the Darndest Things!

This is my homage to Bill Cosby—The Cosby Show is still one of my all time favorite tv shows (and I’m a TV aholic!)—the Cosby’s are the best tv family because Dr. Huxtable always found a good solution to the problems that also taught the kids a good lesson.  I especially love the episode where they sing the song to the grandparents for their anniversary and Rudy is just sooooo cute.  And the episode where Theo decides he will move out so Dr. H takes out the Monopoly money and shows him how much things cost—classic!! The Hecks of The Middle are also a great tv family because they are much less perfect and true to life and so funny (check it out if you haven’t)…one of my favorite lines is “he’s the 3rd child, he’s lucky we feed him!”  If you haven't watched either of these shows and you are a parent, you really should check them out.


Anyway, here is funny stuff my kids have said lately:

Oldest (daughter), 9—I told her she needs to write thank you notes for all the fun stuff she’s done this Summer to the various family members I begged to keep her and take to do fun stuff since we were working our tails off all Summer.  She asked me, “like text them?” no “like Facebook them” NO—like get out your stationery and write a note BY HAND (she tried the “I’ll type it on the computer and email it”) and thank them for taking you all over God’s creation so you wouldn’t have a completely pathetic Summer since all your parents did was work all Summer—and address it BY HAND and stamp it and mail it.  She looked at me like I had 6 heads!  It took 2 weeks, but I'm happy to say we got those in the mail yesterday!

I was talking to my girls about going to school and how we need to get up earlier next week and I said I’ll walk you in the first day of Kindergarten, so the Oldest says “but you’ll be in your nightgown!”  No, I said, "I won’t actually go inside the building in my nightgown, just in the car line…"  Thanks for calling me out on that one honey!!


Middle (daughter), 5—she’s really pretty good at sports and as the Hubs takes out our son to play catch in anticipation of his upcoming Tball season, she wants to play catch too.  She comes in and announces “I caught the ball and threw the ball a MILLION times!  I’m an expert now!”  LOL

Now daddy wants her to play tball too, so I asked her if she wanted to play baseball too.  Her response cracks me up!  “well, what do we wear?”  a uniform  “is it pink?” no  “can I wear a dress” NO “can I wear a crown” NO.  “then I guess I don’t play baseball!”  That’s my GIRL!  


Youngest (son), 3—his sisters had been out of town with Grandma for a week and he was super excited to tell them all about what they missed at home.  He hadn’t been feeling good, saying his tummy hurt all day.  He was on my lap cuddling b/c his tummy was hurting and suddenly puked—just a little but all over me of course.  We cleaned it all up and both changed, etc.  Then about 2 minutes later, he jumped up and said “I’ve gotta tell Sissies!”, ran into the other room and announced in his nanny-nanny-boo-boo voice “I threw up” complete with tongue sticking out.  Like they would be jealous…

I have lots of pictues, all over the house, not too many new ones (on my to do list), but lots of old pictures, like of us in college, wedding pictures, etc.  Son looks at one up high and asks me who that is, so I get it down for a closer look.  He says "I know that's mommy, but who is that man?"  I said, "that's daddy", he said "HE HAD HAIR??!!"

Photo Editing

I had to add one of my daughter in an equally precious shot while I was trying to calm her down during the same photo shoot (didn't know we were being photographed on this one either).  

I saw this saying on Facebook today and was reminded of this picture of me and my son.  We were doing a family photo shoot and he was GRUMPY.  I picked him up to see if I could cheer him up, and he said "Mommy, I just need a kissie".  We didn't know she got this shot of us, but how sweet it is--I had to add the sweet saying.  Take your favorite photo and add a sweet quote over the top, comes out so cute!!  This one's going on the wall at home!

Jewelry "Collector"

Yes, I have a self-admitted LOVE off all things jewelry--earrings, necklaces (the bigger the better), bracelets, watches, rings, pins, etc.  Call it an obsession if you want, I like to think of myself as a collector!  If you've ever read Fancy Nancy to your kids--Collector is fancy for Obsession.  I especially love the hunt--coming up with something that I'd like to have and then looking at every shop in town for said item.  I usually then turn to Etsy or Ebay to find those little treasures I can't find locally.

I come by this honestly--my Mom before me was/is a collector, and my grandmother before her was a HUGE collector.  Grandma had us all beat with an entire 5-6 drawer dresser full of baubbles, beads, and pearls.  What we can't find we also make--and Mom has a whole closet full of "findings"--jewelry making supplies.  It's a female hay day!

Anyway, I digress...so I recently found myself with 2 WHOLE hours to myself!  "What to do?"  I thought--I knew I didn't want to waste the time and had to tackle a project at home that needed no little distractions, so I went on a search around the house.  Keep in mind, there are about 150 projects that need completing, but my jewelry stash was getting to really be a mess, so I decided that's where I'd focus my free time.

I bought several pin/bulletin boards at Hobby Lobby and Kohl's.  Then I bought a package of pearl topped pins in the wedding aisle of Hobby Lobby to use to pin all of the necklaces.  I already had several pin boards of necklaces but they needed some help and I had bought a new fancy one to add...so that took quite a while but now it looks like this--all organized into sections.  I did one board--the fancy one--with all my big statement necklaces.  Texas girls like me LOVE their statement necklaces!  Another board is misc, one more is pearl necklaces (another staple), etc.  You can organize by color, style, length, etc--whatever makes sense to you.

Then, on to earrings.  I have an ornament tree I saw years ago in a catalog and thought it was perfect for hangy earrings--and organized them by color.  Then, I bought an empty frame at Hobby Lobby and cut a piece of styrofoam to fit--it's perfect for all my studs--you just poke them into the foam.  I hung a few of my tiny dainty necklaces from the pearl topped pins at the bottom.  And then I also have a spinny dress form from Michaels that holds some more of the dainty tiny necklaces so they won't get tangled.

I hope I've inpired you to go out and COLLECT some new pieces, and then hopefully put them together on display in your bedroom too!  How do you organize and display your collections??