Happy Harvest Everyone!

The Riddle household doesn't celebrate Halloween but we do like to celebrate the harvest/fall season:) In doing so, we carved pumpkins this afternoon, Chad being the lead in that endeavor with me on the sidelines with a cooking injury. Let's just say an aluminum can and I tangled and I was the loser. Oh the humiliation:)

Anyways, the kids enjoyed scooping the goop and drawing faces. Kyla deftly carved her pumpkin with little to no assistance and Gavin "helped" Chad.


Earlier in the day, Gavin had asked if we could dress up (not sure where that came from) and we agreed that they could dress up for dinner. Dinner time came and the kids ran upstairs to dig through the mountain of dress up clothes that we have with plans of wowing us with their creative ensembles. I can't tell you how weird it was to hear Chad periodically tell Gav to "keep your dress on" as we prepared for our dinner meal:) I'm sorry, if this is not overwhelmingly hilarious to you, I just don't think you know my husband well enough:)

Happy Harvest!

One cold, gloomy day

One cold, gloomy day, a matronly Walnut tree heaved a
tremendous sigh of relief as her heavy, brittle branches were expertly pruned,
changing her from a overweight, creaky danger ...

to a supple and shapely helpmate
to the happy land owners.

Or I could just say that we had a great company come and trim our gigantic walnut tree:) The tree has shaded and protected the house for a good eighty years and needed a little TLC before winter came.

We went with a local company and are extremely pleased with their work. They did a great job, cleaned up way better than expected, and were courteous and friendly. All in all, a good tree trimming experience:)

You can only image Gavin's excitement when their boom truck pulled into the driveway. We watched most of the proceedings (a three hour extravaganza) from the Gathering window (upstairs). We had snacks and drinks just like at the movies.

Our front row view

Glorious Fall!

Oh the leaves are changing and falling from the trees, the wind is brisk, and the sun plays hide and seek behind the rain laden clouds. It's fall in Oregon, and the kids and I are loving it!

We spent this afternoon outside soaking up the last of the sweet sunshine and I just had to take some shots of the kiddos. We played tag, I personally haven't done that in a long while, and took action shots as we went:)

Disney On Ice

A couple of months ago, Chad and I purchased tickets for the four of us to go to the Disney on Ice production in Portland. The kids have been so excited as we counted down the days and today it finally arrived.

We drove into the big city of Portland and made our way to the Rose Garden. The show was a composite of the movies Cars, Tinkerbell, Lion King, and Little Mermaid. Enough stuff to interest both kiddos:) We got there a bit early to take part in the Princess Pre-Show. It wasn't all that we expected, but Kyla enjoyed looking at all of princess dresses. We had great seats about 12 rows from the floor, thank you AAA:)

Fun was had by all and the kids were asking to go again, before we even made it back to the car:)

New out of Old

I picked up this shirt at a resale shop for $1 a while back and just haven't had the guts to cut it up in the hopes of creating something new. Well, I'm needing some new clothes as the season changes and I decided to go ahead and see what I could do with my sewing machine and a sharp pair of scissors:)

Before:

I cut off the sleeves from the body of the shirt and took in the entire bodice by a couple of inches on each side (the shirt was a couple of sizes to big to start with). I reattached the sleeves adding a pit of gather for a "poofy" look. A little bit more gathering at the sleeve cuff and I was happy with the sleeves. I had to tweak the fitting a bit since my body shape doesn't seem to be anything like the woman most clothes are made for. I was still wanting a bit more wow so I picked apart the collar and added the ruffle that I made from the excess sleeve material.

Ta Da!

Please forgive the blurry photo. My photographer, Kyla Rayne, has a hard time holding the camera steady since it nearly outweighs her:) I love the finished look, a little romantic, a little flattering, very bright and happy:) I am constantly amazed that my projects come out wearable, I don't measure or do things carefully, I just wing it. Just don't look too closely when you see me in it, you may notice that things are a bit whopperjawed:)

Winter Pjs

Kyla came downstairs a couple of days ago with her pj pants showing half her calf and I realized that it was time to make her some new pjs:) That kid of mine grows so quickly, I can barely keep up!

I have some flannel that was given to me and a shirt that we got from free-cycle. The shirt was stained but still in good shape. I whipped up some pants out of the cute monkey flannel and then made a bib-like applique to cover the stains on the shirt. A little ruffle and she has warm and cozy pajamas that fit.

My crazy monkey girl really likes them:)

Gavin's next on the "must make new pajamas because he's outgrown most of them" list. A sewing mother's work is never done:) My machine that I was gifted for my birthday is in the shop and has been since the end of September. I finally broke down and begged for a loaner from the sewing store else I wither away from lack of a creative outlet:) It's a old machine, but sews smoothly and gets the job done. I do long to reunite with my shiny, fancy machine though. Soon, hopefully soon.