More weekend fun :)

My neighbor called a couple days ago & invited us to a 'Scarecrow & Pumpkin Festival' about 20 mins out of town. She had seen it advertised in the paper. We started out with the family pancake breakfast, then went on a hay-ride tour around town & looked at all the various scarecrows on peoples lawns. My favourite was the Wizard of Oz - wish I would have taken a picture! Andrea & her kids had to leave for swimming lessons but the boys and I stayed and looked around a bit more. We browsed the Farmers Market and got honey, a treat and some gourds... and the boys decorated a little white pumpkin for $3 each! (the eyes, hair etc was already assembled in a baggie and they got to decorate to their hearts content!). They then jumped on the bouncer and home we went - a very fun morning and they all thanked me for the outing :) Their favourite lawn ensemble was the SHREK one!

The hayride (pulled by trucks)

Munching on hay :)

Decorating pumpkins with great concentration!

The completed masterpieces.... like the eyebrow on Liam's?

My gourds...

Fall is in the air...

This evening, we went across the street to a park and took some family pictures, along with our neighbors... we took their pictures and they took our ours. It was an attempt at Christmas card photos & I'm sure we can find a couple good ones out of the batch! Here's a couple of the better ones that I've played around with a bit:

Just around the corner....

Forty kilometres from nowhere and way beyond normal... is CORNER GAS... we took mom and dad on a drive to see the set of Corner Gas in Roleau, SK (AKA Dog River) - a Canadian tv series about being in a small town and everyone knowing everyone else's business! Monday, October 6th, the sixth and final season will premiere. I haven't actually been following the series but might just start! I even have friends that have served as 'extras' on the set :) It was too bad that we went right at dusk being that it is such a bad time of day for decent pictures but here's some of what I got:

Our week in review....

We had another busy week just doing our day to day stuff! Driving outta town a bit to get the boys to and from school is taking up extra time but also allows us to peek at the house on a regular basis. This week, the shingles got completed and the plumbing was started. My parents arrived on Thursday afternoon and are here for a week, so we are enjoying our time with them too!

Jackson's FIRST homework project - kind of a 'coat of arms' where he had to trace a hand of every family member and include a family picture

Liam is apparently back to some of his 'old tricks' and we found him UNDER his bed

Papa and Cole - we finally got a picture (I was quite sad that I missed this photo-op in November - with all the extra relatives visiting in Victoria, I managed to get them but not my dad...)

Liam and Cole - the littlest brudders

Having fun with Papa

Super Saturday.....

Another crazy Saturday awaited us... we had a house showing at 10:30am, so the boys & I left the house shortly after 10am and headed to the nearest 'McDonald's Playplace' for a late breakfast. We hung out there until noon (avoiding the rain), did a couple errands and then headed to our church carnival at 1pm (thankfully the rain stopped and the sun even shone once in awhile). Here, we participated in games, face painting (the talented mother-daughter team, Raquel and Erin) and the bouncer... while getting balloon creations, candy, hotdogs, drinks and oh - did I mention candy!!!! When we had spent our alotted amount of fun here, we ventured down the street to our little friend Sadie's first birthday party. I wish I had taken a picture of her cakes because they were amazing!!!! One was 'Dora' and the other was a rainbow (the rainbow was cut for the party and the other was left for the family dinner later) I did stamp a card for Sadie but didn't photograph it. Anyways... we departed her party at 5pm and came home to get ready for my friend Lauren's 30th birthday party! (the mom of the bowling party last week - she also has four boys!!!)

So my inspiration colours for Lauren's party came from some lime green & hot pink gerbera daisy napkins and plates that I've have had for eons... it was fun to decorate something girly for a change! I decided to do up a fun cupcake tree and 'borrowed' my sister's decorating idea for the tops. However... I had severe issues and by the time the party was to start these cupcakes were NOT my friends - we actually despised each other! It all started the night before when I made two batches of cupcakes: white and chocolate. I had them on the rack to cool (the boys had all gotten to sample a white one & were told they could have a chocolate one the next day if there were extras). So I left the room for a couple minutes and came back to find ten, out of twenty, chocolate cupcakes with one bite out of the very top! Sigh... I counted up the cupcakes and now had ONE extra one, from the number that I needed for the tree (23). I added colouring to the two containers of icing that I had and set them in the fridge. Fast forward to Saturday: as I'm rushing to get everything ready for the party, I start to ice cupcakes and ruin my one extra because the cupcakes are too warm and the icing is too cold, resulting with my first attempt taking the top right off the cupcake! Jeepers! So I let the icing get to room temp and did my best but what a disaster! So... don't zoom in on my grainy picture of poorly iced cupcakes... they look much better from afar :) The party itself was actually a chocolate-fruit fondue and was yummy! Something I think we should do more often! Everyone brought a different fruit and it made things so easy :) The boys and I even enjoyed the leftovers for breakfast this morning!!!

Cupcake tree - I stamped the toppers with the little items from the new 'Sock Monkey' stamp set - plus a 'Happy Birthday' one from 'Amazing to Zany' and '30' at the top!

My inspiration items :)

The poor cupcakes... you can sort of see the the random 'bites'

The boys get chocolate cupcakes after all!