Spaghetti Dinner Made Better

So I am no expert in the kitchen, never will claim to be, in fact I love quick and easy! When time gets away from me and might be in a pinch to get supper on the table quickly my go to meal seems to be spaghetti. I grab my jar of Ragu, noodles, and a pound of ground meat and get to work. Instead of ground beef I have started using the spiced pork sausage...slightly more fatty, but fat is tasty in moderation ;) 

Oktoberfest

The last weekend in September just so happened to be the weekend that the local town decided to throw their Oktoberfest....yes in September...but who are we to judge ;) We enjoy small town festivities so we thought we would hit it up after J had a soccer game and see what they had to offer. After filling our bellies with several food vendors tasty morsels we headed off to explore what else they had to do. We found at the end of the main street they were having a Car Show, and the boys were lucky enough to sit in a couple.

M and N thought the rusty rat rod was kind of fun.

I think loving cars may be in their DNA.

Crafty Thursday

I have been loving the all the different personalized pumpkins I have been seeing on pinterest and in the craft stores lately and decided to try my hand at it as well last week. I was able to get the vinyl letters from Hobby Lobby for 40% off and the white pumpkins were 50% off and then I had a 20% off my entire purchase, making it a super cheap project. Not only was it cheap, but it was super easy as well.

All you need to get started is you vinyl letter/image, your object that the vinyl is going on and a scissors.

A Weekend With Cousins

So now that we live so much closer to our family, I took advantage of it and drove to WI to visit my brother and his family over a long weekend the boys had. It just so happened to be my nephews Birthday weekend as well, the only that could have been better is if J didn't have to stay behind to work. I think I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

Pumpkin Carving 2012

It's that time of year again when we break out the power tools and become artists. What, not everyone uses power tools to perform this simple task? If you really want to save yourself some time get a bucket of some sort, a drill, a saw (we used a jig saw), and your pumpkin. we like to cut out the bottoms of our pumpkins so that you have a nice flat bottom for your pumpkin to sit on and can place your candle also on a flat surface. It also eliminates the sinking and sagging that pumpkins sometimes get with their tops cut through.

J first drew a reference circle on the bottoms of the pumpkins, then used the drill to start a pilot hole for the saw to go through. He then followed his circle and then punched out the bottom.

Rehabbing and Recycling Fall Decor

So I don't know about you, but I love fall! Over the ten years that J and I have been married I have accumulated a nice collection of fall decor. With all the moving we do it may drive him a little batty at how many totes this collection fits into, but I really don't want it any other way. The boys love it as well, and I think its important for them to really fall in love with the idea of celebrating the seasons along with holidays. 

I love the warm and toasty feeling it gives the house and I really don't have the budget to buy new every year to achieve this look and I really get sad when something doesn't work or gets destroyed. This year one of my lighted grapevine pumpkins decided it was done. I cut out the old lights and thought that I would just leave it as is....but it just wasn't the same. While visiting some family (blogging about it soon) I managed to pick up some brown string lights at a primitive store, with the intention of wiring some grapevine stars I had.  I kicked myself for not thinking of my pumpkin when I got home. I first tested them on the pumpkin, but there just weren't enough lights on them. This past week Michael's was running a 20% your entire purchase and I had a 40% off coupon that they some graciously used on the same transaction...so I snagged a longer set of lights to rehab my pumpkin.

So after cutting out the old strand I gathered my supplies. The lights, a scissors, and small black/brown zip ties.