About a week ago recieved my VERY early Christmas present from my amazing husband and after I signed the pad with the UPS man and did a very energetic happy dance I started unpacking it and set it up in may craft room. I have since only tackled a few projects and played a bit with the stitches...I have not really done a whole lot. Truth is...I am a bit intimidated by this machine. It is about 3 times bigger then my Kenmore Mini Ultra which I have been sewing on for the last seven years and does just about anything and everything you can imagine. I was completely awed by it when I saw them demonstrating it in HSN (yes...we are occasional HSN watchers) and it looked super user friendly but now that it is unpacked...I am just a bit overwhelmed. What is a woman to do? I guess I am just gonna have to dive right in and see where it goes. Maybe I just need to find the right project to get me going...maybe that new coat pattern I bought with do the trick!

The Empire Strikes Back

After countless hours practicing his knocking on the door, saying trick-or-treat, and then thank you we left the house on our way out to collect as much candy as possible! We started out in one of the better neighborhoods in town with great expectations only to have them crushed when almost every house we visited ignored our knock on the door. I was a little peaked...ok, ok, honestly I was pretty pissed off over the whole situation. Really...you are gonna ignore your door on Halloween night with your cars sitting right out front in the drive when you live in one of the better neighborhoods in town? It made me miss my childhood when there were about 500 (or what seemed like 500) other kids out on the street walking from house to house and every house on the street had their door open, smiles one their faces, and bowls of candy in their hand ready for the hoard to arrive. Oh the good old days.

Despite the lack of show from the neighborhood he loved every minute of the experience and got as much candy as he could carry, but by far his favorite part of the night was growling at all the other little kids from behind his Darth Vader mask and getting bubble wrap from his Aunt April. He loves that bubble wrap...don't all kids?

Well...Happy Halloween!

Puddle Jumpers Pumpkin Patch Trip 2011

Gunnar had his first trip to the Pumpkin Patch this year with his preschool class and loved every minute of it! He had so much fun picking out his pumpkin that he can't wait to go back when daddy gets home this week!  Once we arrived I was almost completely unable to pry him away from the vintage tractor they had that was surrounded by straw bales and pumpkins for the kids to climb all over until it was time to take the hay ride! It was the favorite part of the whole trip for him. Before we set out on the hay ride we were give a general announcement detailing all the rules and a little word of caution to "watch out for the black widows". Needless to say I was a bit freaked out about that...I mean really?

Apparently my thumb is greener then I thought!

Besides all the weeds in the background you can see that all my squashes, pumpkins, and melons are doing great! My peppers are looking good and my tomatoes are on their way. I still don't have more than a handful of tomatoes on but they were like this last year also. I didn't get tomatoes until late in the year and they never really turned red. On the up side I had a lot of green tomatoes for frying I guess. I also got my first five yellow crook neck squashes out of the garden yesterday and Gunnar has been begging me to make them for dinner tonight. All in all I am super excited with they way the garden is turning out!