October 2011

As promised, here is the first installation of months I missed sharing :).

October is a fun time in North Shore. It was a very mild start to Winter so the weather was great for lots of outings.

Eden wanted to be a mermaid for Halloween. She spends a lot of time asking me to draw mermaids for her to color. Eden milks the benefits of having parents who can draw and is constantly requesting specific coloring pages from scratch.

For the costume, I found a gymnastics leotard at Goodwill that I used as a base for the top (the blue sparkly sequins part) and added shimmery fabric Eden helped pick out at Hancocks. The tail is actually an "apron" tied in the back. I used this tutorial as a guideline for constructing the fin, but kept it a bit short so she could run around.

There were a lot of pumpkin parties: school party, church party, and the playgroup party hosted at our house. We served peanut butter yogurt dip died orange:

 

Decorated pumpkins (I stole this idea from Eden's school):

Made caramel covered apples:

At some point in October Eden and I adapted this Martha Stewart craft to make pumpkins:

There was also a carnival at Eden's school. They do a lot of fun things :).  There was digging in the hay for prizes, hula hoop ring toss, and a magician.

At our church's Fall Festival there was a chili cook-off! We are such nerds when it comes to food competitions (we really miss Ryan's Burger Cook-Off!). We also miss doing chili and smores every Fall around our firepit at our Logansport St house. We used the chili recipe that we always served at those evenings and can be found here and won. We make very minor changes and I recommend you all make it immediately!

A local farm has a large "farm stand" near our church. The grounds are fairly large and they host a Fall Carnival with lots of rides, a pumpkin patch, and baby animals for oogling.

We bought all our little pumpkins from them. Eden had a blast because you have to wash them by hand in a big tub with a brush before purchasing.

By chance one day Thomas happened upon the most magical farmers market ever. This is in the back alley of Lake Forest's downtown shopping center. Along with regular produce they had every kind of crazy exotic root vegetable you could imagine, homemade gourmet jams, artisan cheese and bread, and lots more. We only discovered it the last two weeks of season. I can't wait until they reopen for spring!

We also finally made it to Growth Spurts. It's about a 25 minute drive and a bit pricey for an indoor play place. They have a great stock of Haba toys that I love but can't usually afford, the coolest play house (a little washing machine and ironing board included), and a constant rotation of art projects set out. Around the corner is a really fun diner. Perfect greasy spoon with a big box of kid's toys (Eden always chooses the dinosaurs to watch her eat). They tie Eden's straw in a knot and decorate her cup with stickers. There are also dozens of rubber duckies hanging from the ceiling. Such a fun outing when we need a break from our normal schedule!

And of course- there was just a lot of this- love this picture (had to document the mustache of course)!!