Our House in the Middle of Our Street

American Gothic, Mast style. If you have a hard time telling, my husband hates posing for pictures, my little Ladybug (Red Riding Hood, thanks, Jess !) is a bit annoyed, and my Bug is a hardcore " State Trooper " with a rubbed off mustache who just really needs to eat " one more piece of candy, mamma". Happy Halloween. Now...onto Thanksgiving and Christmas, already!

Photocredit I think I first saw mention of Play all Day: Design for Children (R. Klanten, etc.) on the Bkids childrens' design website. I remember the teaser had a line about Arounna Khounnoraj (click to see their amazing designs & store) and I was already signing myself up for a copy from InterLibraryLoan. * (She did a weekly kids' craft project on her website, and although a few of them were too hard for a toddler, a lot of them could be scaled down to a small child's learning curve. I even 'favorited' a few of her projects because I wanted to do them for myself! Find them here .)* When I received Play All Day , I couldn't wait to sit down and look at the pictures, finding inspiration at every turn. A lot of the products were made by small companies, but a few were made by parents, and there was an entire section dedicated to futuristic & naturalistic parks/play areas, which is something close to my heart ! I loved having this resource around fo

A few weeks ago my sister-in-law, mother-in-law, Anikka and I took a trip up to Minneapolis to go shopping at IKEA . If you haven't heard of IKEA before, you're really missing out, it's like it's own city in there, the stores are SO big, the products sleek, well-designed, simple and clean-cut, and dirt cheap. They don't sell a lot online unfortunately (they don't need to!), but it's better in person anyway. We rented a van and took the back seats out and came home with this: That's right. Barely a square foot left. 2 Flatbeds ,3 shopping carts , and 7 hours of browsing and we're back on the road. She just saw the bill.

Some of Stefan's best friends came to visit us last weekend from Vancouver, British Columbia for a 5 day vacation! Here are some pics of our time together taking the dogs to the pond. I love this picture of the two guys. Danielle with baby Ani on the blanket. Ani wearing baby leggies made by her mama! She is very willing in front of the camera. Flirt! The whole gang, minus the mama and one dog (probably running through the grass). We had such an awesome time hanging out around the fireplace, cooking & eating really good meals, and just generally relaxing. We are going to try to take a vacation with them next year, I can't wait to see them again!

Every first time mom should have at least one baby shower, so I was up to the challenge of hosting one for my sister-in-law two weekends ago. With a little collaboration with an exquisite cake decorator (who also made the lovely diaper cake you see above) and a few ideas from my online art class I'm taking & some respected crafters, I think it was a hit!~ You can't really see the soft trees in the back of the owls, but they are covered in buttons and slouched to the side for a whimsical, funky theme of 'nature land' replete with 5 homemade owls! The honored new mom got to pick one out to keep. Although this picture doesn't do the cake justice, it was so perfect! I told the baker what our theme was and she went from there, perfectly matched to our colors and theme! A tree branch with leaves was the decoration and the inside was incredible! We'll be using her again in the near future as I plan a bridal shower this month. Here is an almost complete view o