Boo!

Trick or Treater: "Yes! Reese's Pieces! You're the only house that has these!"

Success.




Happy Halloween!

Baby Pictures!

Baby Hutson was working it at his/her 20 week check up. We got to see our huge baby (14 oz thank you very much) on the ultrasound wiggling around and having a jolly good time. Meriahna came with Johnny and me and was absolutely inthralled with the whole thing.



Here's Baby Hutson's tiny little face over there on the right, lying sideways. His/her right hand is pulled up next to his/her face.

In this picture the nurse made an especially big deal that the baby was praying. See the little hands pulled up next to each other sideways on the right side of the middle? When telling Sydney about the ultrasound later, Meriahna said, "Oh my gosh, Syd, it was so cute! The baby was kneeling and praying; Rachel and Johnny taught it well."

Here's the side view of the baby.  I had no idea that we would be able to see through the baby's skin to the bones.  Very good for Halloween.  But you can see its little spine all along the top with its little knees tucked in on the left and the head down on the right. The whole time we were watching it, the baby kept sticking its little skinny butt up in the air; so adorable. (We didn't want to find out the sex, but even the nurse said that she couldn't tell because the baby had modestly crossed its legs the whole time.  Good job, baby.)

Upon looking at this picture, Meriahna's reaction was, "Wow! That is so cute!"

Sydney's reaction was, "It looks like a horse."

Can't please them all.

The Candy Man Can

One thing that I have always wanted to make and never have is caramel.  Yesterday, I found this great recipe for Spiced Apple Cider Caramels at the Not So Humble Pie blog.  I had most of the ingredients, so I decided to make them.

It was so easy!  Definitely time consuming, but not hard or expensive at all.  The only thing I changed was using part apple cider and part Trader Joe's cranberry cider, only because they had run out of the regular kind.  

The only problem with the recipe is that it made 82 pieces of caramel...even Johnny can't manage all of that. So if you live near me, some of these might be coming your way!  And just a reminder to everyone that Christmas Music Day is only 6 days away, so it's a good thing we've started practicing our holiday recipes.

P.S. Pictured in the background of this last picture is one of the pages from the Martha Stewart Cupcake Cookbook.  I highly recommend it if you're looking for a really good cupcake cookbook.

Trick or Treat!

After our grown up brunch this Sunday with Sarah, Emma, and Katie from high school,  Johnny and I decided to carve our pumpkins for Halloween!  I'm especially excited for Halloween this year because in Philadelphia, no one really comes to your door because it's dangerous and blah blah blah.  Here, I'm hoping to have lots of little trick or treating neighbors.

Johnny did an excellent job of carving his tall and skinny pumpkin.  He had an interesting technique.  He would scoop and scoop and scoop and then turn the pumpkin upside down and bang on it to get all the stuff out.  It seemed to be very effective.

So come trick or treat at our house!  Next year there will be three little pumpkins sitting on the porch.  And by the way, the little pumpkin on the right is the same size as 20 week old Baby Hutson is! Cantaloupe sized.

Happy Halloween!

Baby Hutson's Room

Now that the living room is underway, I'm starting to figure out what I'm going to do in Baby Hutson's room.  You might remember it as looking like this:

The walls are going to be some kind of light, non-pastelish green by Sherwin Williams  But the thing that I am most concerned about right now is my plan for decorating.  I want to have illustrations from nine different children's books framed and hung on the wall in a three frame by three frame square.  My plan is to either cut the illustrations out and frame them (which I have done before) or attempt to make high quality color copies of them and then frame them...that way they could all be the same size and I don't have to ruin nine books.  So if you have experience doing that, let me know.

Here are the book options that I have so far:

Curious George by H.A. Ray

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile by Bernard Waber

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

by Judith Viorst

 Babar by Jean de Brunhoff 

(I have this one in French from Paris.)

 Corduroy by Don Freeman

 Flotsam by David Wiesner

 Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

 If You Give A Mouse A Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff

Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans

 Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey

 Olivia by Ian Falconer

 The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

 The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

 Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

 Miss Nelson is Missing! by James Marshall

 Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban

These books are compiled from books that I enjoyed as a kid, books that I've enjoyed while babysitting more recently, and also books that I became acquainted with in Children's Literature at Wheaton.  Am I missing any?  Do you have favorites?  I have to narrow it down to nine.  Help!

Productivity Is My Middle Name

I love days that I can be productive, especially living in a halfway finished house.  After getting some more sanding and priming done in the living room, I decided to do a few crafts that I found on Pinterest.



Here is my cute little pumpkin made out of a collection of Oscar Wilde's works.  I guess I never will read The Portrait of Dorian Grey.

Here's a reminder board made out of a frame that I've been meaning to do something with for about two years.  Click on my Pinterest link on the left to see the instructions from these super creative ladies.

And finally, we have a decision to make, folks.  I have chosen to use a blue for our living room.  Here are two options.  The one on the left and the one in the corner on the top are the same color, and the other two are a darker version of the first.  I'm starting to think the darker one is too dark, but I hate pastels, and I don't want the light one to be too pastel.  The trim will be white.  Thoughts?

Homecoming

Homecoming 2011!  Johnny and I had the pleasure of getting Mitchell to Homecoming because my dad was out of town and my mom was sick.  We were supposed to go pick up his date and then go take both of them to the house where pictures would be held for their group.  So Johnny and I drove Mitchell up to his date's door, and he walked inside, corsage in hand. Then a few minutes later, he walked back outside, corsage and now post it note in hand and no date.  My initial thought was, "Oh no! My little brother has been stood up; let's kill her!"  But apparently she was just down the street at her friend's house, and we were supposed to be pick her up there.  Murder averted. 

Mitchell and Austin went in the same group, and it appears that they had a lot of fun.

So old!  And by so old I mean me because I didn't get to go to the dance.  Heartbreaking.



Four Months

Congratulations to Baby Hutson for making it past the four month mark!  We are officially at 18 weeks, and everything is going well.  I think this picture makes me look bigger than I actually am, but very few of my clothes fit anymore and poor Johnny has lost more than one pair of shorts and sweat pants to his crazy pregnant wife.  Even though Sydney likes to tell me, "You're not fat, you're pregnant!," I think I might be on my way to a life of permanent obesity if I make these again:

Why yes, those are giant apple cider doughnuts.  I've been saving this Smitten Kitchen recipe for a nice fall day, and since we've been working on relaxing and enjoying our Sundays more, I made these this Sunday.

They turned out way bigger than I planned.  But for being a person who has never really fried much beyond my own brain, these doughnuts were awesome.



Johnny enjoyed them as well.  I realize that this picture looks like Johnny ate all the doughnuts on the tray, but I promise these are not before and after shots. Though, people who have picked apples with us know that Johnny can shovel a few of these down pretty easily.  I hope Baby Hutson is okay with reading the newspaper and eating doughnuts all day on Sundays...

Mitchell's Recommendation

All the books that I have been reading lately have been recommendations from my little brother, Mitchell.  This week he recommended Life of Pi.  I remembered that when I was in high school this book was all the rage.  Aside from Harry Potter and Lovely Bones, I try to avoid books that are extremely popular.  The Help?  Please, won't be reading that for a few years.  Call me crazy, and I probably am, but I don't usually like to jump on the book bandwagon.  In this case, however, I should have.

Life of Pi is a novel about a teenager whose family owns a zoo in India.  They decide to move from India to Canada via boat, taking a lot of the animals with them to sell in North America.  Well, in typical Titanic style, the boat sinks, and the main character is left on a life boat not with Leonardo DiCaprio but with a very big tiger.  The boat chronicles the survival attempts of the boy and manages to be extremely interesting even though there are only two characters (think Tom Hanks and Wilson).  The first few chapters are bit intellectual, but overall I thoroughly enjoyed the story.

I give it five stars.

Let The Chaos Begin

The stripping of the wallpaper in our living room began today, so I thought I'd include a few DIY instructions if you ever get the crazy idea to strip wallpaper in your own house.



The first thing you need are some able-bodied people.  I chose my husband, my brother, and my dad.  All it cost us was paying for Mitchell's homecoming pictures next weekend.  After you get the bodies, do your best to pull off as much of the wallpaper as you can with your hands.  We had vinyl wallpaper on the top, so it just ripped right off; underneath, however, is the problem.  If you have old old old wallpaper that is stuck to the wall, spray it thoroughly with a product like DIF, a glue removing agent.  Then get some plastic scrapers and go to town.  Make sure that you only take off the paper and not the dry wall behind the paper. (WARNING: This is very tedious and takes a really long time.)

After you've gotten most of the big pieces off of the wall, grab a palm sander with 100 grit sand paper and smooth everything that is left.  This will throw a lovely layer of fine dust on everything in your entire house, but it's definitely much faster than the scraping portion.

This is where we left off today because Johnny's hair had turned gray due to the dust, and the pregnant lady demanded food.  Next week will begin the priming, painting, and all around beautifying.

New House "Before" Pictures

I apologize for my lack of presence lately. The move has been very time consuming thus far, duh I guess. I do have some "before" pictures of the house, though. These were taken the first night that we had possession, so sorry about the darkness.



Here is our lower level family room. I'm planning to rip out this bar and sink and make this corner into a mini mudroom. Where the sink and bar are now will be an L shaped bench and then hooks on the main wall. The carpet will be torn out and stone or tile will go in.

Here's the rest of the family room. Johnny is going to put up a mantle on the fireplace, and we will change the paint color, curtains, and carpet.



Kitchen! We are painting the cabinets an antique white and changing all the hardware. Appliances are staying, but new lights will be coming in. The lovely blinding yellow color will be gone as well.

This is my favorite part about the kitchen. There's enough room for a little breakfast nook, so Johnny is eventually going to build an L shaped bench here too with our circle kitchen table.



Dining room is just off the kitchen. Window treatments are going out, new shades for the chandelier, and the wall color will change. We are also picking up six new dining room chairs tonight from someone on Craig's List.

Here's the living room. I love all the windows. I am currently in the process of stripping the wallpaper off. Once that is done, I'll paint the walls and Johnny will paint all the trim white.

Here's Baby Hutson's room. Since we're not finding out the gender of Baby Hutson, we are going to paint the room something gender neutral and eventually the carpet will go because there's a nice hardwood floor underneath, which Baby Hutson will appreciate if he/she gets Mommy's allergies.

And just in case you couldn't see the wallpaper in the picture, you can see here that the wallpaper is indeed a timeline of scientific development starting with the Big Bang. Anyone want to use it when we take it off?

Guest room. Not much is changing in here. We're probably going to take the carpet out of here as well. I didn't have a good picture of the master bedroom because there's no overhead light therefore making it too dark for a decent picture.

And last but not least, the celebratory pizza eaten on the first night in our new home. We are going to have to get used to ordering from chain pizza places now instead of walking a few blocks to Lorenzo's. I will definitely miss that about living in the city.

To do list for tomorrow: Strip wallpaper, find Johnny's sweaters, do laundry at other people's houses.