Five things Friday

Tomorrow is Halloween!! I can't believe how fast October has gone by, I keep finding myself thinking about this time last year and looking back on pictures of my sweet Ellie and how much she has grown.  My heart and love for her continues to grow everyday and I am loving each new phase she is in so much more than the last!

Additionally I am SO ready for the weekend.  Thomas has to coach tennis all day on Saturday so it's just me and Ellie making cornbread, doing the finishing touches on our costumes (what am I going to be???) and then hopefully I will be able to get a little bit more organizing/cleaning up in Baby #2's room.

::ONE::

Halloween Past

I am loving this outfit so much that I might just have to put her in it tomorrow just for the photo-op because why not?  I just loved her in this little outfit and she seriously is the sweetest thing ever.  My little witch!

And just for fun here is what Thomas and I have dressed up as in the past (throwback to the College days)

::TWO::

I always get so excited to carve pumpkins and I want to do it at the beginning of the month.  Well that didn't happen this year (and it's a good thing) and I actually kind of like it.  Our pumpkins always rot and get moldy when we carve them too early and end up being totally gross when Halloween comes around... On Wednesday I had a magical thing happen (I got off work at 4 instead of 6!!) so we decided that that would be our pumpkin carving night!!

Ellie absolutely loved her pumpkin and she loved sticking her hands inside to get all the seeds! She kept exclaiming that her pumpkin was cold and was "counting" the seeds she got out "1, 8, 19, 18, 10, 3, 6..." at least she knows numbers, haha.  I have to say I wasn't too surprised with her enjoyment with pumpkin guts but actually I was because she has started to say "yuck!!" when she gets things on her hands (i.e. food and slobber) but I am so glad that she loved it!

Our pumpkins, they didn't turn out too bad considering we couldn't find our carving tools and had to resort to a pairing knife ;)

Ellie and her pumpkin last year:

Ellie and her pumpkin this year (she was much more wild and it was a challenge to get a photo of her not moving!!)

::THREE::

I attempted the scrap paper candy corn art project that is going around the internet the other day with Ellie and my nanny kids.  I thought it was going to be so easy...wrong!!! It was a disaster and I got so frustrated (not a good thing when trying to encourage your little one to be creative...) My nanny kids had no problem following directions and doing the craft all proper like. Ellie on the other hand, all she wanted to do was smear her hands around in the glue. So I ended up doing most of the work since she wasn't interested in picking up the colored paper and putting it on the glue.  

The good thing is that I learned what skills we need to work on and picking up scraps of paper is definitely a fine motor skill we need to work on.  That and following directions.  Overall I am glad that we attempted this project and think we need to do it at least 100,000 more times for her to get the concept ;)

::FOUR::

Usually on Sunday's we try to have a soup of some sort, but since we're having Chili on Halloween we thought we'd mix it up a bit and have our favorite Pot Roast and it really is perfect. Funny story, I made it around this time last year as well and got my face a little too close to the pot when I dropped the meat in to sear and got a big oil burn on my forehead.  Thankfully it cleared up after a few weeks but it can be dangerous in the kitchen!! I think I'll serve it with some mashed potatoes and like I mentioned the other day I'll probably make some sautéed Brussels Sprouts as well.

::FIVE::

This week on the blog

On Monday I talked about our new Halloween Tradition: The Sugar Goblin and y'all it is SOO cute!!

Wednesday I linked up for What's Up Wednesday and shared about all the things we have done in October including some of my favorite outfits.

Speaking of clothes, I have scheduled our family photos (weather permitting) and I need to come up with what to wear.  I shared some of the options I am thinking about on Thursday - what do you think?

♥ Ashley

linking up here