Hooray for Friday - those September vibes

I'm not quite sure how it happened but September is already more than half-way over and it's Officially Fall!!  I've been really trying to live life in the moment and have been putting my focus on some other things: like daily vacuuming (seriously how glamorous), creating photo books for the girls birthdays (way behind) and vacations, not to mention that Finnley is running around everywhere and Ellie is off to school so I've got to figure out how to entertain just one kid again ;)

::ONE::

It's finally getting chilly here in the PNW and it's time to cozy on up with some socks.  I first saw these socks back in March when we went to Vancouver, BC for my birthday and then when we tried to order them online the shipping to the states was outrageous!! Luckily we were planning a return trip to Canada for Finnley's birthday the following month...so I picked up these beauties then and I have been wearing them on repeat all this week.  But seriously how cute are these??

::TWO::

Having two girls is absolutely the bees knees.  I love that they are so close in size because I can get them into matching outfits.  Back when Ellie was a baby and I found something that I just loved I would get it in her current size and then a few sizes larger so that she would be able to wear it "again" in another year or so.  It has totally worked to my advantage because Finnley can fit into the original size and Ellie into the larger size!!  Also in case you haven't noticed...Finnley is much higher on the % scale than Ellie and they can actually both wear the same size!  Which is just crazy to me considering they're practically 3 years apart.  Ellie picked out their Halloween Jams and I just adore them (plus they glow in the dark)

::THREE::

I've been catching up on the latest season of Master Chef and it has really inspired me to get into the kitchen and cook!!  We were at Costco the other week and picked up a package of sausages and have been making our way through them.  Now that it's Fall we can reinstitute "Soup Sundays" and we had our first one this past weekend.  I made Gumbo and it was so good!  I looked up the recipe for the Blue Bayou Gumbo in Disneyland because honestly it is the best gumbo I've had and I found a knock off recipe that turned out pretty good!  I also had the chance to go to the store by myself...so we had steak and shrimp for dinner one night.  And then last night I made an Autumn Harvest Roast with all sorts of fall veggies (butternut squash, brussels sprouts, sweet potato) and tossed them with some olive oil and seasonings then roasted them at 450 for about 15 minutes then I added in some sausages and back into the oven for another 20 minutes and viola so delish!

::FOUR::

Ellie has been having a pretty stuffy nose lately (as have I) and so we've been giving her some medicine to help that comes in liquid form.  Well the other night she requested for it to be in a syringe (like baby tylenol) and then proceeded to squirt purple medicine all over my white couch!! She immediately apologized for messing up my couch...even before I knew what happened...that I couldn't get mad at her, I just had to strip the couch, spot treat the cushions (4/6 were splattered), and put all 6 cushion covers into the wash.  Now my couch is clean and Ellie is required to take her medicine in the kitchen from here on out ;)

::FIVE::

I went up into our attic to get down all my Fall/Halloween/Thanksgiving decorations and found a dead rat in the trap up there...who knows how long he's been there (lets just say...gross) so when Thomas got home he had some clean up to do.  Also I opened up all my decor boxes and just couldn't handle half of the stuff I had so I bagged up a bunch of it and am donating it to Ellie's school, the church, and then Goodwill as well.  I'm trying to really edit my holiday decor because I just can't handle all the stuff anymore.  I just want my house to be clutter free and that is so hard when you have two littles running around wanting to keep all the things.

So tell me, what's new with you lately?

♥ Ashley