Chuckie Doll

Julia's costume required pretty much nothing to do on my part

she  wanted to be Chuckie

you know the demon possesed doll....

yep thats THE JULIA for you.

I kind of love it though

she does what she wants and doesn't give a second thought about what someone eles will think about her.

we had an old pair of overalls and a strip shirt. I did sew on a patch that said 'Good Guys' for her logo.

painted stitches and blood on her face 

I bought a can of orange hair spray to put in her hair.

we went outside before a halloween party to spray her hair and I had her cover her eyes and help some hair up to spray.

pressed down the button and...........

SILLY STRING CAME OUT!!!!!

OMG! 

I would buy silly string and NOT hair spray!!

seriously what is wrong with me?!?!

but we laughed for a good 10 minutes adn then I let her spary me with the rest of the can

:)

P.S.

she is happy about her costume she just wanted to look evil for her picture

TinkerBelle

 

~DISCLAIMER~

like years before I look so SO forward to hand making my kids Halloween costumes!
as many of you know that have seen my diy projects things are not perfect.

I don't measure, use patterns or really any rules when I sew.

I just wing it.

 

Tinker-Belle

to go along with all her other halloween costumes based on her name

(cow belle, Taco belle and liberty Belle)

I was so excited she was on board for a Tinker Belle costume.

again I didn't want to spend any money on making the costumes so I searched my box of fabric and found a bunch of green cloth napins.

I cut them into strips an then sewed together just to give it a more rugged feel because I like the more lost boy look of Tinkerbell instead of the sparkly tutu Tinkerbell.

 added a button and button hole and now it's a cape

 I took a Tinkerbelle t-shirt and a bottom of a old green dress-up dress and sewed them together. 

ok just a touch of sparkle and tutu

 I made the wings but they are not the greatest and I debated on just gettign a pair at the dollar store but I hav eno energy left 

she has the perfect hair color for Tinkerbell but the length is a whole nother story. 

she makes a perfect TinkerBelle!!!

Stella's Minnie mouse

~DISCLAIMER~

like years before I look so SO forward to hand making my kids Halloween costumes!
as many of you know that have seen my diy projects things are not perfect.

I don't measure, use patterns or really any rules when I sew.

I just wing it.

Stella's Minnie Mouse

Stella is a huge Minnie mouse fan.

and it was only natural that she really wanted to be Minnie mouse for Halloween this year

I was so excited becasue I had this fabric left over from other projects and there was plenty to make the costume!

Here is how I made the Minnie mouse bow:

drew a simple bow outline on the fabric

 cut out two

 sewed together with a tiny opening and stuffed it to give it a little puffiness then hand sewed the opening together.

 next I took a strip of the fabric and cut and sewed it to wrap around the middle.

 used some hot glue and glued it to a hair clip

 for her skirt I just cut and sewed on the fabric to an already red skirt. 

she is just wearing a simple black long sleeve shirt

and we got a pair of mouse ears (not pictured)

seriously!!!!
adorbs!!!

I will be taking better pictures of them all dolled up with makeup and hair on Halloween (as long as I am not giving birth!)

pumpkins 2014

We have TONS of squirrels in our neighborhood

and they always eat our pumpkins :( 

so I wanted to wait as long as possible to actually do our pumpkins this year.

the girls are not big fans of getting too messy with gooey things so they opted to paint their pumpkins 

 not Daddy though, he wanted to carve.

 I let the girls get one CD from the library and they always check out the Despicable me soundtrack.

it has a few songs sung by the minions and they think it's the funniest thing in the world. so I did my pumpkin in honor of their favorite singers.

 Julia wanted to do Elmo. she knew her little sisters would like it.

 eww!

 she wanted to help

 then changed her mind

our finished pumpkins

 if you remember this picture from last year.

I really wanted to recreate it using all my girls

but Julia is a social butterfly lately and had a Halloween party to go to. 

so I had to settle for just these two in the picture.

it's always one of my favorite days when we all sit around the table for a few hours crafting our pumpkins. I hope even when they are all social butterflies running off to Halloween parties they still let me have a few crafting nights together.

Home school preschool farm week

this week was another topic that I knew my little nature loving girl would really enjoy.

FARM WEEK!

we read these books:

Down on the farm

Driving my tractor

A farmer's life for me

We sang (of course)

Old McDonald had a farm

ACTIVITIES:

dice-race game with farm animals

we practiced writing her numbers on a paper and then rolling dice and counting how many spaces to move the farm animal. we played a few times and she really enjoyed it. I was very proud of her numbers but she still has a little trouble writing the number 3 and 4. we will keep working on it. o and I couldn't find our horse and duck that came with the farm set so I substituted them with a unicorn and Donald duck :)

 on Tuesday we had a little family outing with some friends to a pumpkin farm!

 she practiced her shapes by drawing the cows spots in the shape it was assigned to.

 I found this really cool video about a dairy farm 

it was really interesting to actually learn everything that goes into making a simple gallon of milk.

We are HUGE milk drinkers in our family

we go through almost 3 gallons a week!

and I am very strict about what my kids drink.

only water unless with meals and then it's only watered down juice or milk. 

but if Daddy is in charge he caves into their requests and gives them chocolate milk.

ugh Daddies!

so after watching the video we practiced milking our imaginary cow (doctors glove filled with milk and holes in the fingers)

 We also talked a lot this week about all the many things farm animals make and give us.

we found pictures in magazines and made a chart separating the animals and their "gifts"

her work book was number 7 and 8
a review of all her shapes and then we started working on sorting big and little objects.



I am completely convinced Miss Belle is a farmer girl at heart 

she would be 100% right were she belongs in a corn field, milking cows and sheering sheep.

I have big dreams of owning a chicken coop soon (hopefully next year!) and Miss Belle helping me collect the eggs. I really want to get her involved in 4H but need to do more research about ages and what all she can do. anyone have children or belongs in a group like that that can pass any information on to us we would be so happy to check it out!!

 Farm week was so much fun we didn't even take a day off!!!

Jackson 18 months

Mr. Jackson had a busy year!

but before we get to that we had to document him turning 18 months.

his God mother is in the military and sent him a few props for us to use.

 I swear this boy is so cute!

 then of course what photo session with Jackson wouldn't be complete without a few pictures on the farm?

I love being able to shoot Jackson's pictures. he's always such a fun energetic and happy boy. this is not the last you will be seeing of him in the next few weeks. remember I said it was a big year for him!!!

Home school preschool: Clean

over the past weekend I was having some pretty bad aches and pains.

I went to the doctor on Monday and was told it was just false labor. 

I hate that feeling of freaking everyone out (grandma's and husband mainly) just to be told nothing new is happening.

luckily this hasn't been as bad as when I was in the last month pregnant with Stella. she would put me in false labor every other day!!

but still I felt silly for not knowing the difference even after being through this before.

so we took a break from preschool on Monday.

but Tuesday everything was back to normal and Belle was so excited to get back to her work and activities.

We learned all about Germs and cleaning up the environment.

I wasn't able to get to the library to pick up our books because of the hectic weekend so we again resorted to YouTube stories.

We sang a song:

(row, row, row your boat)

Wash, wash, wash your hands

play our handy game

Rub and scrub and scrub and rub

Germs go down the drain.

We learned the proper way to wash your hands and drew a picture of what hands look like dirty and then clean.

 

We used vinegar and salt to clean up some dirty pennies.

During our walk to pick up the big kids we cleaned up any trash we found along the way. (I gave her some gloves. to re-enforce no picking up germs.)

She swept some pretend dirt into a shape I called out.

she wasn't the biggest fan of the sweeping and looking back I should have used a smaller broom and bigger "dirt' than the beads because it wasn't really going where she wanted it to go easily and when she gets frustrated she tends to just give up. 

her workbook was all about reviewing all her shapes and the number 6. 

Miss Belle said "the number 6 is a FUN number to write!"

and then she filled her whole paper with sixes.

At the beginning of the week my mom told me I might want to skip preschool this week and just rest.

I knew that wouldn't go over well with Miss Belle and I knew this week wasn't too much of a topic that required much work either. everything we had on hand or we would have done anyways (walking to school, sweeping the floor and washing our hands.) I am glad I didn't skip but I did look ahead at the upcoming topics and I changed a few things to allow a little more of "a break" in case I go into REAL Labor.