Blow Out The Candles

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Today is my birthday. I turn 27. I grew up in a family that LOVES birthdays. We celebrated all month long. This is not a joke. However, for some reason, this year I really didn't want much...in fact I didn't want anything at all. I asked to go see the movie, "Courageous" with Josh and that was about that. I don't need anything. I don't want anything. I am doing my best to set an example for our household. One that doesn't focus on the getting of gifts, but of giving gifts. Trust me, I think Eden deserves the world, but I pray that she will grow up not focusing on the gifts. As the holidays approach I am asking for money for Christmas. I have plans for it. I hope it blesses the people that need it. We may have little in the way of money right now, but I still feel like I am blessed beyond belief. I have a husband that loves me more than I could have ever dreamed, a beautiful and loving daughter, a dog that may cause me grief but sure brings a lot of laughs into our home. I have clothes on my back (although maybe not the most stylish) and food to eat. We may live a very simple life, but that's just fine with me. I am thankful for what I have. There are certainly days where I look at our bare cupboards and wonder just how I am going to feed my family for the day, but thankfully those days are getting more rare. No matter where I am in life, no matter where I live, my home is with my family and that's really all that I need.

Since I am not really in the celebratory mood for my birthday, I thought you all may want a little fun instead. A little later on I am going post Eden's birthday! Yay! And only 2 months late...whoops. First I waited because I had ZERO photos of Eden at her party. That was not okay. Then the lovely Charissa saved the day and provided me with some fabulous photos of my girl having lots of fun at her party. Then I debated sending my photos to another blog (totally out of my comfort zone), but then realized that the photos that I took were very sub-par and I just couldn't get myself to go through with it. Then...I had no excuse. So, here we are. I don't know why, but I am super nervous to post them. There was a whole lot of blood, sweat, and (a few) tears. I loved every minute of planning the party, but then when it comes right down to it I beat myself up over every little detail. It's a horrible trait. One I hope to kick someday. It truly did turn out perfectly and I should probably just stop worrying. I wish the photography was a bit better and I surely will hire someone next time. I was just way too focused on everything else so the photos suffered for it. This makes for an unhappy Mallory. Anyway, be looking for the post this afternoon! I hope you like it...

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Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

Have I told you yet that I am a L-O-S-E-R?! Because I am. Majorly. I also named my Beta fish "Resol" in high school (loser spelled backwards), but maybe I should have kept that to myself. Either way, I am crossing my fingers that I am going to be a winner. Let me tell you what I want to win...

Red Pearl Designs is having the best giveaway! Megan is letting one lucky winner choose 50 holiday cards for FREE. Oh you know I want in on that. I know our friends and family are so anxious to see a current photo of me because I am just that pretty. Oh fine, really they just want to see Eden and most likely you won't even see any part of me in the photo, but give me a little hope please. I must also let you know that these 50 cards are for the most beautiful, gorgeous, magnificent letterpress cards. Letterpress + Mallory = one big weird happy family. 

I'm sure you are so tired of me saying this, but let me just remind you that the beautiful Megan is the one who designed Eden's birth announcements. In case you forgot what they look like here it is one more time. 

She does amazing work people. So if you are in need of holiday cards then head on over and enter the giveaway. You can bet your bottom dollar (what?!) that I am. I am only telling you this because it truly is a great giveaway and I just realized that by telling you all to go over and enter means I have even less of a chance. Oh by all means please make it that much harder for me to be a winner. I dare you. 

Enter HERE.

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SPOOOOKY

Eden loves Halloween. She didn't inherit that from me. Honestly, she was the happiest child ever. I tried to keep her from eating candy, and yet she found it and DEVOURED it. Serious. Here's proof.

See? Terrible right? I hate to admit it, but she is so cute with chocolate on her face, even if I am wincing watching her eat it. It's one of those moments where you throw up your hands and realize kids have some innate love for sweets. I am still going to do everything in my power to keep the sweets out of our home at least and I'll choose to be less rigid when we are out. I'm all about the happy medium.

Look at my girl dressed up as a cupcake frozen yogurt. She cried every time we tried to take off her costume. She LOVED it. Weirdo. She most certainly didn't get that from me, I despise dressing up. Josh on the other hand...well, yeah, we will just say she got it from him. 

We also carved pumpkins for Halloween...well the day before anyway. Did you know I absolutely LOVE yanking the guts out of pumpkins? Honestly its like Christmas morning for me. Every year I can't wait to get my hands on the pumpkin and clean it all out. It is my goal to get every single solitary strand of guts out of those beautiful orange gourds. It is even more fun to separate the seeds from the stringy guts. Yep.

Do you see how Eden is holding my arm? The girl wouldn't touch the guts for anything, but she held on to my arm the majority of the time. My girl can be sweet when she wants to be. Oh and please pay no attention to me in this photo. I had planned on not letting you see what I look like wearing no makeup and hair shoved under a headband. Sorry for this image. 

Want to see something less sweet? Take a look at my husband carving the pumpkin. That's how we do it around here.

And the finished product. 

                                      

Many people ask if Bella likes Eden. Well, does she have a choice? Look at those two. Eden loves to lay on top of Bella. Eden also weighs ten pounds more than her puppy. We may need to have a chat with her about not squishing the dog. Oh and the disposable diaper? That was the just in cause our daughter actually wants to get messy and play in pumpkin guts but oh wait she apparently is terrified of all things messy. You know she is rocking her cloth diaper all other times. 

I made Eden do a photo shoot in her costume. Yes, I am that mom. I particularly enjoy being that mom thankyouverymuch. I had to use the flash on my camera during Halloween (because my gosh darn nifty fifty lens bit the dust) and I just couldn't handle posting a bunch of photos using flash. I needed to capture my girl in her cute costume. So, we wheeled the wagon down the street. I had dreams of her behaving the way she always had in the past during all of our thousands of photo shoots. She would sit where I wanted to, slyly look up at me with the cutest grin, happily throw leaves up in the air...you get the picture. Yeah, that didn't happen. I was literally CHASING her across the grass and scooping her up every time she made it to the street. I even bribed her with snacks. That did no good. She either had chipmunk cheeks from shoving in too many crackers or would throw her arm up in the air while simultaneously whining until I gave her another one. My perfect photogenic child is no more. 

Excuse the truck and the house in that last one. I had to include it because it reminded me of the fact that she suddenly feels the need to stand on her head. Literally, she puts her head to the ground and has her rear in the air. No idea where she got this idea, but it happens when you least expect it. Makes us giggle. 

Last week we also got to spend some time with friends. We don't seem them often enough. It's so fun to get all of our kids together and watch how they interact. I think they are going to be longtime buddies. 

I need to show you part 2 of the pumpkin patch, but that must wait. My eyes are closing and there is a certain one year old who likes to wake up at the crack of dawn these days. Time to rest!
  

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Happy Halloweenie!

So I had this great plan where I take a photo of Bella in her hot dog costume and say, "Happy Halloweenie!" It was a great plan, but I failed to remember that actually making that happen was a little above and beyond what I could handle. Big fail. Let's all pretend that it actually happened shall we?

Once I get some photos of Eden in her costume I will post them, but for today I figured I would FINALLY show you all that I did in fact embrace the fall spirit and put a little decor around the house. Nothing exciting, but hey, I tried. Oh and I discovered this year that I actually don't like Halloween. I think I just don't get it. Why would I want to decorate with fake spiders all over my house (we have plenty of live ones in our basement), dress up in weird clothing, watch movies that make me pee my pants, engorge myself in candy, and embrace dead people? I just don't get it. However, I did get enough of the spirit to take Eden to a couple of houses for fun. More on her experience on this day at a later time...let's just say she is all too happy embracing this holiday a lot more than I am.

As usual, for the decor, I stuck mostly to the mantle. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE having a mantle? It has been my dream for so long to be able to have one to decorate and hang stockings from. The bad news is I don't have the money to buy anything for said mantle, so I just have to shop around my house. This wouldn't really be bad news except that I don't have much to use as it is. 

It is definitely more...cluttered...than I usually would be comfortable with. I like clean, simple, bare and this is most certainly none of that. It is kind of fun though and I am happy enough with it. I really do need to come up with a new look for the mantle for Christmas. I have pretty much continued keeping that old window with photos in the center and books on the side for the better part of a year.

I am in major obsessive love with my gold pumpkins. If I were a good blogger I would have taken before photos, but I'm not, so I am asking you to use your imagination. I bought these two pumpkins at the Dollar Tree. Which means I spent $2 for two foam pumpkins. Way better than the prices I had seen at a certain craft store. I originally planned on getting them all glittered up like I had done in years past, but after I had painted them up with some gold spray paint I realized I was quite happy with the result and left them as is. Maybe next year I will need a little more bling, but for now I am just loving them as is. 

Hope you all enjoyed yourselves on this Halloween! Want to know a fun fact? Today marked our 5 year dating anniversary. Yep, we started dating "officially" on Halloween in 2006. Our date consisted of LOTS of  scary movies. No, seriously. We watched the entire Halloween movie marathon until 3 a.m. Good to know we bonded over blood and guts. How romantic.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 

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Patching The Pumpkin

During a bout of AMAZINGLY gorgeous fall weather here in Oregon, we decided a trip to the pumpkin patch was most definitely in order. We followed tradition this year and returned to Bauman Farms. We seriously love that place. I mostly just appreciate that we don't get charged a million and one dollars to enter a farm with a young child who really can't do a whole lot of activities anyway. Honestly, some of those farms out there are getting crazy expensive. It's pure insanity I tell you. I thought it would be fun to compare this years pictures to last year's since Eden was only a month old last year during her first trip to the pumpkin patch and was 13 months this year. It is so fun to look back and see how much she has changed. Oh and also to laugh at ourselves for forcing a newborn to pose behind a wood cutout. 

Last Year

This Year

Last Year

This Year

Last Year

This Year

Last Year

This Year

Wasn't that a fun little trip down memory lane? Here are a few more fun photos from our little farm trip.

Is this not the cutest calf nose you ever saw? You can't see it here, but Eden kept putting her hand through the fence and petting it's soft little nose. We were all in love with the baby cowie. 

As you can see our daughter has my love for animals. Good thing we want a farm. I never thought I would want a goat, but this girl LOVED feeding the goat. Maybe I'll get over my memories of goats eating my favorite shirts when I was younger...I mean, its only been 20 years since that happened. Geez.

We wanted to get a photo of her standing in front of this measuring stick, but unfortunately Eden thought that  was rather boring and off she went. 

 We took a little walk through the pumpkin patch. We didn't find the unique pumpkins we were looking for, but Eden sure had fun. Oh and ridiculous side note...I had no idea that Eden had found the CUTEST pumpkin ever while I was taking photos. I was so busy holding the big black box in front of my face, snapping away, that I never even saw it. Needless to say I threw a fit after I saw these photos and realized we didn't buy it for her. Don't worry, we ran to the store and bought her one! 

This girl loved petting the hay on this pumpkin dude. Don't know why, but apparently it was rather entertaining. 

We had a great time at the farm. Our only regret was that we went right at closing so we were sad to have to leave. I am honestly so excited for next fall just so we can go again! Wow..never thought I would be excited for fall, but things sure have changed this year. 

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