Daybreak Park Photos!

As I was walking around our house today, avoiding mounds of laundry and dirty dishes, I realized something: Our pictures are pretty outdated. The picture of Katie on our fridge was taken at the hospital, for crying out loud! So, it was decided..a photo shoot was needed- desperately. None of my kids are really good at posing (I blame it on Dave mostly :)). But I did get some good ones today. The weather this week has been awesome! I love fall days like this in the northwest!

A Little Princess

Wow...I watched this movie with Emma a few months back..and my sisters and I watched it when we were girls. Remember that each one of you are SPECIAL!

Homemade crayons and painting

We tried our hand at homemade crayons the other day! So fun... We had LOTS of broken crayons anyway, and the kids loved mixing whatever colors they wanted..

And this picture above just makes me smile. These two are becoming great friends. They've been spending lots of time playing together while Emma is at school, and Kate adores her big brother...

Craft day at the Hughes house!

Today we had a fun family craft day after Emma got home from school. The last couple weeks we have had some ideas in mind of what to try, but just hadn't had time...until today. Now, my wonderful hubby is very creative, and usually keeps himself busy building stuff in his spare time. Me on the other hand, not so much. But I am TRYING, and thats what counts, right??
 The first thing Ben and I tackled was a pumpkin lighting kit he rescued from a garage sale box 4 months ago. He's been guarding this thing with his life and has been SO patient waiting to use it! I think he did an awesome job, and in the dark this thing lights up big time!

The next thing we have been wanting to try for soooo long is making Cake Pops! Of course, we don't have the cool cake pop pan from the super cool infomercial, but that didn't stop Dave and the kids. They made em from scratch, and they turned out very cool....

The girls very serious about decorating. Well, Emma is serious about decorating..Kate is serious about eating...you can almost see the drool....

Ben's masterpieces...

Here they are! And oh so good...Dave made the cake pop stand too...he's such a cool guy! :)

OK, I totally cannot take credit AT ALL for this next project we did. But, I will take credit for actually following through with a project that is crafty! HAHA...  I have been looking for little seats to put in our front room for the kiddos to sit on while playing the Wii. They ALWAYS fight over our computer chair and I can't take it any more! But everything was so expensive. Until I saw this AMAZINGLY SIMPLE idea on Pinterest. You can see the directions and original idea at http://www.adayinthelifeofmisskranz.blogspot.com/ .
  They are called Crate Seats and were pretty easy to make. We bought some crates and thick foam at the store, and then used fabric and plywood that we already had. The total cost for all the stuff was around $30, so they come out to about $10 a seat. If you already have crates, you could save even more! So, without further ado, here they are!

Oh my word, I love them! Thanks Dave for helping me make em! One HUGE plus about these is that the seats are removable so you can store stuff in them too! I knew they were a success when I peeked around the corner while Dave and I were making dinner and this is what I saw:

So, it's a wrap for today.... But we have more projects in the works, I'll keep you all posted!

Baths and Toilet Paper

After Ben got out of the bath tonight I realized we were out of towels. I told him to wait on the bath mat so I could go grab one from the dryer. What did I find when I got back? A very wet boy wrapping himself in toilet paper. All I could think of as I stood there in shock was, "At least he's resourceful...."

Grateful

Last week I had the amazing opportunity to escape normal life for a couple days! I drove down and stayed with my mom for two days, i don't think that has happened since I've been married! So fun...Around 11am the first morning, these are the thoughts that ran through my head....

6 things I am grateful for this morning (in no particular order)

1- Taking a shower without a toddler opening the door and throwing polly pockets at me.
2- Sipping my coffee while watching Food Network instead of Candace trying to bust Phineas and Ferb
3- Blow drying my hair AND putting make-up on BEFORE 10am!
4- Eating breakfast without having to wipe any bottoms...
5- Actually realizing I do have brain power when I'm not using it to clean up milk or legos.
6- I'm still in the SAME shirt I put on this morning and it's 11am! No stains at all :)

I absolutely LOVE my kids with ALL my heart, and usually embrace the snotty noses and dirty shirts and PBS kids, but mornings like this are GLORIOUS once in awhile. Thank you Dave for letting me go and get some rest, and thank you mom for letting me crash at your house!

I love pinterest!

So, thanks to my two fun sisters and mom, I was recently introduced to pinterest.....wow! So fun and so many cool ideas. Being crafty does not come naturally to me, I have to try really hard :) Pinterest makes it easy.. See an idea, and try it out. So far I've tried a couple recipes, done a couple Halloween crafts, and learned all kinds of new things you can do with Pipe cleaner! Check it out..

So, I saw this on pinterest and it is from a blogger @ www.no1hasmorefun.blogspot.com
My original thought was that Kate would have fun with this, but it turns out it was a little too hard for her, and instead Emma and Ben had a BLAST! All you need is a bunch of pipe cleaner, and a colander (or in my case 2 :).. Let the kids be creative....


This kept them busy the Entire time I made dinner AND made these yummy healthy snacks:



These scrumptious morsels are called Energy bites and are packed full of healthy goodness. The recipe can be found at www.fooddoodles.com . They are a hit with everyone and were super easy to make! Ben asked for them as soon as he woke up and Emma packed some in her lunch. You've got to keep them in the fridge or freezer, and are easy to make a double batch of...Try it out!
Ok, I'm off to get more ideas :)

It's bigger than him!

Hughes Cousins

It's blurry, but we actually got one picture of all 7 Hughes cousins sitting in one place! Haha!

Totally true!

Got this off facebook...oh so true...

Wanderings

At dinner tonight we were talking to Emma about her spelling test she brought home. Only 6 right out of 15, which is pretty unusual. This is how it went down- Me: "what happened?" Dave: "Was your mind wandering?" Emma: "yeah, I think it went to the store to get more knowledge."