Presenting Kaiden........aka Mr. John Deere farmer

Well here he is all dressed up for Halloween! I had so much fun putting together Kaiden's costume and all for under $10! In fact, I believe I only spent around $7 for the entire project. We already had the hat, t-shirt, black paint, box, and a half a can of green spray paint. All I had to buy was another can of green spray paint, yellow paint, the headlights (that actually worked), reflectors for the back, and I printed off some John Deere Logos off of the Internet. Kaiden walked around telling everybody he was a John Deere tractor. He was beyond too cute for words, and he absolutely loved all the attention he was getting at the mall!

I got the idea for Kaiden's costume just from his hat and t-shirt. I am from the Quad-Cities area which consists of Davenport, Bettendorf (Iowa) Rock Island and Moline (Illinois) area. Moline is the birthplace of the John Deere tractor. My parents sent the t-shirt and hat when Kaiden became part of our family in 2007. Kaiden wears his hat constantly, and it makes me so sad that my baby is outgrowing his hat. When we visited back home this summer we took Kaiden to the John Deere museum and he enjoyed seeing and climbing up on all of the big John Deere combines. I Googled John Deere Halloween Costumes and found the cutest tractor costume ideas and I absolutely knew that was the costume that I wanted to make! Maybe next year I will make a International Harvester tractor cosutme to pay tribute to my father who worked and retired from there after 32 long years!

Drinking On The Job

Ahhhhhhh, finally we are getting rid of our lovely 1969 wood paneling from our family room. I have disliked that room since the day we moved in our home in 2002. I hated trying to decorate because no matter what I hung on the walls that room or placed on the fireplace mantel the room still screamed out 1969.

My husband has been working diligently since late August remodeling our kitchen and now he is getting ready to drywall our family room. After that is complete we are installing wood laminate flooring throughout our whole house (with the exception of the bathrooms and laundry room). He certainly deserves a nice cold one for all of his hard work! Honestly, he really hasn't had time to sit down and have a cold beer, but somebody else did 39 years ago!

While my hubby was ripping down the paneling we found a little suprise. I always thought that it would be cool to find a bundle of money in a wall that someone kept there for safekeeping, but no such luck. Somebody was certainly enjoying their work day 39 years ago!


Woooooo Hooooooo, the paneling is finally going bye-bye!

SUPRISE!!!

Look at the bottom of the can....tab top can. I remember those from back in the day. Wow, I'm really showing my age huh?

Found the tab! I hope the construction worker had a great day building our house. I wonder if we will find anymore cans.

New running total.....

I headed out to the Dollar Tree this weekend to get a couple more items for Kaiden's Halloween costume.

So here is the grand total I have spent so far on his costume.......$4.12. I think I am going to be under my $10 budget!

Creative costume planning

Ah yes, Halloween is only a week away now. Honestly, I am really not into the "so-called" holiday. I really don't decorate with all the spooky spiders, skeletons and other yucko stuff. In our home we are more into the basic fall theme, such as pumpkins, scarecrows and fall leaves. You know, the more pleasant (happy) side of the "so-called" holiday, or shall I say we make it a positive event.

I have to admit that I do love to be creative and make costumes rather than buy one. When all three of the girls were little I didn't have much of a choice, and I had to be creative because we didn't have the money to go to the store and buy pre-made costumes. Last year we bought Kaiden a pumpkin costume for $15, but this year I plan on being even more thrifty. My budget is $10 and I have already spent $1.12, so we will see if I can do it! Yes, you can go and spend $50 (or more) at Disney, but I like to use my creativity and think outside of the box. Speaking of the word box, a box will be part of Kaiden's costume this year, which was a freebee. I'm so excited about my idea and I can't wait to share it with everybody next week. Here is a little hint:

WOW, THIS PICTURE WAS TAKEN A YEAR AGO!!!

Guess who is 4?????

Yep, you guessed it! Our little guy turned 4 on Sunday, October 19. He is the sweetest little boy and we couldn't imagine our lives without him in it!

Homecoming 2009

Watching Shanna and Lindsay walk out the door today in their spirit week attire really hit home for me. For one, I cant believe that they are seniors, and two, where in the heck did the time go? Tonight the whole family is headed over to the Western Branch Bruins homecoming football game. I figured out that the next time we go to a senior homecoming game will be Kaiden's homecoming in 2022. Sorry for the blurry pics. Uhhhhhhhm, It was the camera not the operator....uhhhhmmmmm, yep, that's what it was.

I'm a blog slacker!

Yep, I've been a major blog slacker. I seem to always find the time to read other blogs (which I love to do). The past couple of weeks have just whizzed on by as we are trying to finish up our kitchen renovations. I'm trying to divide up my time between Kaiden, classes and home renovations. Sometimes it just gets so overwhelming and things get off balance. I get oh soooooooo cranky (stressed out) when I feel like things are off centered in my life. Even though Kirstie, Shanna and Lindsay are older and have a lot going on in their lives with school and work, I always try to take the time out to talk to each one of my girls, or sometimes all of us just load up in the car to do a little girls day out and go shopping. Lately things have seemed a little unbalanced so I knew I needed to use my time more wisely and wake up earlier to get a little "me time" and overall get an earlier start on my day.

I woke up and decided that today was going to be an awesome day and I wanted to start the day off by making myself a nice cup of hot coffee since the weather has finally started to cool off a little. As soon as I started to brew the coffee I remembered that when I went to the grocery store the other day I bought the new pumpkin spice flavored creamer. Yummmmmmy! Now you know you are getting old when you get excited about coffee creamer...lol I blindly grabbed a coffee cup out of the cupboard and as started to put the creamer in my cup (okay, I admit it I like a little coffee with my creamer).Anyways, I looked down at my cup and this was the cup I had grabbed out of the cupboard:


Ahhhhhhh, yes indeed, it is going to be a great day!