New Table!

A few weeks back, we got a new table for our back porch!  I found it on our local buy, sell, trade page online, but it just happened to belong to our next door neighbor.  Easy move!  It is kind of large for the space and may, at some point, move to the front yard to be enjoyed while the girls fish and catch craw dads in our currently dried up creek.  But for now we've decided to try it out on the back porch and were able to have fun eating at eat it twice before it got too cold.

On this particular day, Joel came home from work with pizza, sweet tea, and even flowers!  Not sure what got into him, but it sure made for a quick, easy, delicious (though definitely not healthy) meal!

But our newest addition to our home is not actually this table, it's our beautiful Christmas tree!  We got it yesterday, and the girls and I - actually just Lydia and I...much easier when Anna Kate is asleep! - have got it decorated.  We've also been working on the whole house.  It's fun to decorate a new space!  And with five Christmas bins, there is plenty to go around!  :)

Kitchen Progress!

Here's a super blurry before picture....

to compare to this!  I am loving the transformation!  Not sure why there's a missing drawer, but I couldn't wait any longer to share.  It has been a very dusty mess.  Yesterday I had to wash every dish, pot and pan that were in those cabinets.  We're not even half way finished, so lots more dust to come!  

Now I'm feeling inspired to go sew the curtain for the pantry door.  It's been on my to do list for months, so it's probably about time I get to it!

Halloween Costumes!

Thought I better squeeze these Halloween pictures in before it's Christmas time!

I like this one because Anna Kate is squished down like a little dwarf. 

Snow White and her prince.

The whole gang.

Happy Halloween! :)

Pumpkin Dresses!

These are my current favorite dresses!

Aren't they beautiful?!

They made me late to church yet again.  Just too cute to skip a quick photo shoot.

Thanks, Aunt Terry!!!

Happy November!

I cannot believe November is already here!  Time seems to be flying by!!!  I'm looking forward to the Thanksgiving season.  Gobble, gobble!

Happy Halloween!

We sure have been enjoying this Halloween season!  We went to PumpkinTown, a fun little Halloween festivity in downtown Dayton, on Saturday.  The craft night Halloween party was last night, and tonight we'll be having a blast at the good ol CSBC Fall Festival!  

I really enjoy coming up with matching Halloween costumes every year, and I enjoy even more looking back through all the years of Halloween costumes we have shared together as a family. 

It all started back in 2010, the year of our marriage.  We were such happy, sweet little newlyweds.  We were invited to a college friend's Halloween party and decided to be the lovebirds Carl and Ellie Frederickson from the movie Up, a movie that we saw together on one of our first dates.

Joel probably didn't know what he was getting himself into, because his costumes keep getting a bit more ridiculous every year.  

In 2011, we were Goldilocks and a bear, and what no one knew at the time (except for Joel and myself), was that Lydia was a teeny tiny baby in my belly!

That, of course, made the next Halloween even more fun when we added a baby bee to the family!

In 2013, we worked around the most adorable mouse costume I had ever seen (and all I had to do was add a bow)!  Joel really got in the spirit and made an awesome mousetrap costume!

What's that making my apple costume bulge?  It's a not so teeny tiny Anna Kate!  In 2014, Lydia loved (and both girls still do) the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar and decided that she wanted to be a "flap flap."  Joel set to work again (man, he sure is handy!) and made her very detailed wings and his own cake costume.  I made the apple and added some yellow touches to the butterfly...even had to dye those silly tights!

Now here come some of my favorites...twice the fun with two kids!  Little Red Riding Hood and company.  I only had to make the wolf's tutu and Red's cape.

And now we're back to the present with this year's costumes.  I found Lydia's dress at WeCare, a local thrift store, for 75 cents, which led to the obvious Snow White family theme.  I was feeling a little bad about making poor little Anna Kate be Dopey, but it turned out that she loved her costume and didn't want to take it off each time I tried it on her.  She even liked the hat!  I was pleasantly surprised!  I threw Joel's costume together at the last minute, or should I say the last hours.  I thought it would be so simple, but I ran into a bit of trouble when I accidentally sewed the head hole shut.  Whoops.  Then I decided it'd be quicker to glue the gold trim on with fabric glue (I was running out of time).  That was an unsuccessful, sticky disaster.  So then I tried to quickly sew it on, which then gunked up my sewing machine, and we called it finished.  Thankfully, I borrowed the evil queen's costume.  Good thing, because I reached my sewing limit and am ready to take a break from that pesky sewing machine until next Halloween.  So there you have it.  Habermas Halloweens through the years.  We'll just have to wait and see how long I can persuade my family members to keep this matchy-matchiness up....hopefully (maybe) I can squeeze in a few more years.  :)

And don't you worry, I will post plenty more pictures soon, because I took just a couple more.  :)

Almost Halloween!

Yesterday morning we headed out to Halłoween Story Hour at the library.  The girls are holding their breakfast because we went to the walking track beforehand, and we were running late, as usual.

We got some fun faces that we stuck on our pumpkins when we got home.  Not sure what's on Anna Kate's mouth...must be lunch.

We are getting excited about Halloween!  1 1/2 outfits are complete of 4!  Yikes!