My Mumpkins

So these are called mumpkins...I guess.

 Mums + pumpkins...get it?

I've seen them on Pinterest before.  I think they're kind of fun...pretty for fall.

I had some gift giving occasions coming up and so I thought I would experiment a little.

Wal Mart had some small mums for $2 and these little pie pumpkins for $3...the perfect size.

I was a bit apprehensive as I thought about the possible outcomes of this project so I also bought some loaves of Great Harvest bread (the BEST! in my opinion btw) as a 'just in case'.

They ended up being quite easy and fast...

It's quite self explanatory but I'll briefly walk you through the steps anyway.

Start by cutting off the top of your cute pumpkins.

Dig your hands in and clean out the insides...just as if you were doing a jack-o-lantern.

Then make bowling balls out of them...

just kidding...that's just what I think of when I look at this picture.

You want some holes in the bottom so the water can drain out when you hydrate your plants.

I just used the tip of my knife to bore the holes in.

Next, take your mum and pull it out of it's container and stuff it into the pumpkin.

They were a bit tight...I had to press quite firmly down on the soil to get it below the rim of the pumpkin but in the end it was just perfect!

Now, tie a cute bow around their middles and you are ready to display them.

I've never been very good at tying bows.  They always end up inside out and upside down...so hopefully yours look a bit better than mine.

 

 I made six and gave most of them away so as soon as I dropped the last one off at it's new home I headed straight back to Wal Mart to get more to make for myself.  Ha!

See?  Easy as {pumpkin} pie.  Needless to say, my family is enjoying the G.H. bread...I really want to put a smiley face here...have you noticed the lack thereof in this post...and the lack of that question mark that was supposed to be right there...and here.

Well, the far right quadrant of my keyboard is not working.  This post has taken much longer than it should since each time I need to type the letter p I have to literally pound on the key several times and then after much force, three or four appear at once.  There are a few keys like this and then others such as the colon, parentheses and question mark that just don't work no matter how hard or long I pound.

Sorry, long explanation...

So there ya go...Mumpkins!

p.s.  I'm a bit concerned about how long they will last.  I'm hoping they won't get mushy and moldy too soon.  I think I saw somewhere to spread vaseline on the inside of pumpkins to make them last longer...or something like that.  If anyone has any tricks or hints or suggestions in this department, please send them my way.

Time Out for Me!

This weekend (Fri. night and Sat.) I was blessed to be able to attend TOFW...Time Out for Women...a weekend full of spiritual speakers and musicians of the LDS faith.

I went with a good friend and her daughter (since this year they started doing a TOFG {time out for girls} next door).

We heard wonderful speakers such as Sherri Dew, Mary Ellen Edmunds, Brad Wilcox, Sandra Turley, Kris Belcher and Jennifer Brinkerhoff Platt.

Hillary Weeks and the new Hudson Lights performed too.

 This is Sherri Dew and Hudson Lights.  Our seats weren't the best :)

It was amazing!

Along with all the laughing and crying, the spirit really spoke to my soul and I have a desire to do better.

One of the things I decided I really need to improve upon is my ability to ponder.  My mind wanders much too easily and whenever I try to just think I end up on the other side of the world.  I need to be deliberate with my pondering.

I gained some wonderful insights into my own life and what I need to be doing right now.

This picture makes me smile :)

 Hillary Weeks performed a song about Dancing in the Rain.

Well, this weekend was rather rainy and so many women had umbrellas with them.  During the song, one brave, yet clever lady opened up her umbrella and started swaying and bobbing it in the air to the music.  It didn't take long before many others popped up and soon there was a sea of dancing umbrellas.  It was a fun moment :)

The event was held at the university and while in line to participate in the service project I saw a display of pictures from Holland...I guess Holland has kind of become a thing for me now since this post, so I had to snap a few pictures.

 What a good time!  Again, my sweet husband was so willing to let me go and refill my bucket.

I think he understands how important that can be for me.

Now, I just need to implement what I have learned and think "Higher"!

Things I Wasn't Going to Blog About...

I haven't posted forever....and there have been a few things that have happened that people have said they thought I would blog about, that for some reason or another, I had chosen not to...so for my loyal readers :) here are those few small things...

Our Second Annual Swiss Days Extravaganza!

My cute SIL, Jenny, and I brought matching bags (unplanned) to haul all the goods in.

 Cute and colorful!

 We about bought out the Food Nanny of all of her cookbooks :)

 I love the fairy garden booth!

My sweet MIL is so generous and giving.  She was in a booth and the woman mentioned that her daughter had made this little doll so what was Nancy to do but buy it?  

It was much hotter this year than last but it was still great fun.  I ended up buying mostly clothes of all things (along with a few, fun little crafty things.)

Andy brought the kids down that night and we were able to enjoy the rest of the weekend together.

Thanks sweetie (and all of my babysitters :) for allowing me to have this fun time!

Mr. & Mrs. Pillowcases

I'm kind of embarrassed to post this next item since it didn't turn out the way I had hoped.

I have a good friend that is getting married and for her gift I wanted to try making some fun pillowcases.

I was rushed when I made them (my fault:) and I just wasn't happy with the final product, but what could I do?  I had to leave for the shower in minutes and so I wrapped them up and took them.

#1 Disappointment:  The markers bled.  I was hoping that these fabric markers I bought specifically for this project would not bleed.  Does anyone out there know of a brand of fabric markers that don't bleed at all?

#2 Disappointment:  I got into that ridiculous, vicious cycle of drawing too far off my first line and so I had to fill in to make it look like I meant it to be a thick line...etc. etc.

Next time (if there is one) I would definitely use stencils or something because I'm very frustrated with how my lettering turned out.

At least they were made with love right?!

PCMC - Diet Follow Up

Have I mentioned we've been on this diet for a year?!

I figured it was about time we saw the dietician again since it had been close to 10 months since we saw her last.

Andy was able to take part of the day off and go down with us.  That relieved much of my stress right there since I don't like to drive on the freeway.

Ben was kind of a pill in the office.  It's always sad to me when he is grumpy around other people because then they can't see what a sweetheart he usually is.  I guess we're all entitled to grumpiness every now and then right?

I had to make sure that my expectations of only being on the diet another 10 1/2 months was realistic.  I didn't want to plan on being done at the 2 year mark only to find out that they had something else in mind.

They said we could plan on trying to wean him off over the course of a few months next August.  Awesome!

According to her and the neurologist, everything looked good but they wanted to do labs and just make sure his blood was fine.

We had to take a detour to see the "Meemos" first in hopes to make him happy before they poked him.

Ben loves these fish that swim around in a big glass case on a little motorized belt.

The draw was traumatic as we had anticipated, but another visit to the fish and we were good :)

Sometimes it doesn't seem worth it to go all the way down to Salt Lake for such a short visit, especially since it seems we could do the exact same things with our pediatrician right here, but oh well.

Something good that came out of it though was that they have determined some substitutions for some of the expensive supplements that we have been having to order online.  Now we can just get a couple of them at the grocery store for much less money.  That will be nice:)