Room with a view

Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through

the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.~ Faith Baldwin

Autumn, the year's last, lovliest smile. ~ William Bryant

Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering

from the Autumn tree.~ Emily Bronte

For several enchanting weeks this fiery
Autumn tree danced outside my window.

Each day her lively performance
more charming than the last

Then overnight she was gone

Silently slipping back stage, trading her glamorous
dress for a woolen scarf.. gracefully rehearsing
her encore for Winter's grand performance.
~ Lisa Davies ~

Pumpkin Porch

I wanted to decorate my porch like this for Halloween

but I didn't:(

maybe next year:)

Happy Halloween!

Look whooo's joining our Family Tree

My Sisters Patty and Linda along with my Sister-in-laws Janene and Syd helped me throw a baby shower for my nephew's wife Robyn a few weeks ago. When I called my niece Holly about drawing up some invitations and told her what we had in mind, (a baby owl in a pink diaper standing on a branch with the words Look whoooo's baby is joining our family tree written on it) she laughed and said I have something that sounds just like what you described. All she had to do was make a few color changes, rewrite the text and voila we had these adorable invites!

The centerpiece for our food table....owls of course!

Since Robyn loves pasta we had a Pasta bar with grilled chicken and three kinds of sauces... Pesto, Alfredo and Marinara. We also had salad and bread sticks from Olive Garden....Yum!

Cheery Cherry Italian Soda's

These are the favors we made to match the trees on our invitations. We filled them with pink chocolate covered sunflower seeds, then placed them in a container from pottery barn that was covered in aspen bark resembling the trunk of a quaking aspen tree.

I set up 5 folding tables in my living/dining room so we could play baby bunko. Some of our guest have never played before including my girls, some of my nieces and my 82 year old mother! We had a blast! The prizes were gift cards to use at some of the places Robyn has been craving during her pregnancy, like.... Noodles, Cafe Rio, and 7-11 for hot chocolate:)

Besides playing baby bunko we played a game where everyone was given a binky necklace to wear at the first of the night. If you heard someone say the words baby or cute you could steal their binky. This was hilarious because trying to take the word cute out of the Atwood family vocabulary is just....well wrong! Karli came in second place with 8 binky's

Trisha beat her with nine!

Ashley & Jamie waiting for Robyn to open all her presents

"Look at all these presents!"

Presents....presents

and more Presents!

This present is from future grammie linnie winnie, the tag says.... For your night owl! Inside.... lots of bedtime stuff that will hopefully help baby zzzzz

This one says... For your hOOTer's ha ha ha....yep you guessed it....nursing essentials... nice!

all the baby goodness!

All dressed up and somewhere to go

Saturday my neice Courtney called and asked if she could tag along with Robyn (her Sister-in-law) who was coming over to do Karli's hair for Alta's Homecoming dance. Courtney said she wanted to bring her camera and take pictures of Karli getting ready and also told Karli she should invite some of her friends to come over as well. Now if you have seen any of Courtney's pictures you know we would be crazy not to take her up on this sweet offer. Karli was so excited and quickly called some of her friends, but unfortunately only Emily was ready in time to come over for a quick photo shoot. Karli absolutely loved every minute of it and we both want to thank Robyn and Courtney for making this day extra special!!

Here's a peek of Karli and her crew

Slathering Karli's legs with lotion

Emily thought this was hilarious!

Black House White Market..... here's your next ad

You're welcome:)

Karli & Preston

Talking Trash

Taking the trash out at our house can be quite the adventure. Our driveway is long and steep and if the trash cans are heavy it can sometimes turn into an involuntary tug of war of sorts. We also have small and large creatures lurking around our neck of the woods at night making the trip a little spooky and needless to say, not a very fun chore. Well that all changed last night, let me explain. Pat asked Karli & Jake to take out the trash so they jumped up from what they were doing and walked out the door (in my kids defense, they are all pretty good sports and never really complain about doing this.) Anyway.... I was cleaning up the kitchen and suddenly realized that a lot of time had gone by and Karli and Jake should have been back in the house by now. I even said to Pat "I wonder what is taking the kids so long?" "I hope they didn't get eaten by wild coyotes!" Pretty soon they were back inside and I didn't think any more about it, until this morning. As I was looking through i photo I came across some evidence of why it took these two so long to take the trash out last night:)

Click on video for added audio effect!

I feel so blessed to have such great kids who can turn a smelly chore into a fun photo shoot!

So the next time your kids complain about taking out the trash ..... hand them a camera:)