Halloween 2014

Once again, it is fall...my favorite time of the year! And in just a few weeks, it will be my favorite holiday... Halloween!!

This past summer my son turned seven, and I can almost tear up just thinking about what amazingly sweet, kind, smart, and fun boys they are growing up to be. I just keep commenting on how much they are maturing and becoming more and more independent. And this year, almost as if to prove my point, for the first time ever they have chosen two separate Halloween costumes. (Did you hear that? That was the sound of my heart breaking just a little.) Since they were babies, they've worn coordinating twins costumes, but this year, they are really letting their growing independent personalities and interests show! I'm simultaneously proud and a bit sad.

Before I reveal their costume choices for this year, let's take a moment to review their costumes from Halloweens past:

2007: Thing 1 and Thing 2

2008: Bert & Ernie

(Kinda plain...they wouldn't wear the wigs or face paint)

2009: Rock stars! (complete with black nail polish, eye liner, and pleather pants!!)

2010: Thomas the Tank Engineers

2011: Ketchup and mustard (what for Thing 1's picture on the French's Facbook page on Oct 30!)

2012: Red dog and rainbow dog*:

2013: R2-D2 and R2-Q5 (aka "the darkside R2")

And for this year, Halloween 2014....
Thing 1 chose to be... Sky Does Minecraft

And Thing 2 chose to be... Yoshi

 *While the dogs were not *my* favorite costumes, they boys LOVED them! In fact, they loved them so much, they STILL dress up in them at home and occasionally wear them out. In fact, red dog made an appearance last fall when the boys had to dress up as a book character for a class book report (Thing 1 went as Pete the Cat and Thing 2 went as Clifford the Big Red Dog)

And this past weekend, we took the kids to the local Zoo Boo and Thing 1 opted not to wear his Sky Does Minecraft costume because it would "be too hard to sit in" when riding the train, roller coaster, etc. So he opted to wear his Rainbow dog costume instead and keep the Sky Does Minecraft costume for Halloween night.

So it just goes to show...sometimes it's not the most complicated or "original" costumes that the kids love best. Sometimes it's just the simple ones that allow them to use their imaginations!!

Hope you have a Happy Halloween!

Baseball Room

I was looking through some old posts, when I realized that I had post bits and pieces of the boys' baseball bedroom redo last summer (quilt-red, quilt-blue, pillows, coat rack, curtain rods) , but I never posted pictures of the finished product. So I thought it was high time I posted some.

As a reminder, this is what my boys' room looked like before. This is the same fishy/nautical theme they've had since they were newborns.

And this is the updated baseball themed room that we did for their 5th birthday! They LOVE it!

I got the blue black out curtains (it stays light really late in Indiana) on clearance from Walmart.com. I got the posters from Posters.com (and had a 25% your whole order coupon) and the poster frames from Menards. My parents ordered the little red locker-style night stand from Amazon.com. You can't see the alarm clock too well, but it has rainbow colored numbers! I got that from Target. The little lamp is also from Target, but that has since been replaced with a Lillian Vernon baseball lamp from my husband's parents.

We already had the shelves (Menards), but we decorated them some of my husband's old gloves, cleats, and trophies and some of the boys' balls and trophies. What you can't see behind the door is a we hung another old baseball bat and glove, along with and a framed sheet of IU baseball cards (Go Hoosiers!). The wall on the left side of the closet (which you can't see either) is basically a mirror image of the wall on the right, with a shelf on top and filled with double white metal hooks (from Menards) hanging ball caps. (My kids have a lot of ball caps!). I believe we got the baseball piggy bank from Target (or maybe Walmart, I don't remember).