Happy Halloween Everyone!

Hope everyone is stocked full of candy and chocolate for all those little monsters and princesses tonight! We finally got around to painting the pumpkins the other day. A few of you mentioned on my Theme Thursday post that Ella's color palette was very good....and that your child would have turned it into an icky color of brown....and believe you me, that's what happened at this house too. I luckily caught her paint plate before everything went bad!

I started to freak out about the paint dripping all over her clothes. But then I thought that it would be my fault for not putting her in clothes that would be appropriate for a 3 year old to paint in....She was just in sweatpants and a sweatshirt. It was one of those moments where I literally decided not to sweat the small stuff. What a refreshing moment. If the paint didn't come out, oh well! Thankfully it did. :)

Theme Thursday - Creativity

Stacy, over at The Land of KA challenged us this week to be creative and while Ella was painting pumpkins (which will come in another post), I was so taken with the paint palette she was smearing around. Every time she scooped up a gob of paint, a new formation took place, new colors were created and a new inspiration came about.


For more creativity this week, venture over to The Land of KA.

Growing Up So Fast

Earrings and lip gloss....The begining of my little girls life as a big girl. We clipped these earrings on her and she felt beautiful, she told me. Then she got some lip gloss when hubby bought the movie sleeping beauty. She could spend hours loading and inch thick coat on her lips and still not think it was enough. Then she goes into the bathroll and pulls my hand held mirror out of the drawer and gazes at herself. She is such a girly girl! I have yet to do the makeup thing with her yet so I can take pictures of her....One pretend step at a time, I say, before she grows up too fast!






This means, "Get out of the way Mama before I run you over!"

Best Shot Monday

It was COLD today, but there are still a few things left to pick off the trees. Off to feed the animals again!



Head over to Tracey's to see more BSM.

Cleaning Up the Leaves

Most all of the leaves have fallen off of our trees now, which means its time to play in the leaves....and of course then clean them up. So we let Ella play a few times in the leaves and then she jumped on the tractor to clean them up with Daddy.

We have this little John Deere tractor that we were hoping to use over the summer to cut the grass, but every time we tried to use it, and fix it....it was scalping our yard. Atleast I got my exercise by using the push mower (not sure if a happy face or a sad face should be inserted here...heehee) But Ella loved riding on the tractor and it did have an attachment in the back that rakes up the leaves, so we decided to keep it.

Ella made a pile and started playing the drums. Oh, how I tried getting a good picture of her throwing the leaves in the air....








All these sticks that Ella is picking up belong to two cottonwood trees that have been the bain of my husbands existence for years (more of that to come in a future post). Besides having to pick up dog poop before mowing, picking up all of the branches that fall at this time of the year was a huge pain in the a**, although a great chore for Ella.




Happy Daddy and Ella time. :)

Feeding the Animals and Planting Trees

Our crab apple tree in our backyard became the sole food source for all animals in the forest the other day. Ella was picking all of the berries off of the tree in order to replenish multiple dragons, lions and critters. As we walked around the yard, she told me where each animal was and we dropped a few berries in their place.

After she fed the animals, she planted acorns in the dirt. The best part about this was that the next day, Ella went to the place in our yard where she planted the acorns and miraculously, there were trees that had grown 5 feet tall! Can you believe it? Me either. They had been there forever, but in her imaginative little mind....they weren't there the day before. ;0)









To see more Theme Thursday shots, head over to Stacy's.

A Little More of That Face I Love

These are a few of the other pictures I got from the same shot I used for yesterdays BSM post. I woke Ella up from her nap (a very rare occasion) because it was getting late and she was sort of out of it (lucky me because she was an easy going subject)....So I had her sit on the couch and watch some cartoons while she woke up. It was a beautiful sunny day out and the light was shining into our living room wonderfully.


She then told me I could take more pictures of her as long as I took a picture of her teddy bear (one of the many she chooses to soothe herself with). Her blankie with a tag is a must have, but she moves from one teddy or baby to the next depending on her mood.




This last one is one of my favorites of Ella. I had a hard time choosing between this one and the one I actually used for BSM this week. I ultimately choose the one I did because I thought it was just a great simple shot of her....Something I dont really think I have already. But with this one, this is her shy sweet little face. When she makes this face, I know it is pure innocence. There's no hidden agenda behind that smile except to say, "Arent I cute, Mommy".

Yes My Little Love, you certainly are.

Best Shot Monday

Ok, So I am a little bothered that the eye on the left is not in focus....But this shot still makes me melt.



For more BSM's head over to Tracey's

A Day on the Farm - Part 2

I never knew I would enjoy being on a farm as much as I did. There was so much going on around us. So many animals, so many people working, and so many beautiful things to look at.


These homing pigeons were the coolest things. I guess I never thought much about them before visiting the farm. They had close to 75 of them and told us that they would release them at weddings and funerals. As long as they were in a 60 mile radius of the farm, once the pigeons were released, they would just fly back home. How cool is that? Also, it was really neat to see them, a dozen at a time, flying from the coop and just circling the farm way high up in the sky. So free as birds are, yet content to be confined. It was really strange.


Here's Ella and her new found friend (which she later told me she named her Sweetie Pie) looking at the sheep.


The hay maze had a slide at the end of it, and when all the kids got to the end, it was a battle of the strongest to get up and go down the slide first. Notice her hand on the little boy behind him....She would get up top and keep looking at me as if to say, "Its my turn now, right Mommy?" I would have to take my eye out of the camera and say, "Go ahead Ella, it is your turn now."


There were cats EVERYWHERE you looked. They were a big hit for the kids as they were waiting to get on the hayride.

Theme Thursday - Fall

For more Theme Thursday images, head over to Stacy's