Thanksgiving Home Tour

My house is all decorated for Thanksgiving and it makes me SO happy.

I love all the Fall colors, the mustard yellow pumpkins and the focus on being thankful that this month brings.  It's also my birthday month and I'm in no hurry to rush through the month.

I realize that decorating for Thanksgiving seems to have fallen out of favor for many, but I'm always going to devote November to Thanksgiving.  Do you decorate for Thanksgiving?

I've been collecting cute turkeys for YEARS.  I know there are plenty of turkeys out there that are not cute.  If you look hard enough TJ Maxx, Hobby Lobby and Target will come through for you with good looking turkeys.  I promise!

Side note: I start my Christmas shopping in November and pick up fun things for the kids to celebrate in December, I just don't decorate for Christmas until after Thanksgiving.  

Welcome to my house in November!

Let's start in the kitchen.  This is my newest turkey.  I found him at Hobby Lobby and think he's so pretty!

My Mom surprised me with this braided pumpkin and I love it.  My cats love playing with the tassels.  

 Turkey S & P shakers, festive kitchen towels and sparkly pumpkins.

We are trying something new this year... We are writing things we're thankful for on our chalkboard all month long.  It's been fun to work on so far.

We have some kid friendly decorations in the playroom.

I love this cozy spot.  My fiddle leaf fig plant is doing so well!!

Added in some pumpkins and turkeys to our bookshelves.

 My favorite spot to decorate.  A turkey, real, felt and ceramic pumpkins and garlands on the mantel.

See, it is possible to find cute turkeys.  This handsome fellow came from TJ Maxx last year.  My sister found the mustard felt pumpkins for my at the Target Dollar Spot.  I sent her on a mission and she hit the jackpot for me.

Our family room has Thanksgiving touches throughout, but nothing over the top.

I added this grateful pillow to my collection this year.  It was just $9.99 at Walmart a couple of weeks ago.  The back is gray and white striped and the quality is wonderful.

And a cotton wreath on our front door!

The teacher mom in me loves to put out a book basket in our playroom with themed books for the month or upcoming holiday.  Here is our Thanksgiving book basket with a shout out to our favorite books.  We would HIGHLY recommend these Thanksgiving books.

 Here are my Amazon affiliate links to the books above.  We love all 6 of these books!

Everyday Prayers from a Parent

We pray with our kids throughout the day and for them anytime they come to mind.  That's especially easy for school age kids.  So much of their school days are out of our control.  It's comforting for me to know and share with Olive that she's being prayed for even when we are not together.

I think our morning routine started when Olive started school.  I say a prayer on the way to school or in the carpool line.  We tell the kids we're praying for each other during the day.  We have regular conversations about praying for people in need.  We pray together at dinner and at bedtime.  As the kids are getting older, they're participating more actively in our family prayers.  It's so sweet to see them learning prayerful words, phrases and connecting real life to their prayer life.

One of my favorite parts of Olive's Sunday school class at church is that her teachers will offer to pray for the kids on Sunday.  The kids share prayer requests and then their teachers pray with them.  I love hearing what Olive asks her teachers to pray about.  Sometimes she surprises me!

There are a few things we pray for every day.  I'm sure this list will change a bit every year, but here's our list of things to pray for our little kids.

1. Be kind to others
2. Be a good friend and make good friends
3. Stay safe at school
4. That they feel hugs and kisses from home wherever they go
5. Always learning
6. Current happenings - projects, tests, activities, etc.
7. Pray for them to grow to love the Lord
8. Pray for their future jobs/careers
9. Pray for their future spouses
10. That the kids know we're always here to cheer them on

What things would you add to the list??

What prayers do you say for your own kids or kids that you love?

Chip Free Nachos

My family loves nachos.

I could eat them every week.  I usually put some type of Mexican food recipe on the weekly.  Nachos work great for game day and for regular dinners.  It's an easy meal that's sure to be a crowd pleaser.  My kids love the basic meat + cheese with a little salsa.  The adults love meat + cheese + ALL the toppings.  Most of the ingredients in this recipe are staples at our house.

This Chip Free Nacho recipe came about because I wanted to have a meal that I could cook once and eat twice.  It's also really hard to reheat traditional nachos (toppings on top of all the chips).  This recipe reheats so well and is great for people who are trying to avoid eating tons of carby chips.

Ingredients:
1lb your favorite taco meat (I did ground beef + Oretga taco seasoning)
1/2 green pepper diced
1/2 yellow pepper diced
1/2 red pepper diced (You can do all three colors or just do 1 1/2 cups of your fave peppers)
1 yellow onion diced
1/4 purple onion diced
2 green onions chopped up
shredded sharp cheddar cheese
sour cream
guacamole
salsa
black olives
jalapenos

Toppings: shredded lettuce, salsa, tomatoes, sour cream and chips

Cook the taco meat.  Layer all the ingredients in the pan.  I started with the onions and peppers in a greased 9x13 pan.  Added the meat, cheese and all the toppings.  Bake at 350 for 20 minutes until everything is warm and bubbly.

You can completely customize this dish for your family. 

I like sour cream and my husband does not.  I put dollops of sour cream on my half of the pan and left it off of his side.  My favorite part of the nachos are the toppings so I just ate a few chips on the side.  Kevin put his nachos on top of chips.  My adaptation for the kids was to save some meat off to the side.  Then at dinner time I built them their own plates of nachos with just meat and cheese.  It worked great for the whole family! 

Halloween Weekending

Happy November!!  It's my favorite month.  I just love Fall and my birthday is the 16th.  Such a fun time of year.  Our weekend turned out to be pretty unexpected:


1. It snowed.

2. We had to cancel a fun weekend out of town due to snow.  Kevin got us Notre Dame tickets to go up and tailgate and attempt our first Notre Dame game as a family.  He said it would be a great way to kick off my birthday month.  Well temps dropped dramatically in Indiana this week after we bought our tickets so we had to cancel our trip.  It just didn't sound like fun to tailgate, walk around campus and try to enjoy the game in that kind of weather.

3. We all have coughs/colds/sore throats and lost my voice for 4 days and counting.

4. I got to decorate for Thanksgiving since we ended up being home all weekend.
 

Although our weekend looked like tons of cancelled plans, it was still pretty great.  I watched a few Hallmark Christmas movies, got a new iphone, the kids were super helpful taking down Halloween decorations and putting up our Thanksgiving turkeys and we had fun at home.

I have a fun little recap for you today:

Halloween Photo Shoot.
The kids LOVED their costumes this year.  They had never been so excited to jump into characters.  Their costumes fit their personalities to a t.  Olive was a very sassy Bo Peep and Fletcher was Buzz Lightyear.  Both from Toy Story 4.  They got lots of compliments on their costumes.  Buzz's jet pack lit up so it was great for trick or treating after dark.

Our city always trick or treats on October 30 and 31.  We looked at the weather and realized it would be much colder and snowier on the 31st.  So we threw on our coats and costumes and headed out the door.  The kids walked the entire route and got tons of candy.  They got to go door to door as well as answer our door to tons of trick or treaters.
 

We got home and Kevin suggested we carve pumpkins.  They turned out great!

On Halloween, I loaded up my supplies and Fletcher and headed to Olive's classroom.  I planned all the games for her party and had to run them with no voice.  Not ideal, but we still had a great time.  I love helping out with her classroom and being the room mom.

I don't usually bring Fletcher with me, but daytime childcare is hard to come by most days.  He promised to act like a first grader and he kept up his end of the bargain.  It was tons of fun!

Halloween Party Games for 1st graders:
The Claw
Use the skeleton salad tongs to grab Halloween items to put in the pumpkin.  The kids each got two turns to see how many items they could get into the pumpkin.  They could not use their hands, only the skeleton hands.

Ghost Stack:
I drew ghost faces on a package of clear cups.  The kids had to attempt to build the tallest ghost stack.  The winner was a little girl who got her tower 12 rows high!  The kids LOVED this game.

Mini Pumpkin Ring Toss
The kids had to put on the crazy eye glasses, pick up the stack of ten rubber bands and try to toss them onto the pumpkin stems.  The kids really loved this game.  It was harder than they thought and they worked together to collect and count their rings.

Crazy Hair Day idea:
It happened to also be crazy hair day.  We added a pipe cleaner spider to Olive's favorite headband.  It was a super quick way to make her feel festive and fun.  You just need 5 pipe cleaners.  Wrap all 4 legs around the headband, bend them to look like spider legs and then take the last pipe cleaner around the middle to look like the spider body.  If this wasn't 2 minutes before we walked out the door for school, I probably would have hot glued on some googly eyes.

Story time.
I found this cute little kitty at story time at the library.  He loves going to story time and science class.  He sits and listens and loves doing the activities.  It's fun to see him turning into a big kid right before my eyes and it gives me an opportunity to connect with other moms.

Church on Sundays
The weather was GORGEOUS yesterday!  We unintentionally matched for church and then played in the leaves several times.  Fletcher has also hit a growth spurt and suddenly doesn't fit in his Fall clothes.  We had to try on several outfits before we found one that would fit for church.  I need to swap out his clothes ASAP.

We ALL LOVE FALL!!

Kevin's been requesting an apple pie for weeks.  It's not my favorite pie to make because it takes a long time to do all the steps.  We have now made two trips to the apple orchard this season.  I had just enough time to pull this together yesterday.  It was so good.  The kids helped with the apples and are not a fan of the pie.  More for the grown ups!

Hope you had a great weekend!

Halloween with Bo Peep & Buzz Lightyear

Happy Halloween!  I hope you have a wonderful day!

The kids picked out their costumes months ago after we saw Toy Story 4 in the theaters.  They didn't change their mind once and they were so excited to be Bo Peep and Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story 4.  Many people expected Olive's costume to match the traditional Little Bo Peep, but she had to explain to them that Toy Story 4 Bo Peep was much more sassy with a cape.  Fletcher wanted a jet pack and Olive wanted the cape, staff, etc.  I found their costumes on Disney's website.  They came with all the accessories for a really reasonable price.  The quality is amazing!  I'm sure they'll have tons of fun dressing up in the coming months.

We have had a jam packed week.  We are helping run Olive's class party today and trick or treating.  We also have snow in the forecast for later today.  Brrrrr! 

See you back here on Monday!

Our country club hosted a really fun event on Sunday - trick or treat the golf course - and the weather was perfect.  The kids debuted their costumes and had the best time.  It was fun to see friends while getting to enjoy the lovely Fall weather.

Fletcher took his role as Buzz very seriously.

To infinity and beyond!!

We loaded up in a golf cart and trick-or-treated all around the golf course.  It got dark fast so I was glad Kevin was really familiar with the cart paths.

Fletcher's science class was pumpkin themed this week.  We made fizzy pumpkins, played with pumpkin play-doh, scooped seeds out of pumpkins and got to catapult pumpkin chunks.  He was in heaven.  He also had a lot of fun hammering golf tees into the pumpkin.

At the end of class the kids have to share their favorite part or something they learned.  Fletcher was explaining what happened when he put two chunks of pumpkin in the catapult at the same time.

Happy Halloween!!