Halloween a very favorite holiday

I love Halloween since the day I can remember. . . I guess my mom made me love it so with all the fun activities we would do, the creative costumes we always wore and of course the Halloween dinner was divine! Here are just a few things I LOVE. What do you love about Halloween?

1. Dressing up
2. Eating candy -- chocolate
3. Anything pumpkin-- carving pumpkins, pumpkin desserts, decorating pumpkins etc.
4. Telling ghost stories
5. Spooky Halloween dinner
6. Carmel apples
7. Carmel's
8. Trick or treatin oh wait im too old for that
9. Halloween parties
10. The leaves start changing colors -- really missing that here in houston.

So here are a few Halloween crafts I did for my lack of Halloween decor. They are simple but cute.

1. I traced a bat pattern onto a piece of paper and then transferred to construction paper.

Vase pumpkin. Painted it orange. The top I used a paper plate punched a hole through it and put a stick and leaves I found outside. Glued construction paper for the face.

Crepe paper flower bouquet and wreath tutorial

Supplies: crepe paper, elmers glue, tape, black tape, hanger, cardboard

Flowers: Fold crepe paper like pic above. Then glue onto piece of wire from hanger (can be as long or short as you like it) Roll to make center of flower. showed in next photo. 

Gather the end of crepe paper at the bottom and make it bunch up.

Keep wrapping around don't make it too tight. You'll get the hang of it after a few tries.

Once you made it how big you want it tape the end to the wire. Tape the whole wire with black tape to hide the wire.

For the wreath:

bunch up on the bottom when desired size is met. 

Cut off the end and glue it to your piece of cardboard. Mine was kind of uneven but I wanted it that way. Simple but looks pretty. (sorry for the bad quality of photos)

Happy Halloween! Can't wait to see everyone's costumes and parties. 

My sister is doing a project party on her blog.. so share what you've done and grab her button so everyone else can be inspired. 

One Years Old and Family Photos

Calvin turned the big 1 yesterday and wow can I tell you how weird it felt... I can't believe that a year has already gone by and so much has happened in just one year.  A few weeks ago Calvin and I had some fun taking pictures in our backyard. He is quite the poser and i was eating up every moment of it. And i took so many and they all turned out so cute that I couldn't help but post them all -- i have way to hard of time choosing just a couple. 

I can't tell you how much I love this boy of mine. I'm bias but I just think I have the cutest boy in town. 

Calvin's year one embarked many fun adventures and new discoveries. 

Was born at momma's end of school battle

Had his first Christmas in Utah

Could lift his head up at 2 weeks

Hated being on his belly

Started sitting up at 5 months

First road trip to St. George

Gave kisses 4 months and still does

Lived in 3 different homes

started crawling 10 months

Moved to Texas

says and waves hi and bye

sings la la la

signs more/food

crawls up the stairs

His favorite toys are plastic spoon and his gas relief bottle or mini tub of toothpaste

loves to read, dance and eat

Favorite foods: any fruit, ice cream, grilled cheese, bread + jam, cooked carrots

Favorite book: llama llama

Loves to be with people especially mommy and daddy

I sure love my cute boy! It has been one eventful and fun year. can't wait for more memories with you.

We celebrated by getting him a red wagon and the best part is that it was free. We had dinner with some friends and ate some yummy apple cheesecake bars = Heavenly.. I'll have to post this on the cooking blog. 

I planned his party for this upcoming sat because his cousin (that lives here) has the same bday as him but sadly everyone but one family I invited couldn't make it to the party... how crazy is that. ha so we are just doing a dinner, cake and ice cream on Sunday to celebrate 

 Here are the Family Photos we took in the summer awhile back I said I would post them. well here they are.

We Are Now the Stephens Texans

Hello Everyone. Have you missed me? And Where has the time gone? Who is with me and thinks that summer went by way too quickly? Why does that have to happen, why can't the winter months go fast instead of the glorious summer days and nights? So where did I leave off, I don't even remember it's been so long.
To start off we had such a fun summer being close to both our families.  We were able to see and do a lot of fun activities together.  Daniel finished up teaching his Accounting course at BYU and had a great impact on his students and vice a versa. I was happy when he was finished because that meant more time spending with him.  Daniel also got in a lot of golf time this summer. The boys in his FAMILY played in a golf tournament and took 2ND!!! While they played golf, mom, Kelsi, dad and I helped our neighbors across the street put in their grass.

Calvin celebrated his 9 month BIRTHDAY this summer and is now 10 1/2 months old. With the amounts of photos seen below you probably can tell we just can't get enough of our cute boy. These smiles and giggles make each day brighter and more enjoyable.

I threw a friend party and everyone showed up with their lovely spouses. The only person missing was my dear friend Jessica who was serving in the Chile Santiago Mission at the time. I'm so happy for always having good friends I continue to have a good relationship with.  We have all been friends since middle school.

A trip to Logan. I think yes. We stayed with Nate (dan's older brother) and Kristie.  The kids adore Calvin which kept him very entertained. He would stare at them with such anticipation and then get so frustrated because he couldn't move to go play with them.  They were really great babysitters and would beg and plea for us to not move to Texas. While we visited, we went up to Henry Fork Lake. It is absolutely beautiful up there. It's a smaller lake but it's in the middle of gorgeous mountains. We canoed and swam. Calvin had a riot in the water like always. Dan and Nate took the kids out to teach them how to flip a canoe and then turned into Jack Sparrow and William Turner and walked under water.

 Boating Trip with the Hansen Family.
What a splendid time that was. I even finally got up on the wake board my first time ever!! Calvin even went tubbing, but apparently dad was going to slow because he fell asleep. we jumped in to swim around for awhile and Calvin loves water so much he was giggling the entire time and would scream if we wouldn't get him out there fast enough.

We got to see Wicked with Dan's family and it was AMAZING. I highly recommend Seeing it. Dan and Nate wore matching shirts to it.. they really are twins only not.

 Mom and I helped with the international folk dance team and took the India group to the Copper Mine. Mom had never been there and I hadn't been there since Elementary school.

 The new hair Do/slash my attempt to take a model shot and drive at the same time.

Went down to the Farm with Makana. My sister in law's husband has a cow farm and he gave us a tour. It was fascinating and we even got to pet the baby cows.

 I love the mountains. Everything about them I love. So for one last Hoorah before we left to Texas we went hiking to a very memorable spot... Cecret Lake. I have many fond memories up there and I was happy to spend it with the Fam. Dan even found a huge heart rock in the water.

Last but not Least we journeyed to Good Ole Houston Texas where Daniel got a job at an Accounting Firm called Deloitte. We are living in Mckay and Makana's old place and love it. We have felt so welcomed here by new neighbors and ward members.  We are so excited to be starting our new adventure here.  The drive wasn't too bad, we just to had to watch lots of movies, read, sewing projects and chit chat.

The other day we were painting and I asked Daniel a question and all of sudden it was really quiet and  I felt something cool and wet slip between my toes. I look down to behold Calvin dumping the paint bucket , luckily we grabbed him before he shoved the pain in his mouth. Both Daniel and I were laughing so hard which cause us to reflect how grateful we are. We could have gotten so upset and frustrated but instead laughed about it and life went on, we saved most of the paint and cleaned up just great. Plus we had a happy baby in the bath tub.

For Labor Day we went to the Beach with some new friends we made down here. Calvin got knocked down by a wave but instantly got up and started laughing.. he truly is a water baby. Later that night we got invited by ward member to there golf course to have a BBQ. Daniel was in heaven except for the fact he wished he knew he could have brought his golf clubs.. We are Truly Texans now.. got our license plates, drivers licenses and we've already gotten lost driving.