Happy Monday

 

What a busy weekend for us! Mike and I were non stop the whole time. Friday we went to see our friend’s band The Speedbumps play. They teamed up with the Canton Symphony Orchestra and it was the most amazing show ever. They have an upright base and cello in the band so it was the perfect mix to hear them with a full string orchestra. It was such a blast and Mike got to reconnect with some old friends from high school.

Saturday was our trick or treat. We got together with some of our neighbors and had a three house collaboration with three bowls of candy. As one little girl put it “This is the best house ever!” We had so much fun swapping stories about some of the crazier neighbors on our street. It was a pretty chilly so we didn’t get as big of a turn out as we normally do. It was the first year we’ve ever had leftover candy.

Our adorable neighbor’s kids :)

Sunday we made a two hour drive to Ikea. Ever since we got back from our trip to Portland we have desperately wanted a new mattress. We had been thinking we needed a new one and after sleeping on the hotel bed, we knew we needed to buy one pronto. We also have been wanting to replace out couch so we figured a trip to Ikea was in order. We’ve never been before so we had a fun time walking around. It’s a pretty cool store and the prices are very reasonable. We were pretty restrained though and only bought what we came there for.

Our new couch in pieces.

And completed.

Now that the new couch is in place I feel like we need to do a little rearranging and updating of our accessories. We also had a fabulous sleep on out new mattress. I actually felt refreshed when I woke up this morning instead of achy and stiff.

After our Ikea trip we took my dad out to dinner for his birthday at a local Thai/Chinese place. It was definitely a busy day for us.

 

This upcoming week is going to be interesting with Sandy hitting. We live in Ohio and we are supposed to have tons of rain and crazy winds from it. I really wasn’t aware that the storm would be affecting us that much until we watched the news last night and they talked about nothing else but the storm. I have to say I’m glad I don’t live in New York City right now because are supposed to be getting hit pretty bad. My sister and uncle live down in DC so I’m hoping they won’t get the worst of it. It’s pretty crazy to watch the radar and see the size of the “Frankenstorm.”  If you are anywhere is the path of the storm I hope you stay safe!

Crochet Baby Turban Hat

I found the most adorable hat pattern at This Mama Makes Stuff. I knew I had to make it. My friend has a nine month old daughter who I thought would be a perfect recipient of this hat.
Since the pattern is written for a newborn I had to make a couple of modifications to make it a little larger. I added an extra row of increases and two extra rows to the length. I actually could have only added one extra row because it was a little long in the back. What’s great about this pattern is that it is cinched in the front so it still fit.
I also used DK weight yarn so I used an H hook to make the stitches a little bigger to accommodate for the thinner yarn.
I love love love this pattern! I really want to make one for myself next. It would be really easy to make the hat larger for an adult sized head.
Having a baby mini photo shoot in the evening when it’s getting dark is pretty challenging. Especially when it’s a bouncy nine month old :)

Playing with picture effects :P

I may be linking up to these parties:

Jewelry Making With a Kit

Prima Bead contacted me recently to review one of the products from their website. They are a newer jewelry making supply website that’s parent company is Cousin. I received this Jewelry Class in a Box with the supplies in it to make three necklaces and three pairs of earrings.

The contents contains everything you need to make the jewelry but I also ended up using a second pair of pliers. There is a book that gives you simple instructions on how to make each piece. I especially liked the piece of foam that helps to prevent the jewelry pieces from sliding around.

I found the projects to be fairly simple for the moderate beginner that I am. It was fun to make the jewelry without having to think of how to design a piece and which supplies I needed. There was a lot of loop making involved in these pieces that I might not have tried on my own. I feel like it really helped me to get the hang of bending the wire. I made all six pieces over the course of the weekend and it took me around a few hours total for everything.
I would definitely buy another ones of these kits. This one would not have been my first choice in design but there are lots of other really cute ones on the site. Prima Bead also offers free USA shipping (yeah!) and volume discounts. There are tons of other jewelry making supplies on the site and the prices seem very reasonable.
I’m excited about my new jewelry creations and it gives me the bug to make some more.

This one was my favorite. I love how it looks with my mustard cardigan.

Prima Bead provided the supplies for this project. All opinions in this post are 100% mine.

Our Trip to Portland Part II

 

I mentioned the other day that Mike and I just got pack from a trip to Portland Oregon. The best part of our trip was walking through the forest that is inside the city and going to the International Rose Test Garden and Japanese Garden. We hoofed it on day that rained the entire time but we were prepared with our rain gear and it was still amazing. The scenery was breathtaking.

This is part of the path we used when we walked out of the city and up the hill to the gardens.

The rose garden made me giddy. I love gardening and could have just lived in that rose garden for the rest of my life. There were so many different kinds of roses, I had no idea there were so many varieties. It seemed like each one more more beautiful than the last. There were orange, yellow, pink, red, purple, two tone and more. I’ve never seen a purple rose before and I was way too excited about it. We lucked out too that there hadn’t been any frost in the area yet so the roses were still blooming.

This is an awesome shot of the downtown peeking through the trees. There were tons of evergreens so it was still so green out there especially compared to Ohio where it’s fall colors everywhere.

The Japanese gardens were so serene. Supposedly it’s the largest Japanese Gardens outside of Japan. There were tons of beautiful water features. I wish I could pick one of them up and stick in in my back yard.

Mike did an awesome job with these pictures. We had an amazing time discovering Portland and hopefully we will get to go back some day. I would have loved to make it out to the mountains and the coast so we still have lots we could discover on a future trip.