Tree & Eggnog

One little Hughes family tradition is to wait to have our first eggnog of the season when we put up our tree. Yum.

O Christmas Tree!

We went to Johnson's Farm again this year, we just love that place. Nestled amongst the redwoods, it just has a really wonderful feel there. It was a gorgeous day to be there, and we took the tractor hayride up to the top of the hill where we got to roll small pumpkins down the hill and try to get them through a big tractor wheel, so fun. We found a perfect little tree, and he's made a nice addition to our living room. I always love to browse thru the little shop they have in their old barn. Teri (the owner of the farm and who is in my Bible study) has great taste for the things she has in the store, cool ornaments and home decorations, toys, etc. It was a fun day.

Carson was lovin' the goats!

If only the kids didn't look so blah and disinterested, we could have had a good Christmas card picture! I think they were nervous about the man taking the photo. :-)

Thanksgiving Week

My parents and brother came out to visit for the week of Thanksgiving, which has sort of become a tradition since we moved out here. It was a great week, but it went altogether too fast. The kids had such a great time playing with them, and I really enjoyed their company and help! Like usual, I don't pull out my camera enough, and for Thanksgiving day my camera was lost for a while, so no pictures of our delicious food and our family gathering....but here are a few pics from the week. Mom, Dad & Matt....I miss you like crazy!!! Thank you for coming out to visit us!

We took them to Gilroy Gardens for the last open day of the season. It was busier than I've ever seen it down there, so we didn't get to go on everything, but it was fun for the kids and to show them what it's like.

Uncle Matt

Can't wait till the next time we can be together again!

The Paint Job

So you remember this sneak peak photo from my last post?:

Here's the reveal:






We really like it. It's added some nice warmth to the room and makes us excited to find some other nooks we can paint!

Things we've been up to:

We have lots of white walls in our house. But painting them is hard because the walls in one room lead to another with no breaks and that leads downstairs, etc....there are not many good stopping points. But we have this little window nook in our living room that we decided to spice up a little bit. I loved it on the paint chip, but when it first went on, it kind of freaked me out. But Jason finished it up when I was gone at a birthday party for the afternoon, and when I came back, it was SO awesome, I love it. It really warms up the living room. I haven't taken any after shots yet, but when I do, I'll put them up.

My friend Bethany had made some really cute little creations out of rocks, acorns, dried up moss, and googly eyes. Hers were way cuter and much more "natural" looking, but the kids had fun painting the rocks and giving them some character....they make me smile. Googly eyes make anything funny.

Grandma Patti (Jason's mom) came to visit last week, and I didn't get any pictures of her.....Patti, you'll have to email me some if you can! Patti is a really great cook and she roasted some sugar pumpkins and we made pumpkin puree for some pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting, very delicious and so fun to use fresh pumpkin.

We went to the aquarium in Monterey, I just love that place. There's always something new to see each time, and there are so many amazingly crazy creatures out there. My favorite part is the Jellyfish.

We went to the beach on Saturday. It was perfect weather and I can still feel my sore muscles from playing frisbee for a long time. It was a great day! Gotta love Livi's get-up...the sunglasses that look like ski goggles, the crazy hair and the undies. :-)

Livi loves to take pictures....this is one she took of us the other night. She does pretty well!

Gingerbread Pumpkin Pancakes

I wanted to repost this recipe, because it makes for such a delicious autumn breakfast.

This is one of our favorite recipes. We got it from Trader Joe's on a day that they were sampling these and they are so good! They make a great breakfast, but they are also good if you make extras and put them in the fridge and then pop them in the toaster for a snack. It makes about 22ish thick, hearty pancakes, but you can easily halve the recipe. Enjoy!

Beat together 2/3 cup brown sugar and 4 eggs
Add 1 cup canned pumpkin
1 1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup butter, melted
Mix together.
Then add 3 cups flour
4 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. ginger
pinch salt
pinch nutmeg

Cook on your griddle and have a great breakfast!

Halloween 2008

Carson dressed up as Robin Hood this year, and Livi was a Super Baby (Dora's little sister). Livi was really excited to dress up, but wasn't very happy when we were out with our friends last night. She kept saying she was tired and cried a lot....so we didn't get very many good pictures of her outfit, but she had fun wearing her costume. Carson had a great time dressing up and trick-or-treating!

This was when we got home and Livi's "diaper" had been taken off and Carson's face is covered with all the chocolate he ate in the car on the way home. :-) It was a Happy Halloween and we always have fun being with our friends for this night.

The Box Bag

I found this box bag tutorial a long while back and was excited to have some time to make one for my mom's birthday. It was really easy once I worked out some of the kinks from the tutorial, and I definitely hope to make some more. I used some Peltex, heavy interfacing, to make it really sturdy. I think it would make a really great toiletry bag or for some yarn and needles for a take-along project bag. :-)

Usually at least a couple days out of the week, we try to do a quiet time in the afternoons when Carson is at school. Livi's pretty good about staying in her room and playing and sometimes she'll crawl up in her bed and go to sleep. Lately she's been wanting me to pull out the trundle bed so she can sleep halfway on that and halfway on her bed, silly, but it works. Last week, she was playing nicely for a while and then it was quiet so I went down to check on her, hoping she'd fallen asleep, and here's what I found:

She had taken out every piece of clothing from her dresser and strewn it about...

And then, here she was, in dreamland somewhere under these pink covers...

And even though she really didn't have fun cleaning it up, she decided to do it again during her next quiet time, after which I ordered some other consequences besides having to clean it up again and she didn't like those ideas, so she hasn't done it again....yet. And now we have newly sorted and organized drawers, which was probably much needed.

Pumpkins

We had fun getting pumpkins this year at the same patch we've always gone to. I love the location, how you can see the ocean down the hill and the colors of the orange pumpkins up against the tan hay, the bright blue sky, the green fields & blue ocean down below is so cool.

Fall Fun

A couple weeks ago we went to Gizdich Ranch for a birthday party and Carson had loads of fun in the apple orchards when he went exploring with Jason.