Clint's Sr Pictures

This is my little brother's last year of high-school! I really can't believe how fast he has grown up. I remember way back when I was a senior and how I wanted my pictures done. I do believe we payed an arm and a leg for the sitting and then couldn't even afford prints. I saved money from my after school job to order the wallets. Oh course this is after my class seemed to be done handing out and trading their's.I just don't see the reason to have to pay so much! I dropped over $300 after it was all said done with Evie's 1 year pictures. 

I wanted to take some pictures of Clint, not only to save him some $$$, but because I enjoy taking pictures. As it got closer to when they visited I talked to Clint about ideas, he really liked the trail/ nature idea. I think they came out great! I had a lot of fun doing them and trying out new actions and editing them. Look at how grown up he has become.

31 Days of Halloween

Oh how I love Halloween! Back in September I decided Evie and I would be witches and wanted to give my place a witch theme for decor. I got a lot of fun stuff at the Dollar Tree and also made my own stuff. My Halloween decorations all cost less then $25. Evie was a great helper and loved looking at stuff after we got it up.

I held off as long as I could on putting things up, we ended up decorating the last week of September. The front yard had our grand spiders. I ended up finding 2 dresser drawers and using them to make coffins for some skeletons and we made wooden ghosts. Making the potion jars was my favorite. Actually I had almost given up doing some of them because I was running out of time. But the week before Halloween we were out on the trails and I found great stuff for the jars.
And talk about scary, I made un-dead fairies. I glued feathers on the backs of skeletons and hung them up. Evie's favorite was the spooks I made from black Christmas ornaments.

My parents made it up for trick or treating and we all had a blast. Evie just loves getting her candy! After the 1st few houses she got the hang of the game and wanted to pick her candy and put it in her bucket. I am sure she is looking forward to next Halloween and we better start planning now!

Mummies

Eye ball plants!

Dollar store spider and then I made her a web.

Mini spiders we made

A few of our harvested pumpkins.

So scary!

Spooks

Ghosts

So how's cloth diapers going?

Here it is mid November and I am getting closer to finally having some usable diapers done. What a long road! It took all of September to research and save money to get my supplies. October was a mess with Halloween on it's way and all the work I had to do to make money. 

At this moment as snowflakes are coming down, I have my inserts mostly assembled but need to be zig zagged and finished, I have 4 finished diapers but need their Velcro, 3 diapers waiting for their elastic cased and then my last 5 diapers waiting to be put together. 

All in all I had enough supplies for 12 diapers! This gives me a start and will give me a ballpark of how many she'll go through in a day. In the meantime of getting more pre-folds to make more diapers I will be using these with a mix of disposables.

How long does it take to make a diaper? Well after I have things pre-cut it takes 20 mins for me to put together 1 diaper to the needs to be cased stage. Casing them takes another 20 mins. All for 1 diaper, gosh. I found it easier to just make them in stages. Now try telling that to Evie while she is making messes for me to clean and wants me to play with her all day.

So that's my update for now. My goal is get these last 5 diapers to the casing stage, then case all the diapers (hopefully in the same week!). Then change my threads and finish up my inserts. All these guys still have to be washed at least 5 times to have max absorbency. Then getting to our velcro part. Then of course I have to get to the covers. I think I have done pretty great for being a single, working mom trying to get all this done!