Life With Ida : 13 Months

What a big month! Baby girl is a walking machine.  Ida doesn't always feel confident enough to walk when I put her down, but she practices every chance she gets. She loves when we chant "Go Ida!" when she is walking and will usually stop to dance a little bit when we're cheering her on.

Ida had her first sleepover this month and is sleeping almost all the way through the night most nights. We're going to transition her into her bedroom soon. As excited as I am to get my own bed back, I'll miss her cuddles in the middle of the night. What I won't miss is when I go to the bathroom at night or wake up early for work, Ida wakes up and follows me. When she crawls after me, she reminds me of the girl from The Ring and scares the crap out of me every single time.

Ida has all four of her front teeth growing in. They're all crooked and cute and remind me exactly like Cora's teeth when they grew in. Ida reminds me more and more of Cora. When I look back at pictures of Cora, I'm just seeing pictures of a bald Ida. I know they may resemble each other, but they're personalities are so completely different.

Baby girl is curious and is always trying to get into something. We never needed to baby proof our old place, so this is a whole new territory. She's always looking into our bathroom cabinet, clothing drawer, and pretty much anything she can get her hands on. Ida loves to push her sister's buttons by taking away some of her toys or teasing her with them.

The first year of her life, Ida spent most of her time being quiet and observing, but now it feels like she's really pushing her way through. She joins in screaming and rough housing. We went to the park the other day and she walked around playing with Cora and exploring the different playground features.

I'm so exciting for the upcoming holidays and to watch as Ida really experiences them for the first time this year. I can already picture her making her "oooooh" face at all of the holiday lights.

DIY Pumpkin Patch

This tutorial is so easy and barely even needs a step-by-step, but I wanted to share a couple of tips I've discovered along the way. This post contains affiliate links which cost you nothing, but I earn a small commission from purchases through them.  Thank you for your support of my little blog!

Two years ago, I made this cardboard pumpkin patch for a Trunk Or Treat event at Cora's school. It was so easy to make and I loved the impact that it made. I was blessed with an abundance of cardboard boxes through work and was able to make these from start to finish in an hour with a little help from Ben.

This year, I dreamed of making a wood version of this for our front garden. I knew it would be a little more labor intensive than the throwaway cardboard ones, but I loved that we'd be able to use them for years to come. I'm more into the autumn decorations than the Halloween-themed decorations, so this is perfect.

SUPPLIES:

+ Plywood (I used OSB for mine because it's what I had on hand, but I would recommend plywood)

+ Craft paint (I'm not really brand loyal with this. I usually pick up whatever is cheapest at Michaels)

+ Foam brushes
+ Clear coat (I used this, but this spray paint is also a great option I use for other projects)
+ Sand paper
+ Jigsaw (I have this one and I love it so far)
+ Drill and screws

1 .  Draw a rough outline of pumpkins and use jigsaw to cut them out. Sidenote: I just got my jigsaw and loved ThriftDiving's tutorial on how to use it. 

2 .  Sand edges

3 . Paint. I like to squirt a couple different colors and lots of orange straight on the pumpkin. The different colors give it a little dimension without spending a bunch of time on it. I used orange and white for the cardboard ones and orange, dark red, and light pink for the wooden ones. I think it would also look good with a little yellow or even brown. You can paint the stem brown or leave it brown of the wood/carboard/whatever you're making the pumpkins out of.

4 .  Paint black around the edges black and draw in lines.

5 .  Add a stake using screws.  I ripped some salvaged pallets into skinnier pieces to create a small stake, but any skinny piece of wood should work. I attach them about halfway up the pumpkin. One screw in the middle and one near the bottom.

6 .  Clear coat.

7 .  Display!

This weekend I'm planning on clearing out our front garden and setting all of the pumpkins up for the rest of the month.  Where would you put your own little pumpkin patch?

House Exterior : Taking Off the Awnings

We've been working hard lately to make the exterior of the house a little bit more attractive. See where we left off here. We got some loppers and cut down hella weeds from the front 'garden' and did my best to clear out what I could.  Ben has been slowly taking off some of the extra stuff on the house that isn't our style. He took off the screened in porch in one evening then the porch awnings and side door awning the next day.

It is surprising to me to see how much more open this seems so far.  I walk out onto the porch and it feels so much brighter and airier without all of the extra stuff blocking the view. Now that it's cleaned up a little bit, it's much more inviting to hang out there.

Our previous house numbers were covered up by the ridiculous amount of weeds and we knew we wanted to replace it at some point anyways. I knew I wanted to do something on the house and somehow incorporate wood. I checked out my salvaged wood stash and found the perfect piece. I oiled it a little bit and it looked so much better already. I measured and taped off some rectangles for the numbers. In hindsight, I should have accounted for the spacing of the numbers, but I would love to go over it another time with white paint to try to correct the spacing issue.

We still need to take off the remaining awnings, but progress is progress!

TO DO:
+ remove the remaining awnings

+ replace the mailbox

+ repaint the porch/steps

+ rescreen all of the screens

+ more defined garden beds in the front 

+ Down the road, we'd love to paint the house and get the steps, path, and driveway/retainer wall redone