Octoberfest!

We have had so much fun this month with Garred deer hunting, celebrating our 6 yr anniversary (love ya hun!) and halloweening it up! The girls and I went down with Garred to Salina for the last days of the deer hunt so he wasn't by himself. We had fun and got to spend time with Great Grandma Sheppard which is always a bonus. Hailey played deer hunting for a couple of weeks after we got home :) I took the girls to Gardner Village with my folks to see the witches, Hailey loved it and Ellie didn't. Afterwards we went to a pumpkin patch and picked pumpkins and took pictures on a tractor, it was so fun we will be doing that again. We decorated a gingerbread haunted house. Ellie kept attacking the house so we had to throw it away right after we were done. We carved pumpkins..Ellie loved trying to eat them..this girl eats everything if you couldn't tell. We went to a trunk or treat at Contacts and with our neighborhood. Everyone loved Hailey and Ellie's costumes. They were Little Bo Peep and her lost lamb. I made the costumes and was quite surprised at how well they turned out. Everyone thought my mom made them so I take that as a huge compliment since my mom is a great seamstress. Here are our pictures for this month:

Hailey's 3rd Birthday

I can't believe that it has already been 3 years since I had Hailey. She is a funny little girl and everyday I laugh because of her. I'm so grateful and thankful to have her in our family. I have been trying to become a good baker and I love to make big cool things (thanks food network). I have been asking Hailey since the beginning of the year what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday so I could find a cool one online and copy it....well she wanted a dinosaur cake. I was super excited to make that plus I was super excited it wasn't anything girly. I found this cool 3D cake and made it (I was quite impressed that it turned out as good as it did..even if the head fell off twice). We had a dinosaur party for her, we played pin the hold on the triceratops and had a t-rex pinata. Hailey, her cousins and friends had so much fun! On her birthday Garred and I took her to the dinosaur museum and then to dinner at Pizza Factory..it was fun and she had a blast seeing all the dinosaurs.

Projects, Canning and Cuteness

I have been itching for a change with our furniture, watching too much HGTV and looking at peoples blogs I have decided to refinish some of my furniture pieces. I'm starting small...I refinished our coffee table (before and after picture below) and I eventually want to refinish our kitchen cabinets. I got this cool desk chair at yard sale and I'm planning on reupholstering it and putting it in our office. I love the green leather on the back of the chair, but that wouldn't look too good in our office so I might have to change that part too.


My mom came over and taught me how to can green beans, pears and peaches...I also canned some salsa too! Hailey had a fun time snapping the beans. I wish I would have taken a picture of all the canning because they all looks so nice in their bottles :)


So I have these two pictures that I just love, 1st: never in a million years would I ever say that Garred wears big pants, NEVER, but when Hailey wears some of his basketball shorts they look huge! 2nd: Ellie has some of the curliest hair when she gets out of tub and I just love how happy she is in this picture.. so cute!

Annual Contacts Bash!

1-800 Contacts is one of the best companies to work for...the is were Garred and I met, I worked there for almost 5 years and Garred has been working there for the last 9 years. They are good to their employees, they give everyone an anniversary gift, they take everyone and their families to movies twice a year, they have a huge company party every summer (where they give out huge prizes-unfortunately we haven't won anything yet) and they have a cafeteria with excellent food for way cheap. This summer for their company party they did a party at Thanksgiving point. The day started out crappy with a down pour, but it cleared up and the girls got to have so much fun playing on the inflatable slides. I didn't get too many pictures of the party, but here are some :)

My Little Ballerina

Over the summer I decided to put Hailey in a dance class. The dance studio right by our house had a little 3 yr old class that did ballet, tap and tumbling so I figured hey I will be a cool mom for once and get Hailey doing something then just hanging out at home watching TV while I work...well she loved it! She loved her teachers, she loved the girls in the class and she loved wearing her leotard. Here are pictures from her different classes.

Free Boat!!

Garred and I have been lucky enough to receive two boats for free! We got our first boat when we were first married and living in our apartment in Sandy. The lady I use to visit teach said we could have her boat..it was a big boat and could have been an awesome boat, but after getting the boat and letting it sit in my folks circle for over a month we decided we just needed to get rid of it since it needed a lot of TLC and we couldn't afford it then, so we took it to the dump. Now our current free boat is a beauty..she is a 1958 (or 1957) Glass Magic. A lady in our neighborhood was trying to sell some of her dad's things and she had the boat listed as one of the items. Garred was joking around with her saying that if her dad needed someone to just haul it away for him for free he would do it..about a month later I get a call saying that if we still want to haul it away we can have it. Garred was so excited! I love the boat too because it is so retro with it's fins (Love them!!) The girls love playing in the boat and Hailey is so excited to take it out fishing. The boat needs some TLC too, but we have been able to do all of the repairs our self so far.. here are some pictures of the boat when we got it and after some repairs (We had to remove a piece of wood at the back (transom) of the boat, removed the seats and carpet and then had to remove the flooring since the wood below the fiberglass had rotted away (that was pretty gross)). We will keep everyone updated on the progress.. Garred is hoping to have the boat water ready by the spring :)

Snapshot of the Week!

When Garred and I were dating his roommates use to call him Mr. Sportsman or the Ultimate Sportsman and I always thought it was kind of funny, but now that we have been married for a while it's not that funny anymore. Reasons why: one of the two main topics always talked about around his brothers is hunting/fishing, Half of the shows set to record on our DVR is hunting shows, fall use to be my favorite season, but now that it's the hunting season I like it less and less each year and either Halloween/my birthday or our anniversary had to be moved because of a hunt.

One thing that has redeemed Garred from this is he entered a couple of pictures of the girls into a photo contests on a local hunting show called "Roughin' it Outdoors" and the girls won the snapshot of the week! I know I have dang cute girls, but I was so shocked when the pictures won. We had gone to Cascade Springs over Memorial Day weekend and stopped in Midway to fish a little on the Provo River and I took the pictures on my camera phone. The girls won us a two burner camping stove and a lantern (unfortunately we already had both of those, but heck we can have two of each!). Here is the link for the snapshot of the week: http://connect2utah.com/roughin-it-story?nxd_id=98785 and here are the pictures: