Friday Fav's

My fav's this Friday are many, but I will narrow down the list in the essence of time:

1) You have got to get one of these:

It is a heated mattress pad.  But not just heated, it has dual controls so when you are freezing, and your husband isn't, it works out perfectly!  I must be getting old, but seriously, it is COLD in Minnesota. I was talking about how we were going to try to keep the temperature in the house a little lower this year to cut down on our energy bills, and mentioned wanting to get one of these to my wonderful mother-in-law.  Just so happened, that she had one that she bought and didn't use, so lucky me! I am not sure how, but she also happened to have one that fit Miss Jane's bed, so we are loving it. W hasn't even turned his side on yet.  It does make getting up in the morning a little more difficult though :)

2) I have loved this song at church for so long and never knew who sang it.  It is a group called Hillsong United, and they are from Australia.  Love this song:

3)  The bounce dryer bar.  LOVE IT!  My mom used to use bounce sheets when I was younger.  When I started doing my own laundry, I switched to liquid fabric softener, because I hated worrying about whether or not I had one of those clingy bounce sheets stuck to the back of my leg when I walked into a party, or the office, or whatever.  Well, I received a sample of this bounce bar in the mail and I am hooked.  #1, no more awkward moments spent worrying about sheets being stuck to your pants, #2 no more blue spills on the washing machine, dryer, shelf, etc. from the liquid fabric softener, #3 The amount of smell is perfect.  Not too much, not too little.  Best of all, the kids have started doing their own laundry, and they don't even need to remember whether or not they added fabric softener!  It simply sticks up in the barrel of your dryer, and you can forget about it.  After a few months, the bar gets smaller like a bar of soap, and you simply replace it with another.  Did I mention that I love it?   Try it, you WILL like it.

Happy Halloween

After a few last minute costume changes and last minute pumpkin carving we managed to have a fun Halloween night.   Miss Jane couldn't decide on a costume.  We went to the Halloween store, to Target, we looked online.  She decided on Miss America. Pretty easy right?  Pretty Dress - Check.  Tiara - Check.  Sash - In progress.  When the temperature looked like it was only going to be in the 40's, that costume didn't seem all that inviting to her.  She decided on a Minnesota Viking instead.  Here she is with our neighbor:

And with her Trick Or Treating Partner:

B, on the other hand, knew what he wanted to be right away.  Of  course when he would tell people, many of them would look at him with a puzzled look, trying to figure out who it was.  Initially they would think it was a sports figure, which would make sense for a 9 year old boy.  But this is not any 9 year old boy.  This is the 9 year old boy who loves watching the weather channel.  Who is saving his money for a "tour" of the National Weather Service.  Who had to be the star of "Cantore Stories" for Halloween:

B as Jim Cantore

He was unwilling to shave his head, so we had to go with the bald cap.  Under the hat it doesn't look so bad:

I think part of the fascination with Jim Cantore is his remarkable resemblance to a certain favorite teacher of his:

Mr. D

Jim Cantore

Who knows?  Whatever the case may be, he was able to wear a warm jacket as part of his costume, so that was good thing.  And he had fun. 

Unless you stopped by our house between 3 pm on Halloween and 7 am the next day, you would not have known that we had pumpkins.  We were gone pretty much all weekend, and so when my friend (who also didn't have her pumpkins) called me at about 2 PM on Halloween and said there were no more pumpkins to be found around town, and she discovered some at a grocery store on her way home from work, and did I want her to pick me up a couple...I jumped on the opportunity.  Boy, nice run-on sentence, sorry.  So we rapidly carved our pumpkins when the kids got home from school, just in time to plop them on the front steps before the first Trick or Treaters arrived.  My friends' son did not want to carve his, so Gwen and I did our handiwork on one instead:

And then there is B's pumpkin that he carved all on his own:

And of course Miss Jane's smiley pumpkin:

And finally, the teenage boy's pumpkin in honor of his favorite movie, "Braveheart" and Mel Gibson:

See the resemblance?