After Halloween Party

Well, it wasn't really a party, rather a re-dressing due to me forgetting to take their pictures on Saturday night. Taite went as a nerd and thoroughly enjoyed himself. Brayton went with the green Power Ranger costume (he is SO easy to please because we just pulled it out of the tote) and Taite's was just some clothes he grew out of, our camping "fun" glasses, a little white tape and a pretend pocket protector (I have NO idea where to actually get one!). They started at Grandma's house and already had a bucket full (she provided the "bucket). Then we made some extra stops this year which went okay. They still had PLENTY of candy and managed to get some non-candy items which is always nice!

The loot. . .

Brayton's classroom assignment was to count the pieces of candy they got Trick-or-Treating. I told him he should make a point of listing separately the mac-n-cheese, orange and other non-candy items, but the didn't want to, so he counted them just like the Snickers and Milk Duds.
:~)

Chris has been busy helping my dad in the fields trying to get the corn out now that things have dried up a little. Since we didn't get our front step re-done this summer, I thought we should at least paint it white so it looked a little better than the very weathered cedar that we didn't treat again this year (because we were going to redo it. . .). This is the only "before" picture I could find ~ I had planned on doing the painting myself this weekend, but Chris got started on it Friday night before I had a chance to take a real "before" picture.

So. . . what do you think??

We still need to figure out our plan for what we are going to do, but I definitely want more spindles in the front at least to the edge of the steps (I think it will look more "homey" and "inviting") and we also want to do some sort of fake brick or something on the bottom part of the columns. Oh well, we have all winter to figure it out, right?

Another project we are discussing for in the house is actually quite large. We need new flooring in the upstairs kitchen/dining/entry/living room/hallway. Since we are looking at that, we should do some painting too before redoing the floor. It's such a big project that we are going to get some bids on doing the painting. I'm not a fan of painting and my solution to not being able to perfect the ceiling line is to just paint the ceiling, but I'm not about to do that in this whole space! After we get the painting figured out and the holes spackled, we have to decide on flooring. The stuff we could afford when we built the house is just looking terrible. The carpet is stained and buckling in the hallway. The laminate floor was just plain crappy material so it's getting worse and we want the whole area to be the same, be it laminate, hardwood, etc. so going to the bathroom from any entry into the house would not mean walking on something that isn't easily cleaned. The only problem we are having is deciding on the type of flooring. Chris is nervous about doing laminate because there are still seams and "stuff" can get down in between those seams and we've already had to deal with warped boards and such with our current laminate. He's leaning towards hardwood flooring because after it's all sealed and such, it's like one piece. I'm liking the cork option because it's a little cushiony and will help deaden sound and with the boys' bedrooms downstairs, I think they would like the sound deadening quality. We'll see ~ at this point, we are still thinking about all the wall repairs that would have to be done before we could paint. hehe

Thursday night Taite was up and puked. So, he was home from school on Friday and Chris thought he had the same bug working through his system, but Bray and I are a-okay. Thursday night I was able to meet up with my friend Laurie again. That is always a good time! We share a lot of laughs and I feel so fortunate that Facebook works in some ways (in other ways, it just frustrates me, but that's a whole nother post!). . .