My baby's Birthday...

My Baby has turned 3......

I just cannot believe how fast the past three years have flown by for us.

There are times I wish I could just hit rewind!

He was a a sweet blessing to our family 3 years ago, He is a peanut now, but don't let him fool you, he started out life as an almost 10 pounder! We round up a few ounces, since he was so close...

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I am so grateful he is healthy and growing into a little boy. This child tells me he loves me 10 times a day, will wrap his arms around me at the drop of a hat and if you ask him, he will tell you he is Momma's baby. I know that will always be true but I also know that his displays of affection will probably not last as long as I hope it will, so I want to remember every bit of him being this way. Because I know someday the urge to rewind will be even stronger....

He asked for a monster truck cake. This was the best I could do on an hours notice! I thought we were going to be putting the little monster trucks ontop of the cake. Nope, he wanted it to BE a monster truck. So, with knife in hand, off I went. Cake a flyin' every which way!

Here is what I came up with.....it looks more like an old pickup, but he was pleased as punch and that is all that really matters. He ate one of the tires and upon putting the first bite into his mouth he exclaimed he now had a flat tire! Ha! Pretty good for a 3 year old, his lips were black for hours!

We had a houseful for family birthday night,

he was all cozy in new birthday jammies,

they were covered in cake before the night was over....boys!

Racing his new cars around the kitchen with his daddy and uncles...
they are all like little boys when all together, playin' with all of those toys, lol.

He climbed into my bed for storytime, since his room is undergoing some big boy changes right now. He soon fell asleep with his new truck from his pop-pop and grammie! I had to snap a few pictures to show them!

When I moved him into his own room that baby woke up for a few seconds, grabbed that truck in his clutches and carried it all the way to his bedroom half asleep!

He woke up the next day for his real birthday and a gift from us.....

He has wanted this for sometime and was so excited when he opened it,

he kept saying thank you and how he loves it.

You have got to love Fisher Price.....he still hasn't stopped playing with it.

And here we are hours later still playing.......

anything that can occupy a 3 year old this long is good!

Happy Birthday my sweet boy,

I love you so much!

Autumn's Grace......Part one.....

Well September has arrived and summer has been quietly wisked away. My children started back to school this week and all is now quiet in the farmhouse. It is a bittersweet quiet. I miss them when they are gone but I can get so much more done in a day. I do still have my little man here at home with me though, and he keeps me quite busy!

I am so happy that I still have him here with me, he is such a blessing!

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I had my husband take out the boxes of fall decor from our barn last week....oh boy does he hate that chore! I go a little overboard with the decorating from now until chirstmas but I absolutely love it. We host a halloween party, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner at my home and I love making it totally festive for the seasons. I have collected my decorations for a long time and use them in different ways each year. I have to say that no matter how big or little you decorate for the season the simple fact that you rejoice in the changing seasons, you are showing your family your love....and that is beautiful.

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I have only completed my living room and entryway so far and I plan to post everything in parts, it makes it more fun than rushing to get it all out at one time! I like to take my time and allow my home to gracefully change seasons exactly the way mother nature allows our world to gracefully change over......

When you enter through my front door, just past the pumpkin filled porch of my home, you are greeted with.....an autumn sign and festive wreath, the pumpkin spice candle burns in the early evenings encompassing you with cozy smells of the season upon your entry.

Down the center hall you come to the living room, the everyday tones of this room have already set the stage for an autumnal atmosphere, the warm yellow walls, red sofa, and sage greens all somehow blend in.

A wreath, instead of being hung on the wall, is laid on the table and an antique bowl popped into the middle creates a base for a candle holder....

Those peely and chippy panels in the back of my bookshelves are the real deal...I picked up a set of them at an antique store years ago to give my bookshelves more personality. I like the textured backdrop they provide for my collectibles.

I hope that you are feeling comfortable here now...have a seat and look around, here is my favorite well worn chair. A make shift end table made from an old peely chippy (love that) crate lifts an old picnic basket up to exactly the right height for me to place a warm cup of tea, a quilt right at hand for snugglin in the colder weather drapes across the chair. This room has a woodstove that when fired up in winter warms this room just right, it is in the process of being painted right now for the coming cold months so I will show that when there is a roaring fire going in it.

On that table beside the favorite chair is a pile of old books.....love the 1931 diary, an interesting read picked up in an antique store. I am amazed at how simple their lives were then and the things they held dear were simple and pure. The color is what attracted me though, they are tied in a pile to keep them safe from my young son's hands and artwork!

A simple pumpkin colored spice candle picked up at a chain store is placed upon my toileware dinnerware, I like the simplicity of this and it will be changed out for a green candle at christmas time. It cost me $2, and the plate would just be sitting inside my china cabinet all the year through anyway......a simple, inexpensive touch for the season.

Although this room is used primarly for reading and quiet time, we do still have a television in here that my husband and I occassionally watch, when our children are occupying the family room with games or friends. I decorated the top of my entertainment cabinet with some seasonal accents too.









The picture is of my husband with our two daughters. Our middle child then the baby inside a back pack, they are standing in the middle of a pumpkin patch. Placing your seasonal memories in frames is a great and inexpensive way to decorate your home, I change them out for the seasons too. They were so little then....sweet memories!

A simple autumnal colored bowl from your kitchen can inexpensively be filled with real acorns, and things from around your yard or nearby park or you can pick up some faux mini pumpkins from the local craft store for $1 a bag as I have done here.

I patched together some autumn colored fabric squares....this can be made with scrap fabric or old clothing. It is just a basic straight stitch, I hope to finish it into a mini quilt it one of these days.

Another seasonl figurine under my cloche has been changed out for the season....my favorite decoration right now, the small children praying over their harvest, reminding us to be ever thankful for all that we receive. I covered those paper mache boxes in some calico to raise up the cloche and display the piece, giving it a little more importance.

I like to decorate in different scales in my home, raising and lowering things to grab your attention and surrounding it with different textures, the soft fabric, the rough cornstalk, shiny glass gives displays interest.

That completes part one of my autumn tour.......here is a peek at part two coming next week, a small hutch in the corner of our front parlor. I will have the front porch, kitchen, dining room and family room posted soon as well.

~I hope you have enjoyed my first tour .....Be back soon!~

Take Care,

Dee

May God Bless America...9/11

~~I pray the families that have suffered so greatly from our nations tragedies have peace and contentment. May all Americans pray for our country and it's people in this struggling world. There has never been a better time to do so.~~~

The reveal.......

Autumn Joy Sedum has finally made its appearance and announced the arrival of autumn at the farmhouse.

The bees are getting ready for winter too....

I have to say~my oh my girls! 106 comments and many of them quadrupled because you kindly posted the give away on your blogs. I am so happy that so many of you liked this sign. I love it too, it is very simple and can really go with any type of decor.

I enjoyed reading everyone's comments, all the descriptions of fall really got me into the mood. The new blogs I have found through this giveaway were also so exciting and I can't wait to have sometime to go back and look at all of the new blogs.

Some of my favorite things about the fall season are:

--I was born in the autumn of October so it is only natural this is my favorite season.

--The warm colors of autumn, pumpkins overflowing on my front porch, corn stalks, the jewel colored mounds of mums.

--We light a fire in our outdoor firepit, and gather round for smores and cocoa. Later in the season the wood stove and fireplace be lit when the evenings are a little chillier and we will all snuggle up with a good movie.

--I love the comfort foods of autum, my great aunt Anna's round pumpkin bread recipe, homemade caramel dip, baked apples, spice cake, chicken and dumplings, mulled cider.

--Putting the quilted throws out on the furniture for snuggling. Adding the down comforters to our beds and snuggly flannel sheets

--Sweaters and jeans, out with the jean jackets and boots.

--All the fall festivals we have in our neck of the woods, The Decoy Show, Fall Antique Sale, the Cranberry Festival, Country Living festival, and the Pinelands Jamboree all so much fun!

--Hay rides, mazes, apple and pumpkin picking with my family.

--Carving our jackolantern, and making our costumes.

--Thanksgiving, we host at our home with my in-laws.

--The scents of the season, baked apples, cinnamon, spices....mmmmmm.

We are getting our harvest decorating underway at the farmhouse now, my husband dragged out the 10 totes (he wasn't happy bout' that) full of autumn decor from the barn on Saturday and my plan is to have it all up by the first of September.....I will be sharing some photos hopefully by next week. School starts on the 8th for my children so I may have some time before then. We are enjoying our last few days at the lake this week. Summer certainly went by too quickly but

I am now happy to welcome fall thanks to everyone's inspiring comments!

With all of that said, I want to announce the winner,

but first, I want to explain to you all how I had to do this. Since I said that I would quadruple anyone's chances if they posted about it the giveaway on their blog (and so many of you did) we jumped from 106 comments to 182 entries.

I am a libra and if you know anything about us libra's it is that we are fair. Everything has to be balanced...EVERYTHING or it drives me crazy. It drives my family nuts but they get me. I kept a list of anyone who added it on their blog and gave them 3 more chances added onto the end of the comments in the order they entered.

I then used a random number generator to select one number between 1-182...these things are really neat considering the alternative (writing down ea. persons name and pulling it out of a bowl). Anyhoooo, the number that was pulled from my list was and what does that mean? It means that comment #24, Erica, from Simply Country Chic is the winner of my HARVEST giveaway!

Congratulations to you, I hope that you enjoy your win. Here are the goodies coming to you.......

I so wish that I could give all of you who took the time to comment on this giveaway each a sign, but I am not independently wealthy, well I'm not any kind of wealthy! I have instead decided to take 15% off the price of this sign for anyone who left a comment for this giveaway until September 22nd. So, if you are still interested in it you can head over there in a day or two to pick one up.

Happy autumn to you all!

Let the fall festivities begin!

Technical Difficulties.....

Yes girls, I am having some technical difficulties as you can see. Nice blog right? All my cute pictures replaced with an ugly lil' bandwith message.....ARRRRGGGHHH!

I opened my blog to do a post this morning and gasped...what! Who took my pictures, what in the world is going on here? Ummmmm.....hellllooooo, lil help please? This is a learning process for me and being as naive as I was I actually thought that by sharing the link for the giveaway it was perfectly acceptable! Well turns out that I am limited on the number of views that I can have on my account (in my own non-technical terms), and my account exceeded that limit....by a lot, well a real lot.

To make a long story short it turns out that there was 8,000 + views on that giveaway....???? Yup thats what they told me. Who'd a thought! There was a grand total of 182 entries in the giveaway due to all the wonderful bloggers who posted about my giveaway on their blog. Thanks gals :o)!

My photo account will reset after the 4th and everything will restore back to normal.......in spite of the alternative methods of fixing my account immediately I have decided to patiently wait it out until then.

Of course this HAD to happen on the day I was ready to announce the giveaway winner, yes, by the way, I do have a winner picked by a random number generator. Hang in there until Friday because I will be announcing the winner on the 4th, I want to show everyone just what is included in that giveaway and I won't be able to do that until my account is back to normal....arrrgh! So please check back then! Sorry for the technical difficulties!