My Husband, the seamtress

I was working hard on updating my school's blog, when I looked up and saw my husband pulling out the black sheets. "What are you doing with those, Andrew?" "Making our Halloween costumes!" We have been having SUCH a struggle this year thinking of what we are going to be. We have a party on Friday and we need to be ready! Finally, Andrew decided that we are going as Ron Weasley and Hermoine Granger. Which I found to be fitting seeing how I have read four of the books this year, (I am currently finishing the last book! I love it.) and Andrew has red hair, like Ron, and a die hard Harry Potter fan. That is that. We are going as Ron and Hermoine. Now for the costume FOR FREE! Andrew had a brillant idea to turn our black sheets into robes. It turned out so well. I love him. He is just so cute. Here is how he made the robes....

First he measured himself to see where to cut.

Then he cut! This is actually him working on the second one. It was easier the second time because he just used the first one as a pattern!

Then he sewed away! Yes, my husband sews! Which I am grateful for! Someone has to make our kids some clothes!Here he walking away! LOVE it! We have ROBES!

PUMPKIN CARVING

We decided to use small pumpkins this year. They're cute

Margie used power tools to make an awesome design on her pumpkin.

She is the cutest. And her design is awesome!!

Andrew dove into the heart of Halloween and made a vampire skull. He is so amazing he designed it all himself.

Here he is working hard.

He is the cutest and his pumpkin is scary.

Here are our cute and scary pumpkins all lit up and ready for action. Halloween here we come!

CHICAGO

Andrew charter a chapter of an International Society on campus at BYU-I called CEO(Collegiate Entrepreneurs' Organization) and they had a global conference in Chicago this past weekend.

This is the view out of Andrew's hotel room.

There were over 1000 people from over 45 countries and 150 schools there. It was a great conference and we heard and rubbed shoulders with great entrepreneurs from around the world.

Andrew went to the top of the Willis Tower (Formerly the Sears Tower) and the view from the 103rd story was amazing.

In the tower they have these glass rooms that hang over the edge looking straight down the 103 stories with nothing between you and the ground but an inch of plexi-glass.

This was a fantastic trip for Andrew. He was able to do a lot of networking and learned new ways to make the society on campus bigger and better!

WINDOW WHITEBOARD PROJECT

Andrew needed a new basement window to replace one in our basement. We scored big time when our next door neighbors added an addition on to their house and had two basement windows they were going to throw away. Andrew asked if he could take them and they said yes!! That means we saved $80 on a window. Not only that we were given two windows allowing us the chance to do a great craft project & it was a free project!!

Here's the original

Andrew added cool latches he took off the other window.

We then put cool cloth on the back. (We actually traded out for a cooler piece)

This is the final product. We chose this cloth because it gives the feeling that you're looking out on the ocean. Easy and fun project.

REMEBER: Never turn down free doors and windows, especially if they are old and have character. They make the best craft projects!

OUR FIRST SNOW

We woke up this morning to a ton of snow. Welcome to Ashton Idaho. Poor Andrew had to navigate his way to school in a mini blizzard. It sure was pretty though.

GENERAL CONFERENCE WEEKEND

179th Semiannual General Conference, October 2009

This weekend was General Conference. We had a blast. Andrew's parents came up from Utah and his Grammy Faye came up as well. All the way from Mississippi. We had our semi-annual sweet potato pancakes with apple cider syrup. It is the best. All homemade. We had the Wilsons and the Schaurhamers over to enjoy the breakfast. If you haven't had Margie's conference breakfast you are missing out. Everyone is invited and we'll be having the next sweet potato pancake breakfast in April 2010. So RSVP and we'd love to have you!

We took them all for a drive up to Mesa Falls in between sessions.

In the lodge was a cute bear. Mom thought she'd dance with him a bit.

After the second session we took them on a "food tour" of Ashton, ID. We had a progressive dinner taking them to all of our favorite food joints here in town, starting at Big Juds. We had to get up on that huge one pound burger!!

Next stop was the Frostop. Best fries in the world and they have killer fry sauce.

This might be the most amazing Mexican restaurant in the world. The quesadilla's are to die for.

Last stop was 511 Main. Great pizza joint. The real good stuff is their potato salad. It's amazing!!

Grammy was so nice and bought Margie a Frostop mug. Unfortunately it fell through the bag and broke. Fortunately the Frostop rocks and they replaced it for free.

We had to make sure we played plenty of Settlers of Catan while everyone was here. Diana & Ethnie even stopped by. We also got Grammy going on the game!

Sunday in between sessions we made them an amazing Hawaiian BBQ. It was delicious.

Andrew broke out the Lincoln Logs and made his Mom happy. They had so much fun playing until Dad threw his shoe into the mix. Poor cabins.

Margie stole this idea from her friend Daciana it's a new and fun way to take notes during conference. She'll post this where she can see it to remember all that happened.

HOMEMADE BREAD & POTATO HARVEST

HOMEMADE BREAD

Margie has been off from school for two weeks for POTATO HARVEST. That's right we live in Idaho! She had a huge To-do list to accomplish during the break and one of the things was to make wheat bread for the very FIRST time! We have all these cans of wheat and have done nothing with them yet. Let the fun begin!

The first thing she did was GRIND up all the wheat. You have to put it through the grinder twice to get it to fine enough. But that didn't take too long. Then of course she just followed the recipe and when everything was said and done....this is what came of the baking...

A beautiful loaf of Homemade Wheat Bread! It tasted so good. Margie was extremely proud of herself. She is becoming so domestic!

But alas, it would not be a wonderful Margie experience without a wonderful story to go with it. She almost caught the whole house on fire. She had divided up the dough into the two different pans and put them both on the oven top to rise again before putting them in the oven to bake. Well, as she was cleaning the bathtub she heard the Smoke alarm go off and was quite concerned. She quickly ran out of the bathroom and looked on the stove and saw a bright red burner and a towel on fire....we are talking HUGE FLAMES!! She turned off the burner and ran to the flour, because that is what you are suppose to put fires out with in the kitchen right? By the time she came back she realized what a dumb idea that was...still the smoke alarm is beeping very loudly! She moved the bowl and towel over to the counter and did a maneuver of taking the non-burning side of the towel and bringing on top of the burning side of the towel. She smothered the fire. Hit the towel a couple of times and the fire was out! Whoo hoo...accomplishment! No worries, the bread was ok, too! And, to make it even more of a Margie story, after all was said and done and everyone and everything was safe, Margie thought...MAN I WISH I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN A PICTURE OF THAT FIRE! But there is no time for cameras when fire is involved!

POTATO HARVEST

Margie was going to be able to work Potato Harvest, but it didn't really work out. But she was still curious to what it was all about. So, Friday afternoon, Morgan and her mom took her out to the farm to see how it was all done. It was amazing!

This is a potato field. Where the magic all begins. They have three different trucks that are out on the fields. The first one is the digger...it goes through and digs up four to six rows of potatoes at a time. Then another truck comes by and picks up the potatoes and shoots it into another truck that will transport them to the cellar area. If there is not a truck to transport the potatoes near the truck who picks up the potatoes, nothing gets done. They have to wait for a truck to be there.

Once the truck that transports the potatoes is full they bring them to the cellar area. But the journey is not through yet. They first have to go through a long conveyor belt apparatus where there are workers (this is what Margie would have been doing) who sort through the potatoes. They pick out any bad ones, rocks, dirt, or anything else that should not be in the cellar. They were moving pretty fast and there were so MANY potatoes!!!!

There were also some pretty BIG potatoes.

This is Margie picking out her potatoes inside of a potato cellar. Look at that mountain! It is just so amazing that there were so many potatoes. And to make it even more amazing, these are all SEED POTATOES. They are just there to make more potatoes next year. But we eat them too! Good thing we LOVE POTATOES. What a fun learning experience!