The Leaves are Falling...

It is Autumn!  And the leaves are falling.  So I guess we better rake them.

 
Last year due to us getting married and many, many feet of snow (unusual for Virginia), we didn't get around to raking leaves until March.  And then it took us until May to finish raking.  We have a decent sized yard, but more so we have pine needles that fall all year long along with a few Maple trees, a Sycamore Gum, and an Oak tree which drop beautiful, colorful leaves. 

So this year we had a little help...

Look at how much fun Elaina is having!  Thanks to everyone's help, we were able to rake our entire yard in an hour and a half!  That is amazing!  It would have taken Isaac and I three months.  We got 43 bags of leaves!  That's crazy.

There were still a few trees who haven't dropped their leaves yet.  Actually, as we were a few bags away from finishing the back yard, a gust of wind came along and blew some of the leaves off the trees, right onto our freshly raked yard.  Everyone exclaimed, "Noooo!"  So in  a couple weeks Isaac and I will rake another 20 bags or so to finish up when the last trees.  We usually get around 60 or so bags each season.  That is some kind of crazy!  But is was wonderful to have the help.  The rest of the leaves will be pretty easy because it shouldn't include so much of that pesky pine!

The missionaries had lots of fun!  We love the missionaries!

And of course after all of our hard work, we had to eat some chilli and gingerbread cookies.  It was supposed to be a chilly day so we thought it would be nice to eat chilli and have hot cocoa and cookies when we were finished raking, but it was a beautiful, warm day.  So much for the hot cocoa.  Maybe next time.  But the cookies were good.  And a couple of them baked together like something you would see at the circus.

Thanks everyone!

Homemade Marshmallows and Rice Crispy Treats

Many of you know corn and I do not get along.  And since America is built on corn, we have to look at every ingredient in everything we buy to make sure there is not any corn or corn by product in it.  Talk about a headache.  It takes forever to go grocery shopping.  We are getting better at it though and have been able to find many of the foods we love, without corn products.  Perhaps our waistlines would do better if we hadn't found a really good alternative to Nabisco's Oreos, but Back to Nature sure is good.

Anyway, I really love rice crispy treats, but marshmallows...well...pretty much all corn syrup.  So my dear husband decided we would make our own.  So we did.  And they turned out terrific! 

We have to get the rice crispies at Trader Joe's since the kind you can buy at a regular grocery store are made with corn syrup.  Oh I'm loving Trader Joe's.  All natural ingredients, and the prices are great!

I'm starting to think Isaac really doesn't like it when I take his photograph.  Or is it that I had to make sure I got the marshmallow he had all over his face.

As an aside...
We got new phones and I have been trying my hand at using the camera.  It's not bad.  I however...am not that good.  I usually cut off our faces and get just our eyes... or just our mouths.

 
They turned out delicious!

Picking Apples!

A few weeks ago we went apple picking with a few friends of ours.  I really enjoy Virginia because you can pick strawberries in the spring, apples and pumpkins in the fall, and get pretty good produce from the farms during the year.  Mmmm.  I love good produce.

Isaac and I really love Fuji and Jazz apples.  Deliciously crisp and sweet.  So we waited until late October when the Fujis were ready to be picked. Carter Mountain doesn't grow Jazz, so we picked lots of Fujis.  Last year when we went apple picking it was pretty chilly and foggy.  It made for some good photographs, but cold pickers.  This year was a lovely, warm fall day.  The weather has been unusually warm this year.  But we made a fun day of it anyway. 

Jessica, you are adorable!

 
So, as a photographer, I like to create nice images of people and places.  Isaac is very good at helping me achieve that.

Well, it looks like he had fun at least.

As we were walking through the groves of trees we saw this interesting site.  Wonder what happened to all the leaves.  At least the apples were still intact.

We had a wonderful time.  We picked about 20 pounds of apples.  Now its time to make lots of yummy applesauce.

Painting, painting, painting...

Okay.  So in the middle of August I decided I really wanted to paint the walls in our house.

 
I have lived in this house for 3 1/2 years and have wanted to paint the flat, off white walls since before I moved in, but just haven't had the time.  The walls picked up every bump and scuff from roommates moving in and out so the walls looked very beat up. 

Well, you would think we would decide to paint in the beginning of the summer.  It's not like Isaac didn't just have 3 months out of school and even though he was working and volunteering, we still had plenty of time to paint.  No, no.  I decide NOW is the time to paint, right as Isaac starts back to school.  No worries.  I will just do it while he is at school.  Ha!  It took me an entire week of painting ALL DAY to finish the living room, two bedrooms (which we use as offices), and the downstairs hall.  It was fun trying to cook dinner during this week.

Really painting the walls was not that bad.  But this house was built in 1981 and very much had a deep woods feel with all the dark wood trim.  Before I bought this house the kitchen cabinets and downstairs trim were painted white.  It definitely updated the home as well as brightened it up.  So I have been wanting to tackle the upstairs for quite some time.  Boy, was it a task.  But alas... here is our adventure.

The night before the first day of painting Isaac prepped the walls by filling in holes.

He's so helpful :)

So the first day I painted the ceiling and walls in the living room and the hall.
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We even found a great rug we love and finally decided on some green pillows!  The room definitely needed some accent colors.  We are still working on finding a few more :)

Then on day two I painted the walls in my office downstairs and Isaac's office upstairs.  Since it was Saturday and Isaac was home, he painted the ceilings in these two rooms.  It was nice having some help.
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Okay, so my office is still not finished being organized so I will have to take the after photograph later.  Hopefully I can actually accomplish that, one day :)

Isaac's office, hmm, how is it he ended up with the larger office...  I'm going to need to have a word with management.
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Wow!  The walls look nice.  But it sure looks like a mess in there...

So then it took a couple days for me to get to the trim up here, and it was a task.  We weren't able to move the bookshelves and desk very far away from the walls so maneuvering behind them while painting was interesting.  Let's just say, I had to repaint a few places from bumping into the walls.  It was also very messy having to move the drop cloth around the room to put it under the trim so I didn't get any on the carpet.  This carpet seriously need to be replaced, but that will be a later project.

I really like how these doors looked with primer.  They would be an awesome backdrop in my studio.
I really like this wall color in our offices. 
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Okay, so I still need to paint that little door to the air handler. ;-)

Then the next day I tackled the upstairs hall trim.  I knew we would be painting the hall and stairwell walls at some point but I wanted to get the trim done and out of the way.
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It really brightened up the upstairs by painting the doors and trim white.  Oh, now how I look forward to one day getting new carpet :)

So after all of this...I said to Isaac, "You let me know when you would like to paint and we will finish our room and the hall."  I was beat after all that painting.

Now that it is October, Isaac had a few days off from school for fall break.  So he says, "We should paint."  Okay buddy, you want to paint, let's do it.  So we tackled our bedroom and the stairway.  You really can't tell the difference in color in the stairway.  The paint is a better quality though so we shouldn't get scuffs all over it. 
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And now...My favorite room in the house!  I love this room because it is on the east side of the house and it is so bright and cheery in the morning when the sun comes up.  I love the morning!
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 Wow, look at that amazing taping!

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 We can't wait to figure out what to hang on the wall.

All done!  It is so nice to have all the painting finished.  It was fun and lots of hard work.  Stay tuned for our next project...in at least a year :)