Mama & Noah Currently

Instead of doing monthly updates with all of Noah's stats, I decided to share some things that we are into each month.  You can check out November 2014, December 2014, January 2015, February 2015, March 2015, April 2015, May 2015, June 2015, July 2015, August 2015, and September 2015.

This is what we've been up to in October 2015...

Wearing

 plaid | real pants (instead of sweats)

Eating

Nutella | popcorn chicken

Loving

Fall! | dinosaurs

Watching

new Fall shows | Miles From Tomorrowland

Working on

Noah's 3rd year video | puzzles

What have you been up to this month???

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.... Blast Off! | Halloween Costume Party Link-up

In case you couldn't tell from the photo (and the title), Noah is going to be an astronaut for Halloween this year!  He's super excited about it and loves telling people, though I often have to translate for him ;)  Since actual Halloween can get rather hectic, we decided to dress him up this past weekend and do a little photo shoot :)  I also find it helpful to do a dry run and make sure we aren't missing anything.  While the costume is complete, we learned that Noah isn't a huge fan of the helmet.  Thankfully he still looks like an astronaut even without it on.  But I'm trying to convince him that astronauts have to wear their helmets in order to go up in their rocket ship!

^^^ 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... Blast Off!

^^^ I promise he's not mad... he's just very enthusiastic about his blast offs!

^^^ Even though he wasn't in love with his helmet, he did find it funny when I decided to wear it instead!

I will be back on Monday, November 2nd, to recap our Halloween.  But I wanted to let you all know that the Halloween Costume Party Link-up I'm hosting with Stephanie, Jess, Crystal, Jessica, Jennifer officially opens today!  So please scroll to the bottom and link up any of your Halloween costume and celebration posts with us.  And we have a new hashtag to use when posting Halloween pictures to social media.  We finally have a hashtag that hasn't been used before... #COSTUMEPTY15

And since we do so many crafts over here, I thought it was only fitting to do a rocket ship one this week!  

I found the idea on Pinterest and thought Noah would love doing it!  It involved rocket ships, scissors, glue, and stickers... what more could he want!  And I liked it because it involved practicing writing his name!  Simply cut a square of construction paper for each letter in your child's name.  Cut a triangle to be the top of the rocket ship.  Then let your child glue them to the piece of paper and then have them write their name on the rocket ship.  While Noah totally wrote his name all by himself for his preschool interview, he has yet to do it again... I'm still shocked he did it the first time!  So I helped him write the N, A, and H, and he wrote the O (I told him to draw a circle) all on his own.  He then got to decorate the paper with as many star stickers that he wanted :)  My husband says we should have added some jet fuel packs to the side, but I rather like the simplicity of it just the way it is ;)

I am also linking up with Elizabeth and Amanda again for their Countdown to Halloween :)

The Guy Behind the Blog - October Edition

In hopes to share some more random information about Chris, I'm back today for  The Guys Behind the Blog link-up.

1 // We’re headed into fall, which means cooler temps for most of us…are you a warm weather or cold weather kind of guy?      
I prefer warm weather.   I'd much rather wear shorts and a polo shirt instead of a winter jacket and heavy clothes.

2 // What's the best Halloween costume you've ever worn?    
My best Halloween costume was when I was little I dressed up as Dracula with the white fang teeth and the cape and the fake blood and makeup.

3 // What's your favorite Halloween candy?    
I'm a sucker for candy corn, but the original white, orange, and yellow ones.

4 // What are your favorite parts of fall (ex: football, the weather, Thanksgiving, etc)?     
I love watching football and throwing the ball around at either a tailgate party or in someone's backyard.

5 // How do you feel about pumpkin spice lattes? (As a joke question hahaha)  
M: Chris thought I added the joke part at the end lol.   
I've never had a latte or a pumpkin spiced latte.   I do like pumpkin flavored beer and pumpkin donuts though.

Pumpkin Painting Party | Halloween Pajama Party Link-up

This weekend we hosted a super mini Pumpkin Painting Party (say that three times fast)!  I guess since we had Noah's birthday party outside the house, I had the urge to host something at our house!  No worries though, because by no means was this even close to throwing a birthday party with 15 kids!

The weather here in NJ is pretty hit or miss in October, so I planned to do all the painting inside.  Good thing I did, because while it was absolutely beautiful and mild in the afternoon, it was rainy in the morning!  I double protected our table with a plastic orange table cloth and then put roll of kraft paper on top of that.  I taped it to the table cloth using some orange washi tape, but I was pretty disappointed in how often it came unstuck!  Any ideas for the next time???

Usually I use Crayola washable paint with Noah so I don't have to worry about messes.  But since we were painting pumpkins that I'd like to go outside, I decided to be brave and get real acrylic paint.  Thankfully, he's a pretty neat kid, and we have this smock for him!  I put out paint palettes for everyone to put their paint in as well as a jar full of different sized paint brushes.  I also had some paint pens and washi tape out on the table so everyone could get creative in how they wanted to decorate their pumpkin.  We picked 5 medium sized pumpkins at the farm a few weeks ago for everyone to decorate.  I also put out the mini pumpkins I used at Canadian Thanksgiving for table decoration and we ended up painting some of those as well!  

We also picked up one tall and large pumpkin to carve.  A few years ago (before Noah was born), Chris and I carved an "F" into our pumpkin.  We were silly and did it way too early in October, but we still loved the result and decided to do it again this year!  I simply printed out a very large F from my computer (using Word), cut it out, and taped it to the pumpkin.  Chris did the rest... cleaning out the pumpkin and carving it... he's the best!

Since we were having this Pumpkin Painting Party in the morning, we served a simple breakfast.  We picked up some fresh bagels, had some strawberries, watermelon, and cantaloupe, and I made some of my apple zucchini muffins.  We opted to eat before decorating, and I'm glad we did since the painting got a little messy!

For our painting party, we invited both sets of Noah's grandparents.  My parents weren't able to come since they were in Rhode Island for my nephew's birthday, but Chris' parents were able to come participate in the pumpkin fun!  While we are definitely not artistic people, we all had a lot of fun painting our pumpkins.  Chris decided to get fancy and made a Mets pumpkin... it's not every day they make it to the World Series!  Noah decided his pumpkin wasn't enough and would add his own touch to both mine and Nonna's pumpkins ;)  

^^^ I used a lot of washi tape... for my M, Noah's N, and to make lines on the mini pumpkins :)

Once we finished painting the pumpkins, then it was time to do some carving!  While Noah helped scoop some of the guts out, Chris really did the bulk of the work!  

While Chris carved, we moved onto dessert!  Chris' parents brought over some Halloween cupcakes from one of our favorite bakeries (Natale's).  I'm so glad we got our pictures before dessert since Noah got pretty messy... maybe even worse than with the paint ;)

Did you buy pumpkins this year?  Have you or will you be painting or carving them this year? 

And since I just love a good pajama party, I had to share these monster PJs as well as his bat PJs (again!).  I absolutely love dressing Noah in holiday pajamas (and t-shirts)!  Make sure to visit the lovely hosts and check out their cute pajama wearing kids!  

no longer online at Gap

bat pjs

I am also linking up with Elizabeth and Amanda for their Countdown to Halloween :)

Noah's 3rd Birthday Party

A party at Gymboree with his friends, pizza, cake, and all things construction... what more could a 3 year old boy want!?!  

On Saturday, we had Noah's 3rd birthday party at our local Gymboree.  We had his party a week early because I didn't want to get involved with Halloween weekend this year.  We did that last year, and while his party was a success, I just found there was too much activity (and sugar) for one weekend!  We also decided to have the party at a place rather than our house.  While there are many advantages to a home party, there's a lot of planning and stress that is involved.  I absolutely loved having it at Gymboree and how little I actually had to do!  

Things we did after booking (many months in advance... October is a popular month!) Gymboree:

1.  Send out invitations.  I know many of the parties we've been invited to have been using Evite.  While I have absolutely nothing against it (and use it often), I still love making a paper invitation to send out via snail mail.  

2.  Have our friend, Ken, make a birthday shirt for Noah.  We sent him a few ideas and he came up with this amazing digger shirt complete with Noah's name and age!  

3.  Order a cake.  I first went to a local specialty bakery and was shocked when they quoted me over $100 for a simple half sheet cake with a cookie crumble "3" on top!  We instead went to Shop Rite and had it made for around $30... and it was delicious!

4.  Order and drop off all the party decor.  While we did purchase quite a bit of "construction" themed decor from Party City (way cheaper than Amazon), I didn't have to do any of the actually decorating. A week before the party, I dropped it all off and the amazing Toni Ann (Noah's teacher and party coordinator) took care of the rest :)

5.  Arrive 15 minutes early with the cake and favors and take some photos.  Then all we had to do was enjoy ourselves while Toni Ann handled the rest!  I highly doubt we will do another home party!

Speaking of the decorating... while the majority of the party was in the actual Gymboree play room, we had the "party room" for the last half hour of the party.  Just enough time to eat some pizza, sing happy birthday, and eat some cake.  I was very pleased with how Toni Ann decorated the space!  

Noah was able to play on the equipment while we waited for our guests to arrive.  Chris hung out with him while I waited in the front for the kids to come.  As they entered, I gave them a plastic hard hat and a construction vest.  Some of the kids didn't want to wear them, but that was fine... they still got to take them home :)

The kids then spent an hour playing and having fun!  Toni Ann had some "construction" pretend play planned as well as letting the kids explore and go down all the slides.  I think their favorite part was when she brought out the parachute!  Not only did she do bubbles (every kid's favorite!), but she also pretended to put them in a washing machine (move the parachute back and forth to make the kids topple over), and then the dryer (where they shook the parachute while the kids sat on top of it).  She also had them "push a (pretend) button" so the parachute would take them all the way up to the sky... or rather the adults would just bring the side of the parachute all the way up so they were "inside".  While it sounded simple enough to me, the kids LOVED it and asked to do again at least 10 times!

Then it was time for pizza and cake.  I don't know about you, but there's something about a bunch of toddlers (can I still call him that?) sitting around a table eating food like big people!  

Finally, it was time for the cake.  Shop Rite made the cake, but we added the trucks and the cone candles.  I absolutely loved how it turned out!  We sang Noah "Happy Birthday" and then dug in! 

 We even bought extra construction vehicle toys to give to the kids as part of their goody bags.  We also found "Where Do Diggers Sleep" on major deal and gave that to them as well.  I've decided I'd rather give a few practical things I know the kids will actually use instead of a whole bag of little things that the parents just want to throw right in the trash.  

Another year and another fantastic party!  I can't believe my little boy is going to be 3 in a few days!  Looking at this picture I realize how grown up he's really become... he has lost all of his baby and is a full blown boy!  I honestly could not have been given a better gift, as he is the sweetest and most loving little boy and I'm blessed to call him mine!  

If you'd like product information for anything we had at the party, please feel free to ask!