monday miscellany: home improvements, mall time, fall scents, a little naked turtle riding

1) I love this view. They are the best little critters.

2) Henry and Celia have gotten really into playing with their blankets this week. They carry them all around, and play and pretend all sorts of things with them. They're also playing with their pillow racers a lot now. We got them last Christmas, and at the time they were a little young for them but I just knew they would grow into them and love playing on them. I imagined them riding all around the house on them, pretending they were in cars and going places- and that's exactly what they're doing now. It's adorable. They are always riding around, pretending something with them.

3) The garden is winding down but we still have beans, tomatoes, and zucchini coming. We found this enormous zucchini the other day.

4) It was nice to have a long weekend, but unfortunately the weather was terrible. Downpours, cloudy, and very humid. We had three days stuck inside. On Saturday we went to the mall to go in the kids' play area. It's the perfect size for Celia and Henry, and there's a Starbucks right next to it. Smart, Starbucks, real smart. So Chris and I get fancy coffee drinks and watch the kids play. They have a great time. On Saturday, we also had lunch at the mall and walked around. I brought some food, but Celia wanted "pizza with cow cheese". We got her some and she ate it, but you can see what she generally thinks about cow cheese in the picture below. Ha! Then the boys went to Sears while Celia and I rode the carousel and went to smell the new fall candles at Bath and Body Works. Fun! We smelled them all and had a great time. Celia loves nice smells just like I do. The candles were on sale for half off, so we picked a couple. We're already planning to go back and smell the Christmas candles when they come out :). Meanwhile, Chris and Henry went to Sears and ended up finding a sale on a new vacuum cleaner. You probably don't remember how Chris set our old vacuum on fire last winter, but I do... It hasn't been quite the same since. The new vacuum is good.

On the carousel. 

Cow cheese! Haha.

Yummy fall candles.

5) We have several exciting house projects going on or just finished. First of all, we had the house painted! Well, half the house. The other half will be done after we finish window replacements. It looks so nice.

Before:

After:

I'm really happy with the door color I picked. We also plan to replace the doorknob and add a deadbolt.

6) These are not exciting pictures, unless you're me and you've seen how gross my laundry area used to be. We got a new washer, moved the cat litter out of the laundry room, added a cute clothes sorter, painted the shelf above the washer and dryer, and sanded the rusty dryer top and painted it. Looks brand new.

Ideally, someday I will paint the laundry area walls a fun color too.

7) Another home improvement- new garage doors that went on last week. These pictures look really boring, unless you're someone who has had extremely heavy garage doors that only opened manually.

I push the button. The door opens. Magic!

8) Not much else going on, really. Except, you know, this incredibly adorable naked turtle riding.