Octoberfest at Oldfield Orchard & Bakery

Every year we go to a local farm to do the autumn hay ride, choose pumpkins to carve for Hallowe'en, and do lots of other fun stuff.

This year, we chose to try a different location.  We usually go to Galey Farm but this year we tried Oldfield.

We were greeted with a delicious pumpkin-shaped sugar cookie - yum!

The whole thing was geared towards smaller children, I think, but Jaymi still had a lot of fun there.

There were two miniature 'train rides'.

There were games to play (to win prizes) like a scavenger hunt,

fishing,

 pumpkin bowling,

and a ring toss.

Jaymi noticed right away that we got a ticket (with admission) for a haunted house.  So this year was the first year she was ready to try that sort of thing out.

She wanted to go in but got really nervous anticipating in line.

She was mostly scared of it being so dark in the haunted house, and held my hand nice and tight!

She liked it, but definitely didn't like the people who jumped and said "Boo!" once in a while as we walked through.

I don't think she'd do it again.

There were lots of places to pose for pictures :)

There was a hay maze to crawl through,

 and a hay ride of course.

 Jaymi chose a pumpkin to bring home, and she won another one as well.

And Mark chose a strawberry-rhubarb pie. :D

A Sewing Project for Us

Jaymi helped me to make a toy for our cats the other day.

It's a crinkly mat.  You know how cats like things that make crinkly noises?  Well, it was so easy and cheap to make.

I found this cute fabric at a thrift store, with cats all over it.  I think it used to be a curtain or something.

Jaymi cut it to the right size and we both pinned it together (wrong sides out).  We sewed three of the sides together and left one open.  We then flipped the whole thing the right way around and stuffed it with a few layers of flattened plastic shopping bags.

It's a fantastic recycling project if you have those kind of bags hanging around in your house!

I showed Jaymi how to use the sewing machine too.  She learned how to thread the machine, how to thread a bobbin, and how to sew a straight hem, taking the pins out as she went.

She did very well!

We then closed up the 4th side and stitched a few seam lines across the whole thing, so that the bags wouldn't shift around on the inside.

We also sprinkled some cat nip on it (next time, we're going to put lots of cat nip in it instead) and the cats love it!

We have to make one more now, because we only made one mat and our second cat is a bit peeved. ;)

Creepy Halloween Recipes

Jaymi is enjoying my ideas, as Hallowe'en is approaching, for some interesting spooky recipes.

This was a favourite of mine, that I wanted to try. It went over well with my family. :D

Spaghetti with Alfredo sauce, put in orange pepper jack-o-lantern bowls.

Fun!

We also made eyeball eggs for Jaymi's lunch.

She loved them!

Just take half of a boiled egg, put it in a mini muffin liner, and paint the eyeball details on with food colouring and a paintbrush.

Autumn Colours

Every autumn I take Jaymi out for a photo shoot with the autumn leaves.  We have lots of fun with this, and I get some fantastic pictures from it.

We did it yesterday, and I found the perfect spot!

It has a little bridge, beautiful trees and a pathway for walking or bike riding, and tons of fallen leaves as well as leaves that were still falling.

She had fun throwing leaves at me.

We saw this huge stuffed bear that someone had placed in a tree. :)

She wanted me to bury her in leaves...so I did.

She laid in the leaves.

Of course, we did our tradition of throwing the leaves in the air.  Jaymi loves doing that.

She tried to take as many leaves as she could in her arms and tossed them all up in the air.

She made leaf piles to jump in.

We always do this particular pose, which is a fun one to look at through the years, as she gets older.

And for a long time, Jaymi tried to catch a falling leaf.  This is difficult to do because you never know which tree is going to drop a leaf next, then you have to run for it and try to catch it.

She began watching one specific leaf that fell partway and then came to rest on a very small branch.

It's the orange one in the middle of this picture.

She named it "Leafy".

She begged it to come down so that she could catch it.

She pleaded with it.

She yelled at it.

She waited patiently for it.

(Look way up high at the top-right-hand corner of the picture...it's the orange leaf.  And she is at the bottom-left-corner.)

She finally gave up on it.

It just did NOT want to let go of it's delicate balanced position.

It was a fun afternoon - full of laughter and smiles.