Fall in the Ozarks

I woke up this morning to a beautiful blue sky with the promise of a beautiful day. I love fall here. In Stansbury Park, Utah, or old town, it was snowing this morning! My neighbor from across the street posted this picture of the mountains behind our house (our house is the dark brown one on the right).

Isn't it beautiful? I so miss the seeing the mountains. There are no mountains in Missouri. :( But that's okay! We have had more than one week of fall! It has been fall for over a month. I LOVE it! This is what I am seeing everywhere I look...


It is such a different feeling having FALL! :) I LOVE it! The temperatures are perfect, no heater, no a/c. It is simply beautiful. I am grateful for the opportunity to live here. The world is changing just outside  my door, and it is a nice change. I hope fall is beautiful where you are.

Kid Friendly & Approved Halloween Décor!

Happy Halloween!

This is our first Halloween in this house. My kids have loved these decorations since they were little. They have even made some of them, and they LOVE to put them out!

I love our front porch. It is so fun to sit on our bench and enjoy the cool evenings. I loved it when the fireflies were out!

I thought it would be cute to have the two scarecrows stand as sentinels at the porch!

I love the front door. I think it is so pretty. My 14 year old M didn’t want me to hang anything on the door that would block the window, but I couldn’t get my Command hook to stay on the vinyl siding. I had the hook over by the doorbell under the light earlier this year, but the hook kept falling off.

I love this little wagon. My mom got it for me a while ago from Lakeside Collections. I fill it with a fall leaf garland. I love the fall colors. As I was driving the two youngest home from school today, I could feel the crisp fall air and saw the changing of many of the leaves. It is just beautiful!

Next on the doorstep I have the silly fake light up jack-o-lanterns. I just love that word, jack-o-lantern, SO many letters and TWO hyphens! My kids LOVE these silly things, They love to have them be lit up at night. They are easier than the real kind! We are going to go to the punkin’ patch later in the month. I plan on lining up the kids’ creations on the front porch and putting the little battery votive candles in them! I LOVE those, too!

This has got to be my FAVORITE Halloween decoration that I have. I won it at an Homemaking night (back then it was still called that!) when we lived in Washington state. I didn’t even have kids back then! Anyway, one of my favorite people, Heatherly (isn’t that a FUN name!), made it and I won! I lost track of Heatherly, but I LOVE this door hanger. I have a few pieces from her. She is aMaZiNg.








Now to the inside of my house. Mind you, this is KID FRIENDLY AND APPROVED!!!  this is not Martha Stewart league by ANY means!

This is in our entry way. I love the buffet. I will have to do a post on it later at some point. I got it for FREE when we moved in from a gal in our ward! SCORE!!! Not too much here, but the favorite is the (here we go again, a fun word!) jack-o-lantern scarecrow head that has fiber optic lights that go from green to orange to purple. My kids have to have it on from the moment they wake up until the last possible second before they go to bed at night.

Then we have a few little figurines.

Then the fireplace is the first thing you see when you walk in. I LOVE this fireplace. It has a raised hearth. The fireplace in my Utah house was just in the wall with tile on the floor. I loved that one too, but this one has a raised hearth I Loooooove it!

Sorry my pics are goofy this one is crooked!!! :/

These tiny little guys were hand made a loooong time ago my fave is the little candy corn man. So Cute and SO Easy! I do NOT like to eat candy corn, so the candy corn arms and legs have been in there for 17 years!!!

Then we have a sofa table that is really SPARASE…the kids decorated it, and I left it as is.

My 9 y.o. painted the cardinal in art at school last year. I love it. I got it framed. I made the temple picture at a girls craft night. I get a lot of compliments on it. All the other gals painted theirs black, but since BLUE is my “signature color”(said with a southern accent like Julia Roberts in“Steel Magnolias”) I had to have Blue!

The pumpkin on the left was done by my youngest A who is now 7 when she was in pre-school. It is a roll of TP wrapped in orange tissue! So easy and fun for little ones to do. Then these little clay pots are SO fun for the kids to paint. We have two Frankenstein's and a candy corn.

Then last but not least, my 9 y.o, E. wanted to have the lamps wear a hat…I have heard of people wearing lampshades as hats, but never lampshades wearing hats! She was proud of her idea!

So, there you go, our kid friendly & approved Halloween! Thanks for visiting!

Check out other fun Halloween links here!

Windows Live Writer

I am so excited. I was reading one of my FAVORITE blogs, Centsational Girl, and she had posted how her blogging life is SO much easier now that she uses Windows Live Writer. I finally got it downloaded and am trying it out. It has a familiar feel to it because it looks like you are in Microsoft Word. Here is the link to her post. (Centsational Girl) really like the feel of this better than using Blogger. I always felt trapped by the little box I had to type in. I have been trying to get this program on my laptop for the last three days unsuccessfully, so I tried it on our desktop! I am a Happy Momma now! This is going to make blogs SO much easier to post, so hopefully that means MORE posts!

I LOOOVE Beach/Ocean themed blogs

As I was going through all of the blogs I am a follower of I got to this blog:





http://www.completely-coastal.com/2011/09/starfish-wreath-for-front-door-and.html

They are having a giveaway. I LOVE the design ideas and feel of this blog. I highly recommend you give it a try!

My Joshie

Josh age 4

Josh age 5

Josh turned 12 on September 1. This is a significant birthday. He graduated from Primary. He entered the Young Men's program, and he received the priesthood. Josh is now a deacon! I can't believe how time flies! Today was the first time he passed the sacrament. I feel like he is going through a lot of change so fast.  I am proud of him. He knows what is right. He has a testimony. I am so thankful for him. I love you Joshua Makoa Wilson!

September 1, 2007
Joshua's Baptism
Ashley 3, Lisa, Josh 8, Lynn

Josh 1st day of 6th grade age 11

We're Back...

Somehow, somewhere, my blog got deleted from Blogger. I think it was because we added a gmail and blogger got all confused, and the gist of it is that my old blog disappeared in cyber space. SO, now we get to start with a clean slate. :) So here it goes, the launch of "Wilson Ohana"! :)