Friday Favorites {10.27.17}

Hey! Hey! It’s Friyay! My kids are on fall break for the next few days so we have been decorating pumpkins, filling our front windows with paper spiders and bats and cramming in all the pre-Halloween fun we can. Because all this silly stuff is what memories are made of. 😉

It’s hard to believe that this is the last Friday in October already! Next week we are officially in the holiday season and I can’t wait! Like always, I’m linking up with Erika, Narci and Andrea for Friday Favorites!

one

So please don’t hate me for bringing Christmas shopping up already. Remember- I absolutely respect the turkey, but I wanted to put this out there before your list making is really started and it’s too late. A couple years ago, I found this awesome free gift app called Santa’s Bag. We buy for a lot of people every year, plus two of our boys and our nephew have birthdays right around Christmas. Keeping track of gifts always leaves me totally overwhelmed!

This app lets you enter a budget and divide it among your recipients. I even include everything for the season like birthday and Christmas gifts, Christmas cards, stocking stuffers, gifts to donate to local charities, etc. You add in the gifts, cost and what stores you plan to purchase so that you can sort your master list by any of those categories. I love that it easily helps me to budget and that I can walk into any store on my list and have a list of presents I need to buy sorted in front of me. You can mark the status of each gift: need to buy, purchased, and wrapped and sort that by list too!

This is a screenshot of my app dashboard with last years gifts still on it. This app is free (with a Pro version upgrade to archive all your gifts every year if you choose) and I have not found a better or easier Christmas gift app. I just love it!

two

This week we had our school’s annual Trunk or Treat and the kids had a blast. We decided to pass out candy this year and loved getting to see all the adorable kids in their costumes.

The boys were all different Ninja Turtles this year so I attempted the mom’s version of April (I was not busting out booty shorts but thank you) from the Ninja Turtles and Eli and I made Josh a last minute Shredder helmet to wear. I feel like we did pretty good for random things we had at home and an hour while the littles were napping.

Caleb and Eli immediately came home, dumped out their bags and sorted their candy. Does anyone remember doing this when they were younger? My sister and I would trade things we didn’t like. Haha!

three

Speaking of Halloween fun, I love getting in the spirit of the holidays with themed books for stories before bed. Room on the Broom is our very, very favorite Halloween story! We got a bunch from the library this year hoping to find a new favorite but none of them compared. This one is the best!

We just got these two new ones for Thanksgiving this year. Turkey Trouble and 10 Fat Turkeys are both super cute too. Great choices to add to our collection!

four

Everyone was off school yesterday and we were enjoying a quiet part of the afternoon while Reid and Luke were napping. I was working in another room for a little bit while the older boys were watching a show on their tablets. I walked back in to check on them and they had both moved from the separate couches where they were sitting to share that big chair and cuddle under the blanket together. Those two really are the best of friends. I love seeing them interact and am so grateful that God blessed us with them both so close together. I hope they always have this relationship as they grow.

Speaking of best friends, these two crack me up! When we were going inside from playing the other day, Luke was having trouble getting his shoes off and apparently Reid stepped in to help him. He would pull on Luke’s shoe, lose his grip and fall over and they would both laugh hysterically. They did it over and over. I couldn’t help but laugh and take pictures. 😉

five

Finally, a little funny to round this week’s favorites out. I saw this on Pinterest and was rolling laughing. This is SO me! We have all this amazing Halloween candy in the house and those Snickers bars are my weakness. The kids walked in the other day and this was exactly my face. Hahaha! I said to Josh, remember when I used to enjoy my stolen Halloween candy in peace? Those days have passed!

Also, if you missed my What’s Up Wednesday post this week you can find it here.

I hope you all have the very best Halloween weekend!