What a great welcome home!

My family and I just returned home from St. Louis on Tuesday.

The welcome home we received was not at all what we wanted!

We didn't notice the lovely gift until I saw a wet piece of paper in the corner of the living room. My initial thought was the potty trainer peed on the floor. Then I noticed the carpet was way to wet for it to have been a 2 year old. I looked up and saw it!

DRIP, DRIP!

A wet ceiling sagging down ready to fall. I didn't get a picture of it before hubby started poking at it with the fireplace tools. Then it all just came down.

See that there in the bottom right corner. That's mold. Luckily for me I thought to put down a piece of plastic down first. It might explain why Mr. Destructo seems to be sick so often and have red eyes all the time. I'm not sure how much mold it takes to make one sick or if this is even the right kind of mold but it's a thought.

Lovely gift to come home to huh?

It was just plain nasty! Soaking wet! I knew from checking the weather on the drive home that we had a big storm coming and I knew we had to get this tarped up quick! I later found out the the big storm was actually tropical storm/depression Nicole. Figures we'd get a leak in our ceiling now!

This is the junk that hubby pulled off the ceiling. See the mold!!

$350 later, the roofers had come out and emergency tarped our roof just in time. The rain started that night and here it is Thursday and it's still raining. Expected to continue till tomorrow. 11 inches of rain in some areas. Crazy.

This is the bottom side of the texture that was on the ceiling. More mold.

Anyways, my phones been ringing like crazy as we try to get a hold of various roofers, the previous owner of our house, and our insurance lady. We've got our estimates and work might start as early as this weekend! It's crazy how the estimates are all over the place. The lowest estimate and the highest estimate have a difference of $1800! HOLY COW!

Unfortunately insurance doesn't cover our roof but they do cover the damage inside! Whoo hoo! The interior guy came by today and told me they are going to fix all the damage, re-texture the entire ceiling and repaint my whole living room! I just have to decide if I want to keep the color I chose and painted not even a year ago or if I want a new color. Decisions, decisions!

Until then, here's the newest addition to our living room.

We keep finding more and more water damage. I can't wait for the interior guy to come in and pull this icky stuff out!

Wordless Wednesday- Giant Hole

What we came home to. More about this to come! UPDATED: Here is the link to this story.

My Fall Mantle

It feels so good to be back in Virginia! We had a great trip to St. Louis. I had hoped to first blog about all of our adventures, then we came home to a leak in our ceiling. Then I was going to blog about that first. But now I think I can't look at that hole anymore right now so I want to share with you my first fall mantle!

We moved into our house in November of last year and didn't get to decorate for fall at all. This year is different! I'll show you my mantle and then I'll show you each project as well as a link to how to make one for yourself!

I'm pretty proud of my very first mantle! All with things I made all by myself!

I found the idea for these wooden pumpkins here. I used some scrap wood that I had left over. I should have used a saw to cut better lines but I didn't want to go back out to the skeeter house that is my back yard and I may have gotten so excited to finish that I may or may not have forgotten I was going to do that. Instead I used a steak knife. Shhh don't tell. I sanded the edges in my kitchen sink. Don't tell on me about that either. I like them, hubby is ok with them.

Next we have my 2 topiaries. Ehh. I'm not a huge fan of them but I guess they work. I think I need different textures in them. I saw them on Decorchick but her's are much prettier than mine. Make sure you check hers out here. The metal containers they are sitting in I found at the Dollar Tree and I spray painted them an antique white color.

The enter of my mantle is a fall version of something I made for the spring just with fall colors. I also used skewers for the sticks although some real sticks would be pretty too. Again I didn't want to go outside to find some stick. They are sitting in a hurricane that I made from various Dollar Tree items. And I filled them with some little plastic pumpkins and acorns that I also found at Dollar Tree.

Next we have the wire pumpkins. In the tutorial I read she said to use 20 gauge wire. All I could find at the only store I was stopping at that day was 14 gauge wire. Big mistake! It was much harder to work with than I imagined but doable. I used some floral wire to close it all up. I like them silver but I may end up spray painting them. We'll see.

The last thing on my mantle is my Harvest Banner.  I've seen these all over blog land. I used some scrapbook paper, twine and some big paint chip samples that I found at Wal-Mart. They are Better Home and Gardens colors. It was pretty easy and only took me a few minutes to make.

So that's my mantle! Hope you enjoyed!

Menu Plan Monday 9/20

This week's plan is super short because we will only be home for 2 days!!!! YAY!!

Monday- Pot Roast leftovers that I made last week.
Tuesday- Ham and Pasta bake
Wednesday- Sunday- GONE!!!!

You can get more MPM ideas at orgjunkie.com .

Tot School- Letter I

Mr. Destructo is 33 months and Blue Eyes is 18 months.

This is our 4th week of doing Tot School. Again, not much going on this week. We were busy planning and cleaning for our Fisher-Price House Party and getting ready for our trip! (If you have some travel advice I'd love to hear it on this post.)

But we did manage to squeeze in a few "I" related activities.

First we made an I ice cream. I saw this on No Time for Flashcards.

Last night we also made Homemade Ice Cream with some ice, rock salt, sugar and milk. I don't have any photos because Mr. Destructo did not want to touch the cold bag at all and we were dealing with cheap-o bags that were leaking. Ugh.

Blue Eyes had his normal Occupational Therapy this week where he played Mr. Potato head, puzzles, shapes and did some pouring with the noodles in the sensory tub. No pictures of that either.

Mr. Destructo and I made spIders. His new thing is spiders and since I wasn't going to buy something for him to break I thought we would make our own. If you want a tutorial on how we made ours I can show you. Just let me know. Here is his:

Mr. Destructo also got to play with a butterfly this week. Another new favorite thing is butterflies. He was so relaxed and calm with it. You can see more butterfly photos here.

He also had an unexpected life lesson. Try explaining this in the spur of the moment with a hysterical toddler.

Yes that would be a Mickey Mouse tied to a garbage truck. I guess those guys thought that would be funny. It was not funny to the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse fan. He cried and cried. When I told my mom about it later on she said I should have told him Mickey was helping the trash man today. Yea, I didn't think of that then. I think I was just as shocked as he was.

Last but not least there were some loving moments with the boys this week. I caught this:

and this:

And I don't think it was an apology! I love seeing these loving moments!

So that was our week. It was busy and hectic and not always "school" related but it all works!

You can get more Tot School ideas at 1+1+1=1.

Muffin Tin Monday- Shapes

This weeks theme on Muffin Tin Monday was Shapes.

Well... I made a tin, but it's awful! It was spur of the moment and just plain awful. So instead I'm going to re-post the shape tin we made 2 weeks ago.

So here is the boys Muffin Tin. 

We did Star shaped cheese, square PB&J pieces, and oval/circle grapes.

You can find better tins at Muffin Tin Mom!


Also we are heading out of town for a little bit. There won't be any muffin tin making for me! So if you have any travel advice for driving with two toddlers, read this post!

Travel Advice Wanted!

In less than 1 week my husband and I will be driving 1000 miles to Missouri with an 18 month old who doesn't really like long car rides an a 33 month old potty trainer along for the ride.

So I would like any tips you have to make the car ride more... sane enjoyable.

We are already leaving in the wee hours of the morning in hopes of getting 7 hours in before the kids wake up.

I also checked out "The first 100 episodes!" of  Spongebob from the library. I later found out that is 36 hours! Umm no! So we do have a DVD player with the kids favorite movies.

Other than that is there anything I can take with us to keep the kids happy or make the trip smoother?

Any crafts or activities I can make? Something you took on a trip with you that you were so glad you had? I'm all ears!

Thanks!