healthy porch munchin' snacks

you guys, fall is here! football is here! new shows on tv are here! ...what else is here? oh yeah, the everything pumpkin spice *ugh* and that freakout feeling of the holidays arriving is here too. and even though our schedules are nonstop most weeks, snack time is always happening at our house.

"mom, i want a snack" echoes through the house and rings in my ears every hour from both my boys. the boys crawl up on my counters and open up cabinets to scrounge for something to munch on.

most days i make them something. and i learned a super useful trick on serving snacks from my favorite photographer mama, Brooke a while back -- she uses a cupcake tray to divvy up snacks and contain messes with all five of her boys. 

this past weekend we wanted to enjoy the beautiful hot weather & so i made some special snacks for all of us to enjoy on our freshly decorated front porch.

when i'm making snacks, i always make sure to have a good combination of sweet + crunchy + healthy. a good combination of everything. cue gary's eye roll but we won't even get into what his diet is like...
for our snack we had grapes, strawberries, peaches, cukes, carrots, mandarins and a special bowl of crunchy nuts + popcorn.
oh and i made sure not to forget the sweet tea.

the fantastic part is that andrew has discovered a love for nuts + pecans. but not for raisins, even though they're covered in delicious dark chocolate!

after snack time, of course it's play time. and this time, we grabbed a football. gary's been spending too much time with a football lately so it seemed perfectly adequate, right?

and elena was so in love watching daddy & brothers toss the football she wanted in the game SO badly.

you would think daddy was talking plays with andrew, but no. he's just getting a good stern talkin' to about tackling his brother sans the football!

and when they don't pass elena the ball? this:

finally the boys grew tired of running around and seeked rest--after all, it is still hot in south texas.

popcorn, mixed nuts & chocolate covered raisins... buttery, crunchy & chocolately, what else can you ask for, amiright? 

super easy snacks, right? they're perfect for a good afternoon of football tossin' if i do say so myself. what are you healthy go-to snacks around the house? 

fall decor + a NEW pinecone diy

firstly,

secondly, i've noticed my painted pinecones post has blown up all over pinterest

and i was hoping to properly make a dedicated post for a new pinecone diy post. so bear with me and enjoy!

i snapped a few pictures of my process. pine trees are abundant where i live so all i had to do was look down to gather a few of those prickly little things. i have been wanting to use the gold liquid gilding since this project and i thought it was perfect for this re-do of a DIY.

gather your pinecones and paint them! that's the fun part. paint them all, paint them a different color or just leave them be -- it's up to you!

next make little rings from the wire of framing hardware kit and attach them to the top of the pinecones with hot glue.

when the glue hardens, cut + add some ribbon and hot glue it around the ring. and finally, tie the ribbons off-set from one another onto the hoop. 

it wasn't looking quite right to me after that. the hoop still needed 'something'. so i thought about a floral crown. i went ahead and incorporated some mums to make a floral crown on the hoop and i love how it came out. it totally added more color to it and fits perfectly! 

just buy a small bouquet of flowers and cut them off. next, just wrap the stems around the hoop, and voila! 

 those gold tips on my pinecone diy are so pretty when the light hits them just right. and those mums!

now for some inside fall decor, i pulled out all my beautiful fake fall flowers because come on, i'm practical and real flowers cost an arm & a leg.

and while my husband thinks they're completely unnecessary, i think the opposite. my eyes totally need them. 

andrew helped me set the garlands around our sliding door and above our bar window. and i absolutely love that he loves helping me with it. he suggested where to put them and my heart could not be prouder of this little helper. 

one more time just for kicks!

and lastly, 

have a fantastic first day of fall, y'all!

one muggy afternoon

after the rains had stopped one afternoon, it became incredibly foggy. muggy. humid. and incredibly hot. that's the weather here in south texas north of houston.

but what did the boys want to do? go outside. which believe me, i was amazed. they would rather stay inside on a hot day. 

so i grabbed my camera and took advantage of our driveway adventures. 

me lens would fog up. apparently it's freezing cold in my house. i'd rather have it that way, too.

we still had a pile of crushed granite on our driveway from our patio remodel  and the kids absolutely cannot help themselves become a mess in that stuff. 

it drives me BA.NA.NAS. 

Elena is able to reach the ground now for the trike & the 'ziggle' but has way much more fun when someone pushes her...usually Jonah helps her out, but he was having too much fun with his bike speeding up and down the driveway.

he is my little speedracer. anything to beat the other guy. and the look on his face when someone is about to catch him? priceless.

meanwhile, poor little 'lena just has to watch them race by. just you wait, little girl. just you wait.

and a rare occurrence, prim actually let us take pictures of her! prim's trepidation always makes her so skiddish and accents her "bizques" (cross-eyed-ness). la pobre bizca. jijiji!

also, i apologize for all the underwear you had to see in this post. little girl is potty training so it just makes sense...at least to me... it's still summer and my kids don't wear clothes in the house, and apparently outside either. 

spiderman underwear & batman for the win!