October in Words and Pictures

As I mentioned in my last post - before falling off the face of the blogworld for three weeks - I've recently taken on a lot of commitments.  Life has been busy busy busy, and it's been hard to spare many moments for blogs - either writing or reading them, so my apologies to those whose I try to keep up with!  Here's a look at a few of the things that have been going on for me.

Crafting

I've been trying to plan out one (easy!) craft a week to do with the kids.  They really enjoy it, and I get the benefit of having free but cute seasonal decorations for my house.

Some of the recent ones were...
Paper-bag puppet owls.  They look great on the wall and I may even save them for next fall, but I don't recommend making these with really young kids.  I pretty much spent a half hour cutting tiny things out of construction paper, while the kids sat - impatiently, of course - and waited.

Various ghosties for the chandelier.  Kleenex wrapped around a balled Kleenex, and cotton balls glued onto card stock.  Very simple.

And some gorgeous fall leaves ironed between waxed paper.  The number of stained-glass windows in the house just doubled!

I've also been working on some crafts of my own.  Mainly, the baby quilt I'm making at my quilting group.  I don't have any in-progress photos now, but here's the fabric I'm using:

Halloween
Sly couldn't decide what he wanted to be until the last minute.  I wasn't too worried, because we had his costume from last year as a backup. He finally settled on being a cowboy, and luckily, I was able to throw it together with things we already had around the house.  I pleaded with Stella to be a cowgirl, because how cute would that have been?  But she insisted on wearing a masculine-looking pre-packaged bunny suit we had.  Oh well.  Linus wore his winter bear suit.

Our new neighborhood turns out to be a great place to trick-or-treat.  Our block was packed with kids, and most of the neighbors came to the bottom of their stairs/end of their walkway to hand out candy, instead of staying indoors (we also had pretty mild weather).

Some friends invited us all to a Halloween party after trick-or-treating.  Costumes were "encouraged," so Tom and I scrambled to get something together, literally minutes before leaving.

I dressed in orange and black, and threw on a bunch of dead animals [minks].  Aaaaand....yeah.  I don't know what I was, but I looked Halloween-y, anyways.

Tom slicked back his hair, put on a power tie, grabbed some dry wall tools and went as "a banker on Dry Wall street"....Okay.

Soul Cakes
For several years, I've been wanting to bake soul cakes.  I can't really figure out if they're more appropriately made for Halloween or All Soul's Day.  In the end, I decided not to make them this year for the same reason I've always declined to in the past: we're already eating WAY too much junk food around Halloween, and we absolutely don't need any more!

All Saint's Day
We went to Mass on Saturday, which is when my church observes the feast.  And....that was it.

We had the opportunity to go to a couple different dress-up-your-kids-as-Saints parties, but I opted out.  Figuring out Halloween costumes for the kids was enough for me this year, and I didn't think they were quite old enough to really understand or appreciate dressing up as Saints.  I know some moms just do one costume, having their kids trick-or-treat in their Saint outfits.  My concern is that doing so would just be an invitation to your neighbors to be labelled as "the Catholic weirdos." Perhaps if I were holier, I wouldn't mind so much.

I promised Sly we would try to go to an All Saints party next year, though. He's already decided who he'll dress as: St. George.  A knight who slays a dragon?  I would guess that he is many little boys' first pick.


Other Autumnal Happenings
We're still soldiering on with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons - Sly and I, that is.  The daily lessons have been earning me some time off Purgatory....or sending me to confession.  Depending on how much patience I can muster that day.

ready to read!

Stella got into a tube of brand-new (and not-that-cheap) long-lasting lipstick and put it all over her face.  I may have freaked out a bit and caused her to cry uncontrollably for the next twenty minutes.  It took two days and several hard scrubbings to get it all off.

 
After a lifetime of half-doubting the existence of most people's "allergies," I finally had to humble myself and go get allergy testing done, at the recommendation of my doctor.  And guess what?  I've got 'em!  Among a couple more minor things, I am allergic to dust mites.  This explains so much.  I won't bore you with all my symptoms, but basically I wake up many mornings feeling like I have the worst sinus infection ever.  Because, uh, dust mites live in my bed (and yours too!).  It feels pretty empowering to know this, actually, and to know that there's hopefully a way to make things better.

We took a walk in a city park, and got to enjoy the last hurrah of the deciduous foliage.

Oh, and I finally re-painted our bedroom!!  No more peach walls with peach trim.  It looks great, but I'm going to wait to take photos after we hang our pictures and curtains.  And knowing the pace we've been moving on our home improvement projects recently....that might be a while.