Thursday, November 19, 2009

Note to Self...

When "tapping" a dish to get the air bubbles out from under the surface of the food stuffs, make sure to use a ginger "tap." Otherwise, you will end up splattering the food stuffs, hypothetically speaking guacamole, all over yourself. It will get in your hair, on your sweater, all over your face, and I should let you know that your glasses won't help to shield your eyes from this mess either. Getting a hypothetical dip that has lime juice, onions, tomatoes, salt, and jalapenos in your eye does not feel good!!! This is of course for future reference. That hypothetical guacamole does taste really good though. Too bad it's not for home.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Halloween 2009...

This year, we told the boys that we had to use what we had, costume wise, or design inexpensive costumes. I don't know if anyone else has noticed just how expensive Halloween costumes are, but they are and they aren't even made very well. It makes me wish that I had a sewing machine and the ability to make things with it. I would quit spending so much time on the computer find the time. I think it would be fun and I like making things and using my hands. Where was I?*

Oh yeah, so Monkey, being the Transformer fiend that he is, chose to go as Bumblebee from last year. Great that was easy. Who's going to remember? Well you will if you follow that link. :D Okay, and The Scientist, who will henceforth be known as Pokemon Trainer, wanted to go as a Skeleton Wizard. I kind of thought at first that, man oh man, we are going to have to buy a bunch of crap to make this work. Dirty jumped in with some creativity and said, "We can use the tape that I used for my costume." I didn't get a picture of his costume, but he taped a gigantic "E" on his shirt and he's a boy...get it??? He was "E-mail."

Right, anyway, he used the tape and put the shirt together. He did the pants too, but while the shirt looked alright but anatomically incorrect I'm working on the perfectionism the legs looked pretty shotty. So I redid those as the sun was sitting. Earlier in the day, we went to the Halloween store and bought some cheap facepaint (Lord, please don't let it poison him. One time use should be alright, right?) I really enjoyed painting on his face. If the career as a nurse for some reason doesn't work out, my next move might be cosmetology. Gosh, I'm having trouble staying on topic. I watched a few tutorials on YouTube on creating skeleton looks and painted his face letting him give input on what he wanted. The YouTube tutorial didn't have lines across the gumlines, but it's how he wanted it and it was so. I wanted to keep going and make it even more shaded, but he cut me off. The colored hair spray was right next to the face paint in the store so he decided he wanted green hair too. We used one of his LOTR capes (he has two LOTR costumes because we gave into his "I don't want to be Aragorn this year. I wanted to be Legolas." even though they are basically the same freaking costume. However, times are tight we need to get creative and put a little work into it. Voila!!!



So I finished Pokemon Trainer's costume as the sun was setting. I told them we could go. We walked down the steps and, after I'd already opened the door, I remembered we had not taken a picture. So after a quick temper tantrum from Monkey and the threat of "We will NOT go Trick or Treating!" we trucked back up the steps. Pokemon Trainer was actually excited to get his picture taken. This is actually extremely out of character for him, but I'm not complaining. We hit our neighbor's houses and kept asking each other where all the Trick or Treaters were. As we got to the end of our block and made our way over to Flora Place to Trick or Treat our way up to Dirty's parents house, I saw streams of Trick or Treaters crossing the streets. See Flora Place has all of these huge houses. I would venture a guess that most of the houses are three stories and have an average of 6 bedrooms. Apparently, big houses=big candy. There are always tons of people who drive from all over the city to Trick or Treat on this street. Crazy! Yet again, I digress.

So we made our way up the two blocks and the boys were going to trick Grandpa C. We stood back and Pokemon Trainer went up the steps and said, "Trick or Treat!" That was about the time that I heard Grandpa C. say, "Sorry, but I'm out of candy. They have some though." And he directed Pokemon Trainer to the next door neighbors. Monkey went up, but didn't bother with his mask so Grandpa C. said to him, "Oh of course I have candy for you! Where's your brother?" Monkey pointed him out and Grandpa called him over again. That was kind of funny. So we went inside and I the boys dove into their candy bags and the adults went into the kitchen for cocktails. Once the boys got a little rowdy, Grandpa C. put on Monsters vs. Aliens and they settled down again. It was a nice night of visiting.

It's become a bit of a tradition, and it's nice. The boys don't end up with too much candy because we really only hit three blocks. They don't seem to notice because we end up at Happy Fun Land Grandma T.'s and Grandpa C.'s and we get to visit with Dirty's parents while the boys gorge themselves on candy and watch satellite tv. You know what the crazy thing was? As soon as Grandpa C. dropped us off, and while I was walking up our front stairs, I had this feeling like I wanted turkey and a Thanksgiving feast. I'm ready Thanksgiving goodness. Bring it on!

*I lost the post-it that had the "strike through" feature written on it. It took me forever to find a copy of it in my many past posts. Luckily, I don't know if it was me or Jeannette, but I had a copy in my dashboard. That started me on my lack of focus for this post.