Dear 2009:

You were such an exhausting and nutty and unpredictable year that we're still recovering. On the couch, likely in pajamas.

Tell your buddy 2010 that we've got big plans for the fresh year, just as soon as we get dressed...

And A Happy New Year

Halloween Decorations 2009: Liberace, But Klassy Liberace

Ellie and I decided to glitter pumpkins again this year (which really didn't help with the DEFCON 2 Glitter Situation), and you have no idea how much a five-year-old girl gets out of slathering a pumpkin in glue and sparkles.  Well, maybe you do.  If you don't, it looks something like this:



Glittering is intense business for a five-year-old, is what I'm telling you.  SPARKLE MOTION!


We went with a black, white, and silver theme (very chi-chi, you know) and finished it off with some spray-painted branches from the lilac tree and black feathered birds from the Regrettable But Sometimes Useful Dollar Store.


Boo!

The jack o'lanterns, sadly, have already begun to slump and smell suspicious, but I'm going to toss those and keep the rest of the display up until at least Thanksgiving, all while telling the children, "Yes, true fact, the Pilgrims ate roast crow at the first Thanksgiving and the Liberace tribe set the table with glittered gourds, but don't tell anyone at kindergarten, 'kay?"

All this decoratin' and book learnin' is hard work, y'all.

Pumpkins, Punkins: A Photo Essay

No, Actually, It Is Precisely The Time To Freak Out

After last year's turns as the Lollipop Guild Munchkin and the Cowardly Lion, Ellie decided that she and Jimmy should be Glinda the Good Witch ("You know, Mama, that big, pink fairy?") and the Tin Man, respectively.  This is how things frequently go these days: Ellie makes a decision, Jimmy lives with the results.  He's Cuba to her Soviet Union.  The actual results:


Pretty cute!  See?  Socialist dictators aren't that bad!


Jimmy was really into the whole assigned Tin Man concept, but mostly because the Tin Man is shiny and clunky and therefore looks like a ROBOT! and there is nothing Jimmy loves more in the world than ROBOTS! (More on ROBOTS! tomorrow.)


Also, the costume involved a weapon, which is always exciting.  Quick construction notes for people trying this at home: his arms are made from 3" dryer vent, his legs from 4" dryer vent.  I added a gray turtleneck, gray tights, and a loose tunic made from inexpensive silver pleather. We finished it with a little duct tape bow tie pinned to the front. I was going to stitch a funnel to his gray stocking cap, but my Mom ordered an actual Tin Man hat and hatchet from a costume site instead. (Thanks, Nan!)


And here we have Glinda, scarcely able to open her eyes and witness the pinkness of it all.  Ellie's requested that her costume be "pink, fluffy, big, and pink" and I think we achieved the stated client goals.  The skirt, which was enormous and sparkly and shed approximately two pounds of pink glitter all over the floors, was constructed from a two shades of pink tulle (blush and bashful, perchance?) using the no-sew tutu method.  Incredibly easy, except for the freaking glitter, seriously, we're eating breathing and excreting glitter up in here.  I found some in Jimmy's Pull-Up yesterday.  It's like we're living at Glitter Beach on the Sparkle Sea in the Land of Fancy.  (Our upcoming biopic: There Will Be Glitter.)

We put the tutu over her pink ballet leotard and leggings, and Nan ordered the Glinda crown from the same costume site.  (Yay, Nan!)


The shoes were courtesy of Target, and really everything Ellie has hoped for in a shoe: pink, shiny, flowered, and pink.  She is a little relieved that Halloween is over, because now she can commence wearing those shoes 24/7, possibly even to bed.


And those shoes served her well.  Ellie was a trick-or-treating machine, dashing from house to house in the clear, cold night as poor Jimmy lagged constantly behind, his aluminum thighs rubbing together. He nearly lost heart midway, but was revived by an application from our handy oil can, and by "oil can" I mean fun-size bag of M&M's. At one point in the homestretch, he grew so weary that he abandoned his loot in a driveway, and we didn't notice until the next house.


But Ellie, like a good Soviet dictator, did her best to keep him lined out. She yalped and bellowed for him at every doorstep, waiting to ring the doorbell until he was next to her, bag open and at the ready position. "Get UP here, JIMMY!" she heckled again and again.  And at one particularly festive house, when her little brother stopped too long to squeal and flap and exclaim over the seven jack o'lanterns, Ellie barked, "Jimmy! THIS IS NO TIME TO FREAK OUT!"


Which is, of course, our new family motto.  Happy Halloween, comrades!

Halloweiners Sneak Peek...

More tomorrow, pumpkins. I'm bushed...