Mirror Mirror on the wall...

Who is the fairest of them all?

Princess Tati (and her powerful backpack)!

It was a dark, COLD night on Plum Street...

Happy!

(Isn't this so cute? My sister made it for me. I LOVE IT! Sometimes, she blows me away with her craftiness.)

Sorry for the delay. Here are our Halloween pics.

This was the first year we weren't all dressed up in theme together. It was a little rough for me but I'm maturing and learning how to let it go. Or at least I'm trying. We had two Halloweens this year, normal Halloween night and then our neighborhood did a trunk or treat before Halloween before the weather turned cold. So it was really "warm" that night--probably in the low 60's (which isn't "warm") but compared to the 30's and 40's it usually is, then well, it is warm.

Tati was a candy corn. It was sorta retarded how many people asked us what kind of candy she was. Um, duh. One lady asked if she was a jelly bean. It's not like they don't sell candy corns here. Somebody was complaining to me the other day that candy corns didn't even look like corns and how they were a retarded candy. I finally told them that they picked the wrong audience because I'm a HUGE candy corn fan AND I think they totally do look like corn. But I digress.

Here's our candy corn.
And our "nice" witch. She had to emphasize that to everybody.

She wore make-up and we were all blown away at how striking she looked. It scared her daddy a little bit though. All her overwhelming beauty.

I was Ahoura. Yes, I wanted to be more black but Greg told me it was inappropriate. Don't you think he was being a little racist to not let me be more black? I just used a bunch of bronzer to make me like a Mexi-Ahoura. Greg said he was "Disposable Character #1". He's usually killed off in the first 5 min. or so of the show. Crazy ole coot.
Here we are, all together:

Here we all are on Halloween night:
Greg was supposed to be the "Edge" from U2 but he forgot to wear his beanie. I don't know what I was. I was like a pimp meets cat in the hat meets Elton John.

And finally, this is a glimpse into the future for Tats and if I never brush hair again.

Awkward Moment

So I went to Costco today. It was super busy and my child was super sick of being strapped into the cart (I finally realize why they have those weird seat belts in the cart). I feel like something is always getting rearranged at Costco. The eggs were gone because they are trying to make a "dairy" section. Well if you're going to make a "dairy" section why not include cheese, butter, cream cheese, cottage cheese, etc.? Whatever.

So I'm in the retarded meat department and now the pork is all gone. All I see is lamb everywhere. I sighed some relief when I saw a meat dude. A butcher if you will. He was facing a meat cart and was unloading some salmon into the salmon section. A burly man with a baseball hat on, short gray hair, some gloves and of course the butcher jacket (which looks an awful lot like a doctor jacket, doesn't it?) I quickly approached him and said, "Excuse me Sir, can you please tell me where the ground pork is?"

But he just sort of ignored me. I was about to repeat myself when he turned around. Um, not a man. Definitely a lady. A burly lady with short hair and not too girly in any way but still definitely a a girl. SHE told me (sorta rudely) that the pork row was just over there. I quickly thanked her and was also thanking the stars that apparently she didn't hear the 'Sir' part when she goes, "And by the way, I'm not a man, I'm a lady." I quickly mumbled that I was so sorry to her as I wheeled away as fast as I could. Woops!

I Love My Cabby!

Remember when you were little (everybody my age) and it was all about the Cabbage Patch Kids? My mom even had some like black market hook-up with my kindergarten teacher, Miss Ollrich, where we went to her house outside of school and bought some of the CPKs. I'm pretty sure they were fakes or else full of drugs.

Well, my fun sister bought Chloe the next generation of CPK when she was little. Chloe was never really into babies because the My Little Ponies had some magic power over her (probably also full of drugs) so we saved it for Tati who LOVES IT!

She:

• Shares her gum with the "Baby".
• Shares her food and drink with baby.
• Wants to change "Baby's" diaper.
• Gets mad if you don't kiss baby at nap time.
• Wants to take the baby in the car every time. If the baby gets left at home, her mother has been known to turn around and go back for it.
• Puts rocks inside the baby's outfit because the baby doesn't have any pockets.

THANK YOU AUNT CARLIE!

Beware!

We got this haunted gingerbread kit from Target (in Idaho) made my Mr. Wilton.


It seemed like a fun idea and easy enough. It even says that word, "easy" several times on the box.

All we had to add to the frosting was water. It came with black and orange frosting.

It came with 3 sample designs of what to decorate.

It came with candies.

It came with decorating tips.

It came with it all.

But Mr. Wilton wasn't expecting it to come with this.

You see, getting the exact "toothpaste" consistently isn't really as easy as just "adding water". So we just went with it. We tried to just "ooze" and "drip" the frosting over the house. It was going to look like black Halloween icicles or something...

It ended up more like a house on tar lake. It was sooo messy! Something else I learned was that my husband has never used a cake decorating tip. It was hilarious. He said he couldn't tell what the tip was doing while he was focusing on frosting not coming out the end. And that is where Tati's decore came from.

Yup, Daddy just dripped those right on her head. Obliviously. He would've continued too except that I said something like, "Um, you know you're dripping on your child's head, right?" but I guess to Greg it might've sounded more like this, "GREG, YOU BAFOON WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!! YOU'RE DRIPPING FROSTING ALL OVER THE TABLE, ALL OVER THE FLOOR, ON MY FOOT, AND ON TATI'S HEAD!!!!!!!! STOP THE FROSTING!!! SHUT IT DOWNNNN!!"

So here we are in the end. I can't say it was the best gingerbread house ever, but dang it sure was fun! One of my highlights was when Chloe turned to Greg and said, "Daddy, Tati looks like a tar baby." Ahh, the memories.

Happy Halloween!

Penapedia

**Warning--HIGH GEEK LEVEL DETECTED** Do you love pens, markers, pencils? Take this quiz:

1. Do you know the width of the tip of your pen?
2. Have you been known to turn your nose up at a Bic?
3. Have you ever spent over $5 on a package of pens? (or even just a single one?)
4. Do you have a definite preference between liquid ink or ballpoint?
5. Do you have a special place where you store only YOUR pens?
6. Do you know all the good spots to buy writing utensils in town?
7. Have you ever mourned the loss of your favorite mechanical pencil for a week?
8. Do you keep more than one writing utensil in your bag and switch between them while taking notes or working on projects?
9. Can you get lost in the office supplies section of the BYU Bookstore or Staples or spend ridiculous amounts of time there?
10. Do any of these names ring a bell: Gelly Roll, Zig, Pentel, Zebra, Cross, Pilot?

If you answered YES to 5 or more, you may be a Marker Maniac, a Preferential Pencil user, or even a Penaphile (ill, something about that sounds so wrong) so read on. The rest of you weirdos might want to skip until the next post. Come take a walk with me down my road of pen evolution: My brother goes to Japan on business quite often. Japan might be one of the greatest pen meccas ever. As a souvenir from one of his trips, he brought me these beauties by Pilot. They are called Hi-Tech. They range in color from yellow (which is awesome on black paper) to black. + They write like a dream come true. You never thought you could write so small and so clearly. +They don't bleed through paper (these are awesome use on your scriptures). -They are one high maintenance pen. They dry up fast and if the tip is pushed too hard by your child (just saying) the tip will sink in. -They are hard to find. -They are on the expensive side. **Not to be confused with pinnipeds which of course we all know are members of the seal, walrus family.

Going Batty!

Presenting...

Bernard!

Barbara!

Betty!

and Bam Bam!

I love decorating for Halloween. If you're looking for a fun family project, here's one we did.

Check it out. This project took us 2 days because of glue drying time. If you use a glue gun I bet you could do it all in one day.

What you'll need:

• One black sock/bat
• Googly Eyes
• Small bit of white fabric (fangs)
  
• Small piece of string (smile)
  
• Black construction paper (wings)
  
• Embroidery floss (in Halloween colors) or yarn (decoration/hold the sock closed)
  
• Newspaper or paper towel (stuffing)
  
• Elmer's glue
• A big stick
• Some twine
  

Here's how to do it:

1. Get some old black socks. Stuff them with newspaper, paper towels, or other old socks. Stuff them to the desired size of your batty.
   
2. Tie off the sock with embroidery floss or yard then cut off the excess sock off with scissors.
3. Decorate your sock with googly eyes, string for smile, flannel for fangs, embroidery floss eyelashes, embroidery floss hair bows, an old bracelet your child doesn't wear for a necklace, small triangles for ears, etc. We just used normal good ole Elmer's white glue.
4. Get 2 pieces of black construction paper or card stock for each pair of wings (depending on how big you want your wings to be). Each wing needs a front and back. Draw the wing design with a white crayon on a doubled (folded) paper. Then cut out. We taped bits of pipe cleaners onto one side of the paper to look sorta like the wing bones and also to give it some strength. Then we glue sticked around the edges and stuck together.
5. Before finishing up the very ends of the wings, we inserted a popsicle stick into each side of the wing so if you held a popsicle stick in the middle, you'd have wing on either side.
6. Fastening the wings was the hardest part. We finally used velcro. One piece of velcro on the popsicle stick (in between the wings) and one piece on the bat body. With velcro you can make them more packable for the following year too.
7. Finally you just hang them on the stick. Put the string on the stick first and hang it on the wall to figure out how long you want each bat to hang. Hang them at different levels and different distances. I tried to hang each bat right next to a knot in the wood to give them support and also so they wouldn't move.

If you make some, send me a pic and make sure to tell me their names.