The girls came down with the plague for Halloween this week. Good thing we took pictures of them in their costumes before the snot hit the fan. They had to miss out on halloween parties, playdates, and some special things going on at school, so we tried to make it a fun week in spite of being homebound. So: movies, games, and crafts... and all four of us got addicted to listening round the clock to this awesome Halloween internet radio station. We carved the pumpkins and toasted the seeds, and I've been digging my new halloween-ish argyle socks.

Here's a fun Halloween account I found and it made me laugh:

Here's a spin on reverse-trick-or-treating that I got a kick out of. I grew up in a college town, and one Halloween our doorbell rang and we opened the door expecting to see trick-or-treaters-- but what was in front of our open door--was another door! Like, a full-on wooden door, that had a sign that said "Please knock." So we did, and the door swung open to reveal a bunch of college dudes dressed as really old grandmothers, curlers in their hair, etc, who proceeded to coo over our "costumes" and tell us we were "such cute trick or treaters!" One even pinched my cheek. Then THEY gave US candy, closed their door, picked it up and walked to the next house. It was amazing.

I think the most creative thing I've seen in our neighborhood happened a couple years ago; a strolling minstrel with his guitar, serenading trick or treaters. He was with a girl in Renaissance clothing that walked along with him handing out candy. We kept crossing paths and it was so darn cute.

Hope you cross paths with something creative --or better yet, make something cool of your own this Halloween. And beware of the Halloween plague...

The spiders are back up this Halloween at our house. We added some new faces. If you know us and I have a photo of you, there's a good chance you have a spider alter-ego swinging from my new living room light. I love this light, plus Jeff installed a dimmer switch for it for cool mood lighting. Now we just need to buy a couch to go under it. Details.


We started bowling with some friends on Wednesdays after school, which is fun, hopefully we'll keep it up through the winter. Sabre Lanes in Menasha has a Wed. deal of $4 per kid, and it includes the game, shoes, a snack and a drink. We also roller skated this past Saturday for the first time this season also, and the girls picked it up again pretty fast. I was the biggest dork when I skated around all blissed out to one of my new favorite songs. Feel lucky there's no picture of that.

I'm also loving Pomplamoose, especially their covers-- like this one and this one.

And while on the subject of cool 20-somethings doing great things, one of our kids' favorite babysitters is working and studying in Nicaragua right now. Her blog has been fun to keep up with. I am amazed at her insight and her writing. Reading it, it is hard to remember she is only 20.

I was thinking that it would be fun to have one of these. Or one of these. Christine likes hers. Just lookin' though.

It's been good for me to volunteer at Maddie's school library and be part of a library system again. I love that I'm getting reacquainted with the children's authors and learning the new series and genres they're into. I've been helping her teacher get library resources on South America for their big semester research project. And at the last minute I said I would write up the school newsletter for 2009/2010 which has been more fun to do than I thought it would be. Desktop publishing (is it still called that?) has always been fun for me, even though the text boxes drive me nutsy in Word.

When we got our new computer, we started using Windows Vista. I would say the only real difference this has made in our lives is the option you have a tiny slide show of your photos on the desktop. It's small and unobtrusive, but still noticeable. We have it scrolling through all of our photos on the external drive, from the time the girls were born until now. It can be hell on productivity. As in, "I think I will just look in at our checking account to see if this bill cleared and OH my GOSH, look at that baby's cheeks. C'mere! Do you remember her cheeks looking like that?" Or: "I'm going to send the teacher an e-mail, because, OH! Maddie, look! Remember when you used to make that crazy face all the time?!" And sometimes it is eerily on target, like the moment we sold the outdoor playhouse on Craigslist, these photos scrolled over the desktop:

It's as if it has a mind of its own sometimes. But I especially like the randomness of the past reaching out to grab us in our present whether we were in the frame of mind for it or not.

We saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs last week and enjoyed it, but the last 20 minutes were really intense for the girls and brought them both to tears. They're still not really ready for the in-your-face action and drama of the movie theater, which sort of secretly makes me happy.

I don't want them to be media-hardened quite yet.

We went apple picking, so I got good at making a lot of crock pot applesauce, apple crisp, and apple-zucchini bread (because we also had lots of zukes before we pulled out the gardens).

Freebies? Okay. I enjoyed This post where she describes how to make your own sticky tapes with your own designs from dingbat fonts, etc. She provides this free download to make your own sticky tapes or just for using as a pattern paper like I'm going to do.

Maddie and some of her friends have been trading books, so I was on the lookout for cute bookplates. I found these sweet collection of free printables here: http://www.mixtapezine.com/images/bookplates.pdf

I was checking out Ali Edwards' new digital design template, and was reading her 10 things. One of them was about how she loves this show called Speaking of Faith on public radio, so I started Podcasting it. It is wonderful; I'm not sure how I hadn't come across it before. High in spirituality and low on dogma.

Our book club read this month was Three Cups of Tea and it was amazing. I can't recommend it enough. And my mom sent the girls the picture book version which they love; it has beautiful artwork.

Here's me chaperoning at Mia's field trip to The New Zoo in Green Bay. We'd never been there before; it was a lot nicer than I'd realized.

And lastly, how fun is this? My kids love The Sound of Music and keep asking to watch it. So cool.

God grant me the serenity

to accept the fact that I can't make

every room in this house a craft room:

Give me courage to clean the studio I have;

and wisdom to know the difference.

Hahaha, I saw this on artjunkgirl's blog and identified. I re-did the family room downstairs to have a craft area for the kids, plus it seems I can't keep craft stuff off the kitchen surfaces either. Not to mention that I already have a perfectly good scrap room... and the unfinished part of the basement is Jeff's craft/hobby area. So far the bedrooms and the bathrooms have been safe at least.

We finally finished our mosaics we started at The Fire last month. I managed to make mine match my mailbox totally on accident, yay.

I've been a little obsessed with flag garlands which have been a trend for awhile now... see here, here, and here... so I made some small ones to go on the girls' wall shelves that hold their initials. I'm really wanting to make a couple with my fabric scraps to go in the downstairs family room too.

My neighbor Maria bought all our kids their own embroidery hoops and earlier this summer they all sat on the porch and started hand stitching their initials in felt. We were surprised that all took right to it. It was abandoned it for awhile, but then the girls finished them this week. I helped them make them into small pillows. After Maria had to show me yet again how to thread my machine. It had been awhile. (And speaking of embroidery hoops, I love the design trend all over the place of using them as a frame on the wall. See here, here, here, and here. And, I really want to make this).

While we were at it, we made ourselves some homemade 'Ugly Dolls'. Have you seen these for sale? The kids have been wanting to buy some but I told them all along we could make some that looked just as ugly, so we set out to prove we could. They hand stitched the faces and most of the sides and I machine stitched them the rest of the way shut after stuffing them with batting. I really cannot sew at all, but there's no pressure when the finished product is supposed to be ugly in the first place. Jeff was even getting in on it, helping them with their stitches when they got stuck.

Before deleting them here, I printed out my blog archives into a book at Blurb.com. Very inexpensive compared to most... mine was around 120 pages I think, and it came to $44. It's a sturdy hardbound copy; and the photos printed great on the pages, especially for being small internet size file photos.

KI Memories made some of their most popular products into digital kits now which makes me happy because I can buy the $4 kit that contains my very favorite pattern paper in the world: the Colorful Simple Stripe. I *still* use this paper, it makes me happy. Now I can print it out whenever I want to use it or add small amounts of it to digital elements. Yeah, typing that just made me laugh because there has been no scrapbooking... but now that the weather is changing, I think I'll get back to it.

Want some freebies? I printed out some copyright free art here this week to hang up for inspiration, and also came across some free fun library card pdf printables here. This page has some really beautiful, classic digital elements; all free. And here's some cool to-do list printables.

Maddie, plowing through library chapter books this summer

We finally made it to a kickball with the QL's, Taylors, and Lewises. Who knew there was such thing as a Green Meadows Park? Who knew picking teams would make me feel 10 yrs. old and last picked (again)? In spite of that, much fun.

Picking our salads from the yard

Mia playing dress up with my favorite shoes

Tomatoes on the windowsill

Playdate dress-up always makes its way outside.

Farmer's Market Raspberries

A collage of some photos I took for a friend this summer. Maddie and Mia want to wear their dad's uniform too after seeing these. I like them, but some just further proved that I need an external flash. Eventually.

On our way to Iowa, we went to the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison. We always have fun there. We stopped and ate at Zulu's Cafe across the street; it had great food and coffee. In Iowa, we ate dinner at a great place right on the Iowa River; check out our table view. We took some pics outside too. It was good to see how the Coralville area finally seems to have recovered from last year's flooding.

I was playing around in picnik and I love the Orton-ish effect you can apply to your photos there. But I had no idea what that meant, so I looked it up and learned something new. And a one button click is a lot easier than all those steps in Photoshop. I applied it a little to this pic of Mia and I on the carousel and the one of me and the girls. Fun. I like the 'Matte' effect too, the ones with the edges lightened instead of darkened vignetting like I usually do.

Wow, I hadn't updated any links on this blog in years. So I just updated my favorite scrap blog links over there on the left; adding more of the blogs I actually go to when I get the time. Which is hardly ever, but I like having them all there in one place when I do.

One of the highlights of our trip to Illinois this week were fireflies or lightning bugs, depending on your...dialect? The kids had so much fun staying up until dark and chasing them all around with their cousins. Does anyone know why we don't have them here locally? Is it all of Wisconsin that is firefly barren or is it just certain areas? Hm. I miss them.

The Quinceanera was lots of fun; lots of dancing and good food. I'm glad we had been to one before so we were kind of familiar with all the stages of the celebration. In the 3rd pic the kids are doing some sort of electric slide-ish dance; check out how both of them have their tongue sticking out because they're concentrating on the steps so hard. They so get that from their dad!

We also had lots of fun at my brother's house just hanging out. I love this pic of my mom telling the kids a story outside.

Today we picked strawberries for the first time at Cuff's Farm. Good thing you don't have to pay for what you eat in the field, that's for sure. Tomorrow I'm making strawberry muffins and maybe a pie.

Lots of wading pool and slip & slide time in the yard on these hot afternoons. Jeff found our old inflatable plastic ball pit and we put that out there too. How many more things do you think we can throw into this yard? Gardens, clothesline, playsets... heck, with the road closed I might just stake some pink flamingos out there.

We had a really nice time "up north", in spite of rain, clouds, and tick sightings (really disliked the ticks). We took our bikes, and got them out on Tuesday for a ride. We saw many deer and one turkey. We had a nest of baby birds in a hollow tree close to the house we kept tabs on. Jeff got a fire burning outside for s'mores, and fires inside to play board games in front of. (We just bought 'Uno spin' and its the kids' favorite). The owner of the house had an awesome collection of 8-track tapes with a player-- it took me right back to being a kid. My parents used to have a lot of the same music they did on 8-track: Seals & Crofts, America, Abba... tons of 70's classics.

The girls got to climb a winding staircase to their bedroom which they thought was completely cool. There was a sand mountain in the backyard, providing hours of fun. (Notice, true to character, I made them wear their bike helmets while up there). They were Queens of the Hill.

The thing I love most about the Crivitz/Peshtigo area is the proliferance of supper club signs, grouped together at intersections.

Summer has been slow and easy so far. We've had some playdates, some crafting, lots of playing outside with the neighbors. Summer school starts this week and the kids are also taking tumbling on Mondays through parks and rec, giving us a little more routine to our days.

The girls had fun at the APBA golf outing this week, riding in golf carts and water-gun squirting participants. We also watched Jeff march in the flag day parade, which was fun, but hot. We bugged out early and swam at a freind's pool to cool off.

Maddie brought up a couple times that she misses school, her teacher, her friends. This makes me happy... and hopeful that second grade will be just as fun but minus the social adjustment stress she had for the first half of the year.

I think my tooth is cracked. My dentist has tried various things, and I've seen a specialist, trying to figure out what the deal is and hoping all along that it was not a fracture (I already had a root canal on the tooth last year). But we've pretty much ruled out all else, which means a tooth extraction and implant in my future, costing a ridiculous amount of money that insurance does not cover. I'm waiting as long as I can to be sure, but I'd really like to fully chew on that side of my mouth again someday. Has anyone gone through this? I think I just need someone to tell me to stop pretending it will go away and just have it pulled. It just seems so.... final.

We're off to Illinois this week to see many, many people in 4 days. And going to a Quinceanera -- Jeff's niece, in Chicago-- should be fun. Still, with so much visiting on the agenda, I'm already looking forward to being home and back to our slow summer again...