HallowAnniversary

10 years!  It's hard to believe it's been 10 years!  We've been together for 13 so it feels like I've know Jarrett forever.  He still makes me laugh and treats me like gold.  He helps with kids, does the dishes and folds the laundry.  He's the fixer, the instruction reader, the hair out of the bathtub and sink cleaner (thanks).He will quickly step up and take over when I feel like I've had enough and need a break.  He's my best friend, my shoulder to cry on and listens to my endless rantings.  Thank you and I love you.

Having your Anniversary on Halloween, usually means we spend the evening with the kids Trick or Treating. But what's wrong with that?  It hasn't always been like that and it won't always be that way.  We have 364 other days to do things with each other.  We got up, exercised together, laid around the house, played Uno and Kinect Sports with Max, went to Lilly's Halloween parade, went to dinner and went Trick or Treating. It may not be everyone's "Dream Anniversary" but it was pretty darn good to me.

Anniversary dinner with the kids.

Nacho

My sister as "Beth" from Dog the Bounty Hunter

Trick or Treating

About half the loot

My sister and I and our kids

Everyone who dressed up

Birds on a wire

 Every morning for the last month or two I have seen this sight:

 Between 8:30 and 9am they all flock to this wire above our neighbor across the street's house.  They are so funny to watch and remind me of this Pixar short HERE.
As each new group of 4 or 5 fly up they all squawk  in annoyance and move down to make room.  Ha ha!  I love slowing down and discovering little things in nature like this.   It makes me happy.

Tombstones

Max has been begging and begging and begging me to make a "graveyard" for our yard.  Don't get me wrong, I love Halloween and would love to do a big Halloween scene in our yard, but we seem to have the bad luck of always being targeted by the low life's in town.   We've had flowers and  pumpkins stolen, and quite frankly I'm afraid to to put anything in our yard.  And we have no extra money to spend on Halloween decorations, so we make do with what we have ....or what is free.
 So Jarrett brought home some cardboard boxes from work to make some graves.  But then what if it gets windy or rains? Plus we have no black paint to paint it with, and cardboard is enough of a pain to cut, that it would suck to have them ruined, or stolen plus they wouldn't be long term.
About a year ago, Jarrett found some particle board in the dumpster. (Yes, the dumpster.  The same one we found the bike and sandbox in.) behind his work.  That thing is a gold mine! It was painted black already and we've used it to make a work table for the garage.  So Jarrett had the awesome idea to use his jigsaw (he got from his Dad and has been wanting to use) to cut the particle board and make tombstones out of it.  So I drew on grave shapes and Jarrett cut it out and I found some oil pastels and let the kids draw on the tombstones.
 *Although painting them with chalkboard paint and using chalk would be awesome and maybe some year when we have more money I may do that. That way you could change the words on the tombstone as often as you wanted.
Jarrett cut up an old curtain rod (in 3 pieces) and we stuck them in the ground and we leaned the tombstones against them. There you go FREE graveyard that won't blow away in the wind.

P.S. I'll be moving the graves before night fall....just in case.

Halloween Costumes

We had our neighborhood/ward Trunk or Treat tonight so we all got dressed up in our costumes.  So we took some pictures.  Here they are.

Max was Batman

Lilly was Bat Woman (Not Bat Girl, Comic book fanatics at this house would be appalled if I got it wrong.)

Jarrett and I were Nacho and Encarnacion . From the Movie Nacho Libre.

The Whole Family

I made all the costumes except mine, I borrowed it from my sister who got it at a Thrift Shop.

Halloween Pumpkins and Roasted Pumpkin seeds

*Yesterday we carved pumpkins.  My sister came over to do hers as well.
* I roasted the pumpkin seeds after we were done.  This is the recipe I always use, My mom got it from a newspaper a long time ago.  It was like a first place winner recipe or something.  It's really yummy.

Wash and dry pumpkin seeds
Boil them in heavily salted water for 2-3 minutes
Strain them and in a separate bowl mix the following ingredients:

3 Tbsp butter, melted
1 tsp salt
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
About 2 c. pumpkin seeds

Mix the seeds and other ingredients well
Heat oven to 225 Fahrenheit
Line a cookie sheet with foil and pour seed mixture onto it.
Spread out the seeds and cook in oven for about 1-2 hours until seeds are crisp stirring seeds every 15-20 minutes.

Wacky hair day

* Today Lilly's school had wacky hair day
*A helicopter came to their school and gave everyone chapstick?  And Lilly said she's going to be on the news?  Not sure what that's all about but.......
*Lost my glasses and had to look for them for an hour and a half...I need to pay more attention to where I put my stuff.
* Carving pumpkins tonight...can't wait.
* I am attempting to sever my ties to Facebook.  It mostly just makes me angry.  Too many people telling other people what they think is acceptable to post.  This is my substitute for Facebook posts.  I'm going to write about my day and what's on my mind here.  Plus this will get published in ink at the end of the year and my Facebook posts are lost in cyber space.
* Almost finished with the Halloween costumes.
*Played Uno with Max again today. (7 games)  He loves that game and I love that he can play a game to help him recognize is numbers and colors.
*Ate a fried chicken TV dinner.  It was good.  30 grams of fat good.  Been a long time Hungry man, it's been a long time.
*Raked the neighborhood leaves out of our yard.....again.  3 black garbage bags full so far.  I really shouldn't complain.  It's exercise, and we enjoy the shade from the trees all summer.
* The kids and I made a scarecrow last night out of Walmart bags stuffed with leaves (we've got plenty) and Jarrett's old clothes.  The kids were so excited.  Too bad he doesn't have any arms.

*  Lilly got the Geneva Giant of Week award at school for excellence in reading and writing.
* I took this picture about a week ago while scootering around the track with Max.

* Jarrett and I went on a date about a week ago.  Dinner and a movie.  It's been a long time since we've done that..Too long.  Here is a picture from said date:  We waited almost 45 minutes for our food.  At Arby's.  What?

* We turned on the sprinklers one last time  about a week ago and Max ran through them.  Lilly was at a Birthday party.  Jarrett took this cute photo of Max.

*  The kids and I made these bats for our wall over Fall break last week.  Would have made more but we had no more paper.

Watercolor Wednesday Week 35

This is the winner for the wedding gift.  I found an awesome picture of the two of them dressed up for Halloween and so I drew them up and painted a post apocalyptic background and both my husband and I love it.  Having their faces covered and/or  painted, takes away the cheese factor (Not that there is anything wrong with the traditional posed painted picture of a couple as a wedding gift, it's just "not them") and the pressure to make the painting look like them.  But the costumes and pose will (hopefully) make it so they can tell exactly who it is.  Plus they like the whole post apocalyptic  scenario so.............I hope they love it.  I'm going to mat and frame it as well. Not that there is anything wrong with a painted picture of a couple as a wedding gift, it's just "not them

Here is another painting I did as a possibility for the gift:

View my other paintings HERE.
UPDATE: Here is the wedding gift framed.

Halloween

Halloween has always held a special place in my heart.  I have lots of really good memories of Halloween from my youth. My dad would help us make Halloween decorations and he would always bring home a piece of butcher paper from work (he was an art teacher) the size of our door and we would draw and color a life size witch stirring her cauldron and hang it on our door.  My Dad always took us Trick or Treating and took us out until our bags broke from the weight of the candy.   he also used to always take us to Taylor Maid in the mall and scare the crap out of us by trying on the scariest mask he could find and chasing us around the store.  He used to LOVE to scare us and I now do the same thing to my kids.  Not sure why I get such a kick out of scaring people....kids especially because they are so easy to scare.    I think one of best jobs I could ever have would be to work at a Haunted House.  I would LOVE to do that.  L O V E!
Jarrett and I were married on Halloween, despite our parents urging to "choose another day" and people telling us that we would "live to regret" that decision.   I apparently haven't lived long enough because I haven't regretted it yet.  Halloween has got to be the best holiday ever!  I thought it would be fun to show a bunch of Halloween photos of us through the years...since it is our 10 year Anniversary!

2000
This photo is having issues....obviously.

 2001

2003
Blurry, but the only one we've got..

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008
Learned how to make this fake skin and blood at a scouting activity by a really, really old man.  I need to make a post about it.  Oddly enough I was only one writing down the info...?  what?  I was a "gunshot wound victim" this year, with all that mess that is  on my arm in this photo (this was a trial run the day before), on my face (forehead to be exact.)  But for some reason neither Jarrett or I can find any photos of it. ??/??????

I should mention that the photo below is my mom, my  kids, and sister's little boy.  This is the only photo we can find of our kids for this year.

2009

2010

2011

costumes yet to come....but we can't resist a Halloween store.

Click HERE to see Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up about Halloween.