Neighborhood Dress-Up

Our Halloween was grand. All rustling leaf kicking, mulled cider and laughing murmur of conversation. The big boys (demonstrating our slide into video games this year) were a Mario Luigi duo. They are the most innocuous and classic of video game characters so I couldn't complain too much. How upset can you really be when your four year old is standing there grinning with an enormous faux handlebar mustache happy as the day is long? Not very upset. Mama picks her battles.

There was an astounding and record breaking amount of candy gathering. The big boys are getting to be very stout walkers and Ru in particular is quite enamoured of ringing doorbells which all winds up meaning three gigantic jars full of candy on my top pantry shelf. And this after The Great Binge when we returned to the house. Gah! Yipes.

I think I will continue investigating candy-free stocking stuffers and Easter Basket contents and find pretty little paper-cutting ways to celebrate St. Valentine's Day lest our home be mistaken for Willy Wonka's great factory! Good for me anyhow...gives some starch to the direction I was leaning and the ideas I was hoping to eventually work into. Sugar mustn't be allowed to be the only way to celebrate.

The leaves are coming down fast now. There's a shivery chill on the wind and I find myself noticing it extra now that several of our friends are out of power and shuddering along in the dark wondering when the power company will get to their road. Seemed like just last I was thinking to myself that even though it was technically fall the  weather didn't feel like it had really turned much yet. I'm not sure if I started paying attention or if the thermometer is starting to get serious now that it is officially November.

We're almost to the weekend and its going to be one of those crispy, pink nosed ones where you have a log fire in the morning on Saturday and then go off to pick apples later in the day. My friend, Nutmeg brought me a box of Indian Spice tea and I'm thinking a big pot of chai would hit the spot in the thermos on the way!

The Photo Booth Lives On!

We had a big party over the weekend and there was an accidental benefit that I didn't expect. One of the ideas I had for this party was setting up a little makeshift photo booth. Amid the furor of trying to get the house ready and set up all the goods before the party-goers arrived, a very sweet friend knocked on the door and very impromtu, threw her soul into helping me not lose my mind and instead turn out a thoroughly successful bash. In the process my little photo booth idea went from wincingly unplausible to super fun.

My pal rocks and she realized that I needed more interesting costume finery in the booth for people to play with for their shoots. So she went home and came back with a trunkful of fabulous disguise booty. She is a really cool friend. I dare you, find a friend like that.  So then....and although I forgot to write up an instruction sheet, demonstrate how it worked or encourage people to try it out...and my poor little photo booth idea was virtually ignored during the party....it was still ultimately a big win.

Party is long over, all the decorations have been packed away and most of the cake got polished off...but that bin of photo booth paraphernalia has just begun to live! Thank you photo booth, you made my boys discover dress-up.

Hee hee! Too bad we have to return all the fabulous accessories...time to start our own collection I think. I dig this parade of characters and I don't want them to go away anytime soon! And I think the photo booth will make a return appearance at another party someday. It was an idea too good to do just once. 

Life Potpourri

Little potpourri of our life lately. Today was a good day. 

Big trucks in the yard much to the glee of my boys bearing three lumberjacks with cigarettes clamped in their grins, lustily removing trees and adding sunlight to my garden plot. Yay light! Amazing when you just call professionals and then they just come do work for you. I am not used to white collar life.

I had a long chatty visit with my aunt, watched the baby taking teetery steps across the living room and gently watered my tiny sprouting seeds that are living so very happily on the radiator in the front window. The potted gardenia we bought in the grocery store recently (the world's most suicidal plant) is suddenly blooming and scenting the whole sunroom. Victory delayed is a few levels deeper.

Then I baked two chocolate cakes from scratch in preparation for the world's most intimidating prospect....my first Fairfield county child birthday party. Saturday we'll be throwing open the doors and welcoming all of Ru's little friends to a circus extravaganza and I will not panic! I can hardly wait. Anyhow, the cake cakes are done. (I started to bake only one and realized that I needed way more cake than that.)

The weather is finally warm and suddenly I am awash in happy smells and misty rainy mornings. We're jacket on/jacket off fiends and we can hardly think up a reason to stay indoors when pressed. Good problems.

Ru: At The Moment

Our oldest turned five two days ago. Five years old. Unbelievable. Party and real celebration is forthcoming (enough time for mommy to feel sane after returning from our trip) but in the meantime, we're busy prepping and talking about all the fun to come, working and re-working his birthday Legos over and over. His first big boy Legos, he's old enough to work the little bitty kind and not just the big variety.

Fun to see what he is developing to be. Time for another listy snapshot, don't you think?

Here's our oldest boy at the moment:

He Likes:

• Animals, especially dogs and horses
• Guns (not Mommy's favorite...not really sure what to do with this one)
• Competition
•  Donuts
• His own private water bottle
• Making faces
• Doing yard work with Daddy
• Lemonade
• Tools 
• The color red
• Washing dishes
• Video game arcades (which he calls "art caves")
• Climbing trees
• His sunglasses
• Bow ties
• Showers
• People

He Dislikes:

• Socks that are too long
• Seafood
• Raisins
• Being put on the spot
• Storms
• Buttoning his pants himself
• Saying goodbye
• Sleeping
• The end of reading time
• Sitting still at dinner
• Small forks
• Having people see him naked
• Spicy foods
• The ends of movies
• Visible herbs in his food

Sugaring Festival

Image via Wikipedia

We drove a great deal this weekend and managed to get all the way up to the top of the state to the part of Connecticut where there is still snow. Far away, up there it is still the end of winter and the maple sap is flowing. A generous farm decided to host a local sugaring festival for free for anyone who wanted to come celebrate. We had a grand time.

There were pony rides (Ru was a very smug fan. I wish I still could fit on a pony.), there were sap and syrup tastings, there pancakes hot off the griddle, there demonstrations of maple cookery and a big evaporator steaming up the attic of the sugar house with the effort of cooking down the farm's arboreal takings.

And then they made sugar-on-the-snow, just like in Lara Ingalls Wilder's story about sugaring off in Little House In The Big Woods.

I've never actually seen it made or tasted it, although I grew up in a family that made maple syrup. I totally get why it is described so fondly in the book. Wow.

The syrup turns into this lovely, moist taffy stuff that is a glowing gold as it spins on your fork (you twirl it up off the snow after it is ladled out) and it mixes with the cold crystals from the snow and ice and gives you this warm/cold feeling as you eat it. So great.

We left remembering just exactly how fond we both feel of this local, American product and decided that next year, maybe we'll try tapping the  maple trees by our house. There are two that would be unobtrusive to tap, in our back yard and then if we got brave we could tap the two others along the street in the front yard. Do you know any stories of urban tapping?

Halloween of Yore...

It was a great Halloween. I called it the best one in our memory as a family although A said that he thought we'd had others just as happy and full of cheer. I may be a child of the moment, only really remembering what I just ate or maybe it really was just that fabulous. Who knows.

I was a gardener (I had leaves and sticks in my hair) and Nib was my yard gnome. The big boys were both firemen of course.

There was a wonderful dinnertime open-house costume party at the next door neighbors. The grown-up wore costumes, even if they didn't have little kids, there were lots of homemade get-ups and everyone was very warm and jolly, grinning at each other and swapping stories over the pizza and caramel apple dip. At exactly the right time the party disbanded in a whirl of glitter and feathers and pretend noses....and we all took to the streets to wish each other a happy autumn, make introductions, hand out candy to each other's children and kick our way through the leaves on all the sidewalks.

Here's a neighbor at the costume party who was also a gnome. So funny to see them together!

Dee collected lollipops on his rounds saying when asked what he'd like from a basket or bowl "I like lollipops." and then carried them in bouquets all over town. They didn't go in the bucket...just in the hand.

A said that it was truly surreal trick-or-treating...crowds of people out halloing across the street and parents back slapping each other over their children's costume choices and neighbors passing out glow-in-the-dark bracelets for all the small ones trooping down the street. Such a fabulous sense of community and togetherness and warmth and trust. I am won over, completely.

A is a careful and studious carver and spends a good bit of time on his creation every year. This year he was carving swiss cheese holes in his pumpkin to make a gleeful Sponge Bob.

And here are all of them on the porch: Mommy, Dee, Daddy and Ru...four in a row.

Our pumpkins we carved were wonderful this year too. No botched slips of the knife, very warm and cheery glows and I'm cooking them down today to make them twice useful. Pumpkin pie, here we come!