Halloween Fun

For some reason I haven't been quite as excited about Halloween this year as other years. Maybe it's the early snow that has put my brain in "winter mode" about a month too early. Anyway, I decided this week that it was time to stop being a Halloween scrooge and have a little fun. Thanks to Valerie's excellent idea I saved myself some money by making Halloween gift bags out of envelopes. Mine aren' quite as fancy as hers as I lack the ability to fold corners and just left them bottomless. They look really cute and the girls both loved them.


Cheyenne and Isabella have been having spooky playdough fun with google eyes and my Halloween cookie cutters. I love this bat.

I have replaced one cup of my morning coffee with a homemade version of a Hot Apple Blast. We got the apple cider at an apple orchard this Sunday when we went on an adventure. We took a road we had never taken before and ended up in Red Wing, a cute little river town south of the Twin Cities. Along the way we stopped at an apple orchard. In addition to the cider we got some of their homemade honey roasted peanut butter. Amazing! The hot apple blast is just hot apple cider with whipped cream and caramel ice cream syrup.

Tonight we are having a friend over to make jack-o-lantern pizzas, Halloween cupcakes and Purple Mermaid Punch.

For Aunt Fran

This post is entirely for the benefit of Zach's Aunt Fran, who I just e-mailed the link to my blog. I knew I had been bad last year about correspondence, but apparently I've been worse than I thought. It turns out we had neglected to inform Fran of the birth of the newest Griffith baby! Really. What kind of niece does that?

Anyway, I promised that the blog would be chock full of pictures of my kids and then realized that, since school started, I haven't posted many pictures of them. I'd post more of James, but I'm not kidding, he never sits still and they're almost all a blur.

So here you go, Aunt Fran. Can you even believe how big they've gotten.

Fall

Well, Fall finally arrived. I think the leaves were utterly confused. We went from 75 degrees and sunny to snow to 50 degrees and rainy in the span of about a week. Fall is my absolute favourite season even though it lasts, at best, for about six weeks. This week it was more like two. Some of the trees are already bare. I did manage to get out and capture a few nice fall shots though.

Outsourcing my DIY Holiday

Knowing my limits is not something I've ever been good at. That's why I was forced to give up Martyrdom for lent last year. I tend to take on too many tasks and then end up throwing myself an ice cream and hot fudge pity party for myself at 3AM trying to pull everything together.

No where has this been more true than Christmas. I love handmade Christmas gifts. Every fall I get crafty little daydreams and create big lists of things I will make by December 25th, like the year I decided to hand embroider monogrammed tea towels for each of my coworkers in their favourite colour.

This year I have had to concede that my DIY basment remodel isn't going to leave me adequate time for an entirely DIY Christmas, so I've decided to outsource some of the crafting and just buy stuff on Etsy. The first of my treasures arrived today. I bought two of these mermaid soaps, one in purple for Cheyenne and one in pink for Isabella. This is going to be a Santa gift.


This is the year the girls decided to ask if Santa was real. I wish they would have asked their father. I give entirely too much information. It turned into a big explanation about how Santa Claus is really a third century bishop from what is now called Turkey who supposedly gave dowry money to a poor man who had three daughters. Which led to the inevitable questions, "what is a dowry?" and "so Santa Claus is dead?" Neither of which, I am sad to say, had a handy sugar coated explanation. Suffice it to say my cheerfully morbid little girls have been gleefully showing off their newfound knowledge by telling just about everyone they meet that "Santa is dead!" Why couldn't I have left it at "yes?" It wouldn't be a lie. He was real, and if I'd thought of that in time I'd probably have spared a few of their little friends some trauma.

On a lighter note, I also ordered this lovely for two of my closest friends. That's right. It's glow in the dark Eric Northman soap. Mmmmm.

Swim with the Fishes

Last week Zach took a 10 year old kid he mentors to the Mall of America's Underwater Adventures Aquarium to participate in their Swim with the Fishes program where people 10 and older get the chace to snorkle in the Rainbow Reef tank with a guide from Underwater Adventures.

The kid, who I'll call G, wants to be a marine biologist when he grows up, but he doesn't have a lot of confidence and he struggles some with school and friendships. In my opinion nothing motivates a kid to learn more than excitement and this kind of experience would give him a taste for the real thing.

The staff were great. When I called to reserve a spot they made note of his interest in marine biology so the people helping him could encourage him and answer any questions he might have. As the woman on the phone said, "there's nothing like a stingray swimming right by you to get you excited about the ocean."

I'm a little jealous, really. Maybe someday I'll give it a try. It could be a good birthday or Christmas present for the kids when they get older too.

He Finally Sat Still Long Enough to Get a Photo!

This post is really nothing but a shameless "look at how stinkin' adorable my baby is" post. I have nothing useful to say. Just sit back and enjoy the cuteness.

A Party at the Park

The first Friday our new neighbors, Silverwood Park, host their Fireside First Fridays event. It's an evening time party with a nature theme. This month's theme was The Moon. We gathered in the by the gallery fireplace to sing songs and watch a shadow puppet show about the moon.

This was followed by a chance to make our own shadow puppets and try them out with the moon shaped shadow puppet theaters that had been placed in the event hall. Bella made a bat. Cheyenne made a bunny, a girl and a tractor. The moons were made of freezer paper taped onto a big wooden circle. I bet I could do this using one of my very large embroidery hoops and one of Zach's LED shop lights as a light source. The puppets are made of construction paper, brads (to make the parts move) and bamboo skewers. They were really easy and we had a lot of fun. Even our neighbor, a woman about my mom's age who's kids are grown and gone, had a great time making them.

Finally we roasted marshmallows in the patio fireplace. We will definitely be attending more of these Fireside First Fridays. It was a great chance to get out of the house and meet the community and it was a lot of fun.