The Elsa Halloween

Halloween just passed.

Hmmm, why didn't I mention it sooner? I am not a big fan of Halloween which I have written about before. Therefore, my girls are not big fans of Halloween either. I swear I made Halloween fun when they were little. They always went trick or treating with their cousins in the best neighborhood, they sorted and traded their candy and went to sleep that night with smiles on their faces. I guess my "love" of Halloween is transparent now. 

We still carve pumpkins, though. Well, we carved them this year at 4:30 on Halloween night, but they were spookily glowing in no time and I made pumpkin seeds, too.  That counts, right?

                                             B and her friends getting in on the fun

At the elementary school where I work, it is tradition to have a parade of the kids (grade 2-4) downtown, while the younger children walk around the fire station. Our fire station is in the middle of being rebuilt so we jogged around the local infield once. It was perfect. Oh, what was I dressed as? A cowgirl because it was easy and comfy. 

The funny thing was that out of the 100 or so children in the kindergarten and first grade, 50 or so are girls. There were 14 Elsa's out of that 50. Basically a third of the girls in K and 1st grade were Elsa. The librarian brought them all into the library and had them sing Let It Go which I so wish I could post here because it was adorable.

I never took pictures of my girls before they went to their respective parties, but I did get my niece and 2 of her besties (one of which was Elsa!).

Damn, it would have been a good week to buy Disney stock.....

Halloween: Past and Present

Halloween has come a long way since I was little. We, for the most part, would go to KMart and buy a costume in a box: mask included. We would shove our puffy ski jackets underneath the plastic to stay warm (9 times out of 10 it was cold). Sometimes my mom would get creative or I outgrew the box costumes and I would wind up as a raisin (with a worm coming out of me?) or a cleaning woman. Who knew that the cleaning woman would become a self fulfilling prophecy. I am always picking something up or wiping something down.

At our elementary school, now, we have a parade. The children are not allowed to collect candy on this downtown walk, but we all parade around anyway. Yes, I was a giraffe. No box costume for me. This was B's Halloween costume from last year that we ordered from a sketchy website and it arrived stuffed in a sketchy envelope. The costume rocks though because it's COMFY. And if it wasn't close to 60 degrees yesterday, I would have easily been able to fit my winter coat under it.

And yes, giraffes do rock bright pink sneakers.....

Pinterest is My Frenemy

First let me say, "I've missed you".  Seriously, I have. It's been weird taking this long of a break from my blog-baby. There is a bunch of stuff going on in my life that I am not sure I can write about yet.  Most of it good, don't worry :)

I did sign up to do nanammoalslepo or something like that which means that I have agreed to write EVERY SINGLE DAY OF NOVEMBER. I think it's like giving myself a kick in the ass. I am game if you promise to leave me a comment every once in awhile so I know that I still have followers.

Because I am an overachiever, I have decided to start a day early!

Halloween in an elementary school is not as hyped as it once once because there are lots of rules.  No weapons with costumes, baked goods needing to come from a store, not your kitchen and you can't randomly hand out candy. That being said, there were some extremely creative parents this year and I totally blame Pinterest. Where else would they have come up with this stuff?


How cute and simple is this? Little clementine pumpkins!

Earlier this week, one kindergartner asked me to peel her clementine and her dad had drawn a jack-o-lantern face on the skin. Hysterical AND easy!!

In the pre-school today, one mom made mini jack-o-lantern fruit bowls out of orange peels. Seriously, how long did it take to get the oranges out of the skin without it ripping??

In 3rd grade, a mom who is an artist, (and in my opinion should be in the cookie business) made these cookies for the students to take home. See, you cannot eat homemade treats in the elementary school, but if you take them home, you can let your parents decide if you can eat them.

 
Then, as I wandered through a 1st grade room today, I ran into these little mice. Bananas on sticks, rolled in coconut with raisin and chocolate chip accouterments.

Obviously, I need to step it up a notch and look at my Pinterest account more often. I can't wait to see what they(heehee, I) come up with in December!

Frag'n Friday

It's been eons or so since I did a Fragmented Friday, but I thought, "Hey, what's holding you back?", so here you go......



*There is a man in China who should have his right to bear children revoked. He had a baby with his wife and then divorced her because their baby was so ugly. He even did a paternity test because he accused her of cheating. The baby was found to be his. He divorced her anyway because he could not stand the site of the baby. He found out that she had had $100,000 worth of plastic surgery before they had met.  He sued her on grounds of duping him because he had not known about the plastic surgery. And, the kicker, HE WON AND WAS GRANTED 120,000 DOLLARS. I hope he has to pay it back to her in alimony.

*A shout out to my friend Liz and her family who are smack dab in the middle of hurricane Sandy hell. They live in New Jersey and have not had power or school all week.

*I thought trick or treating was for smaller children, but guess who still went trick or treating on Wednesday night? Yes, my two. I thought maybe they would want to spray some shaving cream, wrap some one's house in tp or something sort of malicious (short of scaring the wits out of some little kids), but no. Fine with me because they brought home lots and lots of candy.

K was a black cat and B was a giraffe...

B did K's hair to look like ears! One of her friends tried to pull off her "ears" because he had no idea they were actually attached to her!

B's friend went as a cow. They bought these costumes off some sketchy website, but they were so cute!

*I am doing NaBloPoMo which somehow translates into blog every day in November. I am pretty sure this will make my Uncle giddy and perhaps myself insane. We'll see how it goes.....

*Have a great weekend! Looks like we may have another storm next week. OY!!

Halloween Horse Show

Halloween weekend kicked off Friday afternoon with a special Halloween horse show! The girls dressed up themselves and their horses. K was an Arabian princess riding her camel, Simba. B is not so into riding so she was ribbon girl! Everyone won first place! They paraded around the neighborhood and then came back for the egg and spoon race. Remember as a kid when you had to run with an egg on a spoon? Well try doing that on horseback! K's egg broke all over her saddle!








It's always good manors for your camel to kiss your goat.




OK, now I have Miley Cyrus' song "Hoedown Throwdown" going through my head....

Frag'n Friday!

I'm a winner! I'm a winner! My weekend is starting out great because I was bestowed the honor of co-Fragment Friday Fun/Fish/Fantastic/ what does the other F stand for? Anyway, Mrs 4444's (the creator of Friday Fragments) thought my frag with Gretel and the grave she dug for me was worthy of an award!!! I'd like to thank the 4444's family, my family, Gretel for being a smart ass of a dog, my stuffed bear.... Go check out Mrs. 4444's Friday Fragments to get a load off your mind before the start of the weekend!

*Halloween is tomorrow. I will admit I am not a big fan of Halloween. Candy yes. Dressing up no. Case in point the perfect meltdown K had last night because our barn is having a Halloween Horse Show today and she is not ready. And, I know I am so mean, I will not take her out of school early today to shop for accessories for her camel/horse.

*Carving pumpkins is fun and cooking the seeds is fun, too. And picking the seeds out of my teeth for a week is REALLY fun. B and I carved the other day while K raked in the bucks at the barn guiding 3 trailrides.

BEFORE

DURING (electric knife tool, very fun!)

MINE AFTER (I took this picture because it looked like it had a boogy hanging from it's nose. I am so mature.)

LIGHTS!

*When I was outside taking the lit pumpkins (yeah, they had had a few too many), I turned around to grab a quick pic of the sunset. We have had some amazing sky color here lately!
*When I was in Maine last weekend for the memorial service, we drove around Ogunquit a little. They were having some sort of a creative pumpkin contest. My dad was driving (yeah, and I was in the back seat) and my mom and I were frustrating him by telling him to pull over every 5 seconds. So, I got 2 pictures before he locked the doors and hit the gas.


Some people are very clever.

*You know when you go to the Drs for a physical you shower, shave and try to smell good? Well I took my car to get inspected yesterday (2 days BEFORE it expired, that's impressive!). First, I cleaned it out, then I wiped 3 inches of dust off the dash, then I even windexed the inside of the windows and lastly I vacumed out a summers worth of sand from the trunk! She was looking sweet! I didn't have to wash the outside, the torrential rainfall took care of that the other day. She passed her test with flying colors and I got a wink from the man who didn't speak much english. I think that might be the same type of appreciative wink your Dr. gives you when you clean up for him/her. Either way, my car and I felt good leaving with a new sticker!

*I am sure I will have a barn party wrap up this weekend and Halloween in general wrap up. Then we can move on looking forward to the next feeding frenzy; Thanksgiving!

HAPPY WEEKEND!