Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Happy Halloween From Camp Crystal Lake!

This is the first time in about twenty years (since I lived at home with my parents as a teenager) that I've been looking forward to passing out candy for neighborhood trick-or-treaters.

Living in the city--in multi-unit apartment and loft buildings--means rarely, if ever, getting costumed kids knocking at your door. But this year, it's all going to change!

Yes, I know that there's a 110% chance that it's going to rain every second of Halloween this year, but I don't care. Repeat: I don't care. I am so excited it's stupid. I've spent about a month preparing the house for Halloween tricksters and treatsters. Let me show you how it'll be done for the first Power family Halloween at Camp Crystal Lake.

First, because of where we live, we had to be prepared to answer the door like this:


But before we could answer any doors, we had to prepare the house. So I started making decorations.

Spooky crafting supplies

Zombie hands I cut out and put in the garage windows

My absolutely amazingly fantastic new zombie garden gnome from RevenantFX

Cheesecloth ghost

spooooooooky!

Hi.

When I get out of here, I'm giving you a big hug.

I've put some spiders and skulls around the house, and tonight I made a headless man (or woman, since it's wearing my jeans and hiking boots and it's stuffed with my thermals and tee shirts [way to ruin the magic, I know]).

Stuffed man materials

Missing feet & hands. But no big.

He can still watch t.v.
Anyone seen my head? Oh. Here it is. In my LAP!

And you might be wondering where that carved pumpkin came from. Well, last weekend our friends Jayson and Cristen came up from South Bend, IN (Jayson--he teaches photography at Notre Dame) and Chicago (Cristen--she's a video artist and photo assistant/producer). We did some Halloweeny things together, which included carving pumpkins,

Our gourds, before they went under the knife (knives)

Carving party!

Our finished pumpkins--from left, J's, C.'s, mine, and T.'s

and going to a Halloween party.

Trevor's Costume = Old Style Delivery Guy
Cristen as Jason Voorhees

Jayson as "Tape Face"--a new and terrifying monster
And surprise, surprise: I am a zombie

We also watched Halloween (at least a little of it until some of us [me] fell asleep), and ate pizza. To answer your question, yes, eating pizza is a very Halloweeny thing to do. 

And now, we're pretty much ready! I still have a creepy baby doll whose eyes I need to paint black, and I should pick up a few more candles. But T.'s brother Sean sent us a bunch of files for a fantastically spooky Halloween soundtrack, so I'll be piping out scary sounds and songs to the back porch where the kids will come for candy. Or, at least, the one kid who's in a Morton Salt girl costume.

Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!

And watch out for werewolves!

Friday, October 25, 2013

Awards Follow Up and a Camel's Butt

Trevor pointed out that although I mentioned Roo's Halloween award in my last post, I forgot to include a picture. So, here it is:

Proof that our dog is silly and dresses to show it off

And then, once I realized I'd forgotten that, I realized that I also forgot to post a picture of one of the best things we saw during our trip to Sonny Acres--a camel.

And not just a camel, but a camel's butt.

A camel butt

A sassy camel, smiling because he just showed me his butt
 TGIF (or TGICB)!


Sunday, October 20, 2013

Monumental Weekend

Well, maybe this weekend wasn't exactly...monumental. But it was pretty darn nice.

Saturday was the Power family's annual excursion to Sonny Acres Farm. We've been going there every fall to ride the rides, go through the haunted houses (not me), eat caramel apples (absolutely me), and check out the Halloween shop; and this year was no different.

We rode the rides...

Daredevil Power

Dad, Sadie, and some elephants



...and went through the haunted houses, although Sadie was relegated to the Spook Shack instead of the real haunted house that only Sean and Destiny would go through. She gave it the old college try convincing her dad, though.

Dad, come on! They've taken emergency precautions, so what's the big deal?!

The cousins decided to paint their faces to finish off the afternoon.

Favorite cousins = Matching skeleton faces

I am very serious about face paint.

I made them take another picture after this because they weren't being very scary (um, Destiny, skeletons don't smile).

Much better
We left the farm and headed to Pal Joey's for pizza. By this point Dest had gotten rid of her skeleton face, but Sadie was still going strong. And as everyone knows, skeletons are really big into roaring.



Trevor and I also enjoy making faces at our favorite niece, so we spent some time doing that, too.



We called it a night to get home and take care of Roo, whose belly was grumbling and who was having a hard time sleeping because she was so excited about today's Hound Town Halloween Bash.

Yes, that's right--today was Roo's first costume party! Her costume has been ready for over a month (I did some early shopping), but I had to get my costume ready, too, so that the two of us could participate in the neighborhood dog park's parade. She was a hot dog and I was a bottle of mustard.

Her costume was store-bought but was the perfect costume for her:

Our little hot dog
 But I decided to make mine, so I added some iron-on letters to a yellow t-shirt and knitted a goofy mustard hat.

 

There were lots of dogs there--two bumble bees, a cheerleader, football player, and umpire, Superman and Supergirl, an alligator, a Home Depot employee, a banana split, a witch, and even another hot dog (although Roo was the cutest hot dog. obviously).

Roo found a plate full of spaghetti and meatballs to play with before we walked in the parade:

Don't play with your food!

Mustard!

My friend Lisa and her two daughers in pumpkin shirts walked with us
Not only did we have a great time, but Roo won "Silliest Costume"! She is so very much my dog.

When we got home, Trevor tried out his new leaf blower and I baked some pumpkin pies from the pie pumpkin I got a couple weeks ago. The pies turned out to be pretty tasty--though a little clovetastic--and they were a good companion to tonight's episode of The Walking Dead. And now I am typing this post and watching Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (I thought it was the original and am disappointed but still watching it [because of laziness]).

I've been working on Halloween decorations for the house, and that will be my next post. Here's a little taste until I get it up:

Um, a little help here?
Until then, stock up on candy and get ready for trick-or-treaters coming soon to a neighborhood near you!

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Nesting

Over the past five weeks, instead of updating this blog, Trevor and I have been nesting. Like, ne-heh-hesting. Nesting the hell out of new our house, in fact.

The first steps in our nesting process were some of the "big" projects. The house is in good shape, but the previous owner (an unmarried middle aged contractor) was a hunter and fisher, and he let his hobbies direct his design aesthetic. This is what the house looked like before we moved in:

The living room...

...which is full of both furniture and full of stuff--so much stuff

The upstairs bedroom...

...also full of stuff, and a fishing-themed wallpaper border, and, just out of the frame, a rifle (not a show piece, but his actual hunting rifle that was just propped up in the corner of his bedroom)

Once we moved in and most of his stuff was out out the house (notice that I didn't say "all" since he left us treasures--bags of old clothes, kids' toys, twenty-year-old computers, holiday decorations--throughout the house [in the sheds, the basement, and the attic crawlspace]), we started to erase the rustic...let's say "charm," and make it more us.

With the help of Fran and John Power, who lived with us for a couple of months this summer while their new house was being built, we got the wallpaper borders scraped and the walls painted. Trevor and his dad laid a new upstairs bedroom floor, and T. and I were finally able to move our stuff up and out of our makeshift bedroom downstairs.

Here's our new room:

New floors, courtesy of John and Trevor Power, handymen extraordinaire

Roo loved getting upstairs after having been denied access for three months.

So with that big project out of the way, we were able to start getting some new stuff and moving some things around. We put our old couch and ottoman, along with our old t.v., in the bedroom:

The new set-up is perfect for reading in the afternoon, the sun shining through the skylight.
And we got a new couch for the living room:

The delivery guys arrive...

...get ready...

...and get it in the house in a matter of minutes!

It's very square.

Roo had to check it out.
We want to get a few more chairs, and maybe a stool for the kitchen bar, and we absolutely positively need bookshelves. We've got our big pine shelf (custom made by one Mr. John Power) from the loft, but that only holds about six boxes of books (art, mass market paperbacks, and graphic novels/comics). There are another twenty boxes in the front room that are all cooped up and need a permanent home. This makes me sad.

But, what makes me happy is this rug:

Helloooo! I'm the cutest rug in the world!

And this rose bush in the backyard also makes me very happy:

Hi! We're super pretty!

To continue our nesting, I got these mums (which I think are required for all Crystal Lake residents to invest in--like, you're un-American if you don't have some mums)...


...and we have put exactly two pieces of art on the walls. Correction: on one wall. 

A Mexican ceremonial mask similar to the ones we saw while vacationing in Austin, and a childhood portrait of T.'s mom, Maureen, painted by T.'s great-grandfather

Hanging more art is something that will come very slowly and probably not for a long time, but it's so nice to have at least a little something up.

Our other nesting activities include crafting (I've befriended some gals from our block, and they're super crafty [like, put my sad scarves to shame, crafty], and they've inspired me to up my crafting game), 

A wreath I'm working on (it'll be argyle-ish)

and using our mantle to display some important doo-dads, including one little wooden fellow that T. got for me to satisfy my desire to decorate our entire house with amazing whales.

The body tilts up so you can keep a secret treat inside. Like a tiny Pinocchio.

Why do I want to decorate our house with whales? (well, why not? okay?) Because the previous owner had this piece of art hung up in the living room:

Harlooooooooooooooooooo. Smiling whale.

I wanted to write it into the contract when we bought the house, but Trevor would not let me. Rude. But we do still have this weather vane on the top of the garage:

Yes, that's a whale

And Caren got us these terrific tea towels for the kitchen:


So I guess that'll satisfy my whale wants for a while. Until, at least, I can talk Trevor into letting me get this,

and this,

and this,

Are you kidding me with how cute this is?

Today I'm switching my style brainstorming from whales to Halloween, though, so stay tuned for a post about how I plan to make our home a house of terror for the neighborhood children. Yahoo!