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!

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)!

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!

Playing Catch-Up

Yes, it's been a month since our last post. So this is me, playing catch-up.

But zombies are slow to catch up. They're slow at everything.

I went to school on Halloween dressed up like a zombie. I didn't take the train like this; I drove instead and wore big sunglasses to hide my really gross make-up. My students were doing a peer-review so they didn't have to listen to me very much; I'm glad because they were so weirded out by my appearance that they wouldn't have been able to pay attention.

One of my students also dressed up for the Pride Club's Halloween costume contest. Here she is, flying through the air in the Commons.

Hermione, casting a spell; Supergirl, flying; Rosie the Riveter, flexing

Halloween night I met up with Bo and his parents for some trick-or-treating. He was a lion--the cutest one ever--but he refused to wear his hat so he's a headless lion. Still cute, though.

I'm so cute! Even without my lion hat!

Why is my auntie trying to eat me? Oh. She's a zombie.

After Bosco-treating, we went to the Power place to hang out with Sadie and her parentals. Sean did their house & lawn up with Halloween fantasticness. It was scartastic. Terrifyic. Really cool.

Sean got a video of those zombie shadows and a projector to put them in the window. A. Maze. Ing.

Sadie was done with her tricks and treating by the time we got there, but we all still got to hang out and eat dinner with her for a while until she went to bed. She showed us a seriously great dance move she learned in dance class: it involves her hopping onto one foot. She rocked it.

The weekend before Halloween, Trevor and I went up to Door County to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa Madel. It wasn't Albie's first trip up there, but doesn't he look adorable?

Albie = Adorable

We got to spend Saturday night with Grandma's book club, the Mysterians. A mystery writer named Bryan Gruley was in town from Chicago for the weekend to do some readings at the local Door County libraries, and one of the Mysterians was hosting a cocktail party for him on Saturday. The party was a lot of fun, and all of Grandma's Mysterian friends, and Bryan and his wife, were gracious and interesting. And Bryan was so gracious that he implied he might be willing to come talk to my creative writing club. I will begin harassing him about this soon. I also started reading his first novel, Starvation Lake, but the copy was Grandma's so I only got through the first dozen pages. I'm going to get my own copy soon.

The view from Grandma and Grandpa's place

Trevor, sneaking around in the stacks at Untitled Used Books

I'll have more news later (sooner than a month..)!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Trevor and I have a visitor for Thanksgiving this year: our friend Adam, who's in town this weekend for his cousin's wedding. While Trevor grabbed him at the airport Thursday morning, I started cooking. The boys kept me company in the kitchen with a game of Trivial Pursuit, and then later on in the afternoon, we sat down for a Thanksgiving supper. It was all pretty good, if I do say so myself.

It was a vegetarian Thanksgiving meal, starting with a goat cheese and pumpkin dip snack, baked macaroni and cheese as a main entree, and sides of carrots with dill butter, candied sweet potatoes, stuffing, "Harvard" beets, jellied cranberry sauce, and crescent rolls. Here are some pictures (though please be warned that the jellied cranberry sauce looks a bit like liver):

Adam, getting ready to eat

We ate until we couldn't eat any more, and then Adam, Henry, and I took a nap while Trevor, amazing husband that he is, cleaned up the dishes.

Or we thought that he was doing dishes; he was really taking candid pictures of us sleeping.

When we woke up, we played a game of Scrabble while snacking on Maurice Lenell cookies (I got a tub of holiday cookies, which are almost worth it, but only almost, because they seriously skimped on the jelly stars...) and then some of the Indian rice pudding I'd made first thing in the morning.

We ended the day by watching a couple of movies and then heading off to bed. Today, Trevor's back at work and Adam is planning a lovely morning running around to the galleries and museums of Chicago. I am looking forward to a day of working on my tenure portfolio, which is due on Tuesday. I'm about ten pages into the narrative, with maybe another ten to go, and I have to organize and link up to all of my documentation, most of which I scanned in on Tuesday night before leaving campus. I plan to only leave the house twice more this weekend: once for my appointment with Bob, the personal trainer at the West Loop Athletic Club (I joined a gym in October. Yikes.), tomorrow at 10 a.m., and again to drive Trevor to the airport on Sunday morning (his flight is at 6:45 a.m., so I'm guessing we'll leave about 5, or even before because Cathy likes to get to the airport early. Gross.). But since the Sunday morning trip will be so early, it barely counts. And then I'll be up and awake and ready to start working when I get back home.

Before I sign off here to do some work, I'd like to show you all some of the Halloween pictures I forgot to post up here last month. Sadie and Bosco were both styling in their devil and pumpkin costumes, respectively.

She's also wearing a cape (because that's what devils do...)

Sadie, trying to figure out a glow-stick before Sean adds it to his awesome Halloween lawn display)

Trevor and me with the jack-o'-lantern, courtesy of Paula

So I guess that's all for now. I have two more weeks of classes and then one week of finals. I'm behind on my grading, and I wish I could use the tenure portfolio as an excuse, but I can't; I'm just behind. I cannot tell you how much I'm looking forward to this winter break. While on break, I might blog a little more, or I might just sit on the couch, sip a cup of coffee, and stare at the bookshelf.

Trevor leaves for Art Miami on Sunday (the 6:45 a.m. flight), and I'm going to join him on Thursday afternoon for just a few days. We'll be seeing Rachel and Letty, too, and I'm really looking forward to some post-tenure portfolio (but still grading) relaxation. And hopefully I'll post the pictures we have from the trip up here right away. But no promises.

Happy after-Thanksgiving to you all, and here's hoping no one gets trampled while shopping today!