She was a rainbow cloud (see earlier discussion here). I told her she could have a very big piece of candy if she wore it.

And we borrowed Elliot’s costume from Karen, whose 14-year old son wore it when he was Elliot’s age. That’s right, Sonic is old.

UPDATED TO ADD:

Here’s a pinnable version of the costume if you’re interested (someone asked, so I figured it was easy enough to put up a new head-less pic for Pinterest purposes):

By the way, that’s a chopped up hula-hoop inside, to hold the curve in place.

I don’t have much to show for myself this Halloween because the “rainbow-cloud” costume that Clementine demanded this year (and that I worked for hours on one night, you can find pics here on my Instagram feed, scroll down) was a complete bust as she could not move her arms around and screams bloody murder whenever I put it on her. I re-tooled it a little bit and it’s better…but I still give it a 50% chance of happening tonight when we go around to the nearest five houses to trick-or-treat. Last night she told me she wanted to be Spiderman. Which is totally fine because that would make three years in a row that the $20 polyester Spiderman costume from Meijer gets…

I’m a procrastinator. It’s part laziness, part space-cadet-ness. I wish I could get extra points for an Energetic Response when I realize something should have been done 15 minutes ago, but for some reason that never happens. We moved twice this year, and last spring when my mom started calling a month before we were supposed to load up the truck to ask if I had started packing any boxes yet, I just laughed. “Mom,” I told her, “I always do this. It will get done, just all at the last minute.” Why on earth would I be packing boxes? (and surely she could still remember my senior year of high school, and the violin concerto I began practicing at home just days before I…

Around here I am always looking for fun things to do with Elliot while Clementine naps. Once in a blue moon he’ll fall asleep during his “quiet time” but usually he pops up after about 10 minutes of reading books by himself or puttering around in the living room — they share a bedroom so he takes his quiet time on the couch downstairs — and wants to be entertained. And I’m like “seriously you are done ALREADY?” but I keep my mouth shut and then try to remember how much I will miss him when he moves out of the house.

My children are very different; Clementine will play by herself, alone, unprompted, for long beautiful periods of time. Elliot is a more…

 

 

  

 

 

Hope you’re enjoying this beautiful Monday as much as we are, whether you have the day off or not!

{ new-to-us dress: Old Navy circa 2009, thanks cousin Sadie! }

Here is a no-sew craft that I made a couple years ago that gets pulled out year after year at our house:

It’s made of paper, but with careful storage it’s been up for Christmas four years in a row now. I made this garland with some origami paper (that’s where all the fun prints come from), an exacto knife and mat, and a couple yards of green grosgrain ribbon.  Here’s a step-by-step if you’d like to make one.

1. Download the letters from Martha (that MARTHA! so. amazing.) by clicking on the “ABC Letters Template” in this article.
2. Trace the letters you want onto colored paper, wrapping paper,…

Yes, those are Elliot’s training pants. I’d like to say they’re clean but…yeah.

Dana’s going to spit out her coffee when she sees this because the other day when we were chatting I was all “blahdeeblahdeeblah, I NEVER make my kid’s Halloween costumes, blahdeeblahdeeblah!”  You know, acting like I was too busy to waste time making something that only gets worn once or twice. Well now I’m just a big fat liar. The cow flannel that a friend gave me last year when her mom was throwing away fabric was just too irresistible I guess. And wouldn’t

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