a heavy downpour

+ a broken gutter

= the perfect freshwater shower

Maku's ponderings

"What is the difference between invisible and disappear?"
"Does the bad guy thinks he is the good guy, since to him the good guy is the bad one?"

boats! boats!

A recent fascination with boats led us to the marina. It is always a pleasure to spend the afternoon walking along the bay; it is so relaxing to hear the sounds of the wind blowing, the boats rocking gently in the water, and the occasional splash from pelicans diving for fish.

My crew was determined to find their boats. They even dressed the part, Snow in her striped shirt and Maku in his skull and bones.

Among all the fancy yachts, simple Snow picked this boat.

Maku was a bit disappointed not to find a tugboat and an icebreaker.

But happy feelings were back again after making a boat that stays afloat.

veggies and the dewey decimal system

Two hours before bedtime, two little librarians tackled the job of sorting their books. They managed to pull quite a few out of the shelves before I stopped to question their actions. And this is the reply I got: "Mom, you're not supposed to sort books by size. Nature has to be with nature, animals with animals, not board books with board books, and you can't put a stash of thin books together just because they're all thin!" And then this: "I know we shouldn't be doing this now because it is already nighttime why don't you make us eat 4lbs of broccoli."
They're thinking food by the pound now since we weighed our Halloween loot. I gave them about a pound of broccoli, that was all we had. I never use food as punishment, besides this wasn't any form of suffering, steamed broccoli is one of their favorite snacks.
But since they threw the idea out there, I added big chunks of luscious leeks to their peas last night. It was worth a try but they are not yet ready for leeks outside soups.
Now back to sorting books...

Hallows End

Four rotting pumpkins and 7lbs of candy on the kitchen counter --
another ghoulish Halloween has ended.

The scary scarecrow

the lovely Chinese doll

and the elusive ninja

all had a magical time.

pumpkin overload

jack-o-lanterns carved
pumpkin pies baked
pumpkin seeds roasted



all halloween books read --
-- more than once

tomorrow we trick-or-treat

it has been raining a lot here lately
wet candies are no fun
hoping for clear skies on halloween night

The Procrastinating Apprentice

I've always been a procrastinator when putting together Halloween costumes, every year I plan our costumes for weeks only to come up with something new at the last minute. This year, to cut down on the costume rush, I set this weekend to be my costume-making deadline. Unfortunately, I forgot one important detail: we are attending a Halloween event tomorrow. Ahhh!!! Maku's costume is not quite ready. I still need to dye fabric, make a belt and sew his mask; so either I won't have time to make my costume, or I'll have twenty minutes or less to put together a really lame one.

This was Maku's first Halloween costume. He was supposed to dress up as a cute little pumpkin until I came up with Donald Trump.
The idea came to me the night before Halloween so I slaved through the night on this baby-friendly hair piece. I sewed pieces of Jin's old Rapunzel wig from four Halloweens ago onto a skull cap I made from Snow's ballet tights.
If The Donald could see this he would certainly approve of my version of his comb-over. And with a nod and a wink he'd say, "Seagrape, you're hired!"