Remember that too-hot-to-swim sunny afternoon, when you just happened to catch me while I was in town, at Wal-Mart, and I asked, “What do you need,” and you said, “Wine.”
The cell phone dropped before you could tell me what kind. So I chose for you.
It’s much colder than that today.
Who would expect to find snow before Halloween?!
How lucky we were then, that the air was warm enough to keep the water from freezing, so that I could deliver your parcel
to your front door, via canoe.
I am not a pastry queen. I can cook and bake — but that’s where it ends. I do not do “birthday cakes” or decorated cookies — unless I can cut the as dough. Anything involving sprinkles — not my strength.
So, pardon me for believing that perhaps I could throw all of what I have learned about my strengths and weaknesses, when I saw this ghost cake on the Parenting website.
Source: parents.com via SusieJ on Pinterest
Except — I was going to do it as a Bat!!!
How easy could that be?! Just move the cupcakes around until you have a bat. Except — what about the points on the wings? Cupcakes are round.So, I proceeded to cut, with a serrated knife. Heaven helps me. The cupcakes, no longer perky, began to flatten, like squished bread.
Maybe Icing will cover it all up, right? I proceeded to add red, blue and green food coloring to the chocolate icing. This made dark brown, gray, and back to darker brown as I kept adding more and more colors. Wasted the whole box.
The gaps between the cupcakes was large — I filled in with icing… then I began to run low on icing. IN my panic –I spread too rough, and broked the tops of the cupcakes… and soon there were cupcake crumbs in the icing. Heaven help me. What a mess.
Back to the ghost — it looks so EASY?!!! Why is this not working?
Source: parents.com via SusieJ on Pinterest
I looked over at fun size, and I shook my head, and I said, “Do you think I could have pulled of the ghost?”
No, he politely, but truthfully said. NO. It’s harder than it looks.
Wise. Wise, he is. Wise.
“Mom, I have been doing homework since kindergarten.”
Really? Homework didn’t start for me until I was in 7th grade.
A look of shock came across his face… “And, look how SMART YOU are? How is that possible?”
I’m not sure — but how long as it been since Bob fed his dog?
And yes, it is interesting to me that you thought that the trees might be shaking.
Sorry you lost your friend..
And, I’m sorry that you for “got” to laugh…
And, between you and me, I’m so glad you have homework now, so that I get to see even more of how your precious little brain works.
Origami is a full body contact sport….
I doubt you really knew what a full-body workout this craft truly is…
There was no “black” so he used what he could find.
Red and green poster board — so he called this his Origami Christmas Bat…
I have a feeling this guy is going to be around for a long while in our house.
Instructions for making your own Origami Bat:
I read several books at one time. I have no problem keeping the plot straight — the author’s “voice” comes through the pages loud and clear, and I can pick up the story line right where I left off, among the jumble of 5 books that are running through my head and hands at one time.
Books are a healer in a stressful world. When a title intrigues me, I am hooked, and my curiosity will not rest until I discover what the author has left between those two covers. Whether it is a cookbook, an autobiography, a fiction or self-help book, my life will be altered by those pages — I know this in advance. This is what attracts me to pick up the book.
This summer, I decided to “heal” this book reading ADHD, by picking up one single book off of the pile at a time, and not daring to move down the pile until that book was completed. In the morning, when I was tempted to pick up a new cover I had yet to explore, and peel back the cover and discover what the author had to share, I resisted the urge. I went back to the same book I was reading in bed the night before. I stayed the course — steady — one book at a time. I did this for one single entire book.
At the time, I attributed to my book reading cross-overs to logistics and laziness. We live in a house that has living space on four levels. The book I read on the fourth level at night isn’t around on the second level when I’m eating breakfast. My hands, in the morning, are full of laundry to carry to the basement — no room in my arms to carry last night’s book. So, in the kitchen, another book is waiting for me there to eat over breakfast. Another book sits in the living room by the sofa… and another book is in the bag I carry while waiting for doctor’s appointments.
Then, I met someone who reads her books on a Kindle. She too reads several books at one time — and her books are all in the same place! I asked her why — and she said, sometimes she gets restless, and she wants to know what’s going on in that book — and another book will lead her to something over here. She had no less than 7 books opened in her Kindle.
I pondered that… but continued my summer quest of reading one book from start to finish before moving on to the next intriguing cover.
I can’t do this one-book-at-a-time thing anymore! One book was enough — and I miss that book! If I had been reading more than one book at a time, I would still be reading that book — and it wouldn’t be over! I like the experience of reading a book… not just finishing one.
I refuse to continue this sterile process any longer. It’s robbing me of the pleasure I gain from reading. Reading one book at a time is far too lonely and isolating. Rushing through the book, just for the sake of getting to the end, so that I can move to the next book, cheapens the entire art of reading.
Just like the girl I met with the multi-book Kindle — it is not laziness or logistics that keeps me flipping through so many books at once. It is connection. I love how one book makes me think of some other topic, and the book I’m thinking about is there — so I open it up. I love giving an author’s thoughts time to peculate in my brain — while I move over to another book and gather strength from that author — and then going back to the first book that inspired the move in the first place.
Reading several books at once is like savoring a good meal. The book is not quickly over and done with — it becomes part of a mental conversation that I have in my brain with all of the authors I am reading — all at once.
Sometimes the ideas need time to percolate. To simmer on the back burner, because your brain is not quite ready to absorb the gifts the book can bring you. Moving to another book gives you space between your experience and the reading. Reading fast and furious, from finish to end, curtails this process from unfolding.
To give a book the prominence in your life it deserves — you need to draw away from the book for awhile– and then come back, with more insight and thoughts fully formed. I can’t imagine reading any other way.
The answer was an unequivocal no. After spending the night at the zoo with my first fifth grader six years ago, this was a question I would never entertain again. No. No. No. A mom of four boys simply needs her sleep.
That all changed when my 3rd fifth grader sat in the back seat of the car, sleeping bag and toothbrush already packed and ready to go, and he said these life transforming words:
“I never said you couldn’t stay.”
What the heck is that supposed to mean?
My heart was already softened after nursing him through another bout of Poison Ivy. We were attached.
Quick my mind flashed back through what this entailed. I thought of the fact that I had not even eaten dinner yet. The frigid cold night air whipping across our backs as we walked through the zoo at night. The endless lectures as the zoo keepers pulled out armadillos, snakes, opossums, lizards and alligators from their coolers for us to pet. (No thank you, please.) And finally, that empty feeling as the lights finally go out at 12:30 a.m., in the crowded auditorium as sleeping bags shuffle all the way through till morning, girls whispering with the goal of staying up ALL NIGHT LONG. No sleep, an achy back. In the morning, feeling dirty and tired, served a breakfast of sugar cereals and knowing there are still two more hours of walking through the zoo left to go. I just want to go home! No.
But something else knew I could do it — knew I wanted to do it.
“You grab a sleeping bag for me, and I’ll get my toothbrush.”
When my son, with his friends, jumped over to my sleeping bag to give me play-by-plays of their ongoing poker game, and how he giggled when I refused to pet the snakes, I realized this was my only option.
The coolest part was the bats — Fox Bats at night– opening their wings. They looked just like Batman himself.
My crafty-origami maker found these 3-d ghosts on Pinterest and wanted to make them. I obliged.
We blew up balloons and stuck them onto bottles for the base.
It was fun — although I think the project would have been more stable if we had used Styrofoam… but who has that on hand?
Next, we cut some cotton gauze into squares. ( I would recommend cheesecloth. It would have been more lightweight.)
We dipped the cotton into liquid starch.
We draped the wet cotton over the balloons.. the bottles fell over.. it was difficult.
Then, we let them dry overnight — while he cut (he actually cut a piece of paper!) out the eyes and mouth from construction paper.
When the ghosts were dry, he popped the balloons, and took out the bottles. Now, the ghosts stand up all by themselves. Cool.
After about 36 hours, the ghosts were dry, and ready to display on our mantle.
He added a banner of ghosts, for effect.
There are gorgeous floor ceiling windows in our kitchen. They scream “banner!” At Christmas, there is usually some kind of garland, but, never a banner. With my love of words, and newsprint, it’s a shame that so many holidays go by without a banner of some kind.
Inspired by, (what else is there?) Pinterest — I made a really super cool Halloween Banner.
I tore out pages from an old paperback book, already yellowed.
Using a Black Sharpie, I wrote the appropriate letters. (No stencil — just freehand.)
I used some cut-outs of witches and a big fat moon and glued some of those on the pages too.
Then, using wooden clothespins, I strung the pages onto a black ribbon (which matches my burlap curtains perfectly),
and Viola!
Mom, I Was Bored. And then, I remembered that I had a post-it in my pocket. So, I made this little crane.
Just a note. His big brother took this picture… and Photoshopped the black and white cut-out.
