Happy Halloween everybody! I’ve never liked this holiday but I sure do love dressing up and carving pumpkins. It has been non-stop fun around here. Before I get into my crazy stories about paper maché and giant messes, I just wanted to show you my really easy Wall-E costume:

Ghhirr! Vhwhirr! All I need now is a cockroach, some goggles and I’m set.

Do you need a last minute costume? I can’t recommend this enough. It’s SO easy. Walk down to your nearest mailbox store, buy a cube box that will fit you, cut some holes, write the word Wall-E on the bottom and you’re done! Of course you can be like me and paint in the logo (badly) and some buttons. I didn’t feel like painting it yellow though (too busy and I have a toddler who likes to “help” and then go run and jump on my white couch in a single breath). So I borrowed some of Bug’s yellow chalk and rubbed my color on.

Big mistake.

Later when I was putting my Wall-E box up high on the table so my super toddler wouldn’t try to use the arm holes as a bean bag toss game, I accidentally put my box too close to Bug’s brand-new-just-finished-hand-sewn Eva costume and now there is a smudge of yellow on it! DOH!!!!! Grrrrrrrr.

Thankfully, it’s just a small smudge that mostly blew off but I was not happy about it. You see, I traded her hand-sewn Eva costume for a painting (that I have yet to finish) with my friend Tammy. Remember Tammy? The girl who sewed Baby Bug’s mermaid tail when she was an itty bitty baby? Tammy is so sweet and talented. And guess what?!!! Before she could deliver the costume to me, she got sick with appendicitis and went to the hospital for surgery!!

Going to the hospital with a burst appendix has to be top of the list for reasons to not come through on a costume trade. Well, guess what? Tammy came through. From the hospital, while she was probably gasping on her hospital bed, Tammy’s husband emailed me from his phone (They didn’t have my phone number because I never gave it to them!) that Tammy could not make it and needed to reschedule.

Reschedule we did and one day later an appendix-less Tammy stood up, walked from her car and gave me Bug’s Eva costume. Chariots of Fire should have been booming from the sky. It was one of those moments. I should have hugged her but Bug beat me to it first. Bug doesn’t hug many people but she looooooooves Tammy. I love Tammy. She’s a real-life super hero and I’m not being sarcastic.

Now, if I can just get Bug to wear her costume so we can all see how cute she looks as Eva! She is so TWO sometimes. I’m hoping that tonight with all her cousins and buddies dressed up, she changes her mind about the run-like-crazy-so-mommy-can’t-catch-you every time I suggest we put on her costume.

We do have photos of an Eva pumpkin! This pumpkin looks more like a ninja to me but the toddler queen of the house has declared that she is just fine and then she ran around and exploded things. We haven’t been ingesting any sugar around here, noooooooooooo. Not us.

Ha.

Do you see that little scribbly black line on the forehead of my Ninja/Eva pumpkin? That would be Bug’s design. I know she’s technically not old enough to use a sharpie and mark up a pumpkin but she’s getting really close!

Just look at this sketch and tell me I don’t have an artist child. Okay, I guess she’s almost three and it’s normal for three year olds to be able to draw a face but I think her illustrations are the cutest things ever! I just want to make stuffed animals out of them and hug them. I LOVE kid art.

I think her plans for our pumpkins were quite clear, don’t you? Too bad I have issues with letting go and refused to carve three noses. Maybe next year. Who knows what she’ll come up with by then.

I lied, I’m not getting to the paper maché stories today I guess but I will soon! I promise. I have lots of photos to share that are hilarious. Until then, have a fun Halloween! See you on the flip side!

I bet you’ve been wondering what we’ve been up to. Projects galore! I will be sharing very soon over at my Alpha Mom gig but until then it’s top secret!

Edited to add:

It’s up! I’ll be back here later to fill you in on the nitty gritty details.

Sigh. The house is done. Two days and it’s entirely unpacked. Well, except for five boxes of really boring computer parts in the guest-room closet and a mysterious collection of boxes in the garage that I can’t get to because I stacked up the packing paper and collapsed boxes from the rest of the house so high it would be like climbing Mt. Everest just to get to them…so I’m just going to leave those for the Actuallys. Or maybe they’ll save them for me for the next time I come cat-sit.

I’m actually kind of sad the fun is over. It was like Christmas, unwrapping everything. The professional movers wrapped everything in copious amounts of clean butcher paper so it was really a complete surprise every time I tore open a new box. Would the contents hold a supply of paper towels or a sword from the far East? Or maybe the other princess slipper!?

That was the funny part: how things were grouped together in boxes. You can tell the professional movers speed-packed. It was almost like unwrapping a time capsule. Whatever they came across went into the box. Rather than sorting like items and wrapping them together they just moved from left to right. Paper from the desk, photos of Annalie, a cat toy and a shoe! Why not?! Throw it all in, tape that sucker up and mark it “Office.” It was a hoot.

Unlike all the times I’ve moved with my parents, nothing was dirty or dusty or ruined because it got left out in the weather. I didn’t discover any mice or anything broken. It was all very pleasant. Every box held a new surprise, something I had never seen before, some little puzzle piece to try and decipher. I hate to say that I’m the snooping type but unpacking the Actuallys was like unpacking stories from exotic lands. There were rugs from Morocco, puzzle boxes from Japan, paintings from Hong Kong…it was like unpacking for Marco Polo.

They’ve traveled the world and though they don’t have a lot of “stuff” per se (which is nice because too much clutter is a huge headache, believe me) they do have quite a few trinkets from far-off lands that are just dripping with intrigue. No, not that kind of intrigue. But I do plan on asking to hear the stories behind each item.

And then there’s the part of me that just likes to find solutions. I would love love love to be on one of those shows that organizes people and turns a mountain of clutter into something perfect and orderly. I find great pleasure in thinking up new ways to put things together to make life easier, more efficient and fun. (Not that I’m taking credit for Annalie’s closet. It was pretty much like this when I got there. I just thought it was a pretty photo.)

What I’m really proud of is the art studio I created for Annalie out in the garage. I guess the above photo doesn’t do much for it but it’s really really cool. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Annalie has a lot of art supplies and fun crafty bits. She’s a child after my own heart. But her supplies were scattered around in strange places. She had a lot of fun things in her closet but no real table to work on them.

I know she does her crafts in the kitchen with her mom but that was tricky too because it wasn’t really her space. I personally hate it that I have to clean up my art projects every day in time for dinner. If I could have a studio to leave my paintings in while they are in progress, I think I would die of happiness. That’s every artist’s dream, right? A room of her own.

When I saw that the Actuallys had this HUGE garage with a simply divine laundry room, I shook my fists at the sky and yelled “Why me?! Why can’t I have this house?!!! Why do I have to wash my clothes with frat boys and homeless people at the laundromat?!!” Just kidding.

What I actually thought was, This garage would make a perfect art studio! It’s clean, it has a floor you can drip paint on, it has natural light…it’s perfect! It’s not even hot out there. Because it’s below their house (they have a split-level), the air-conditioning from the house seeps down into the cool garage below. I just love it. If Annalie doesn’t use it, I will!

Which is all part of my evil plan! Ha ha, hee hee, ho ho!