Halloween Fun

halloween

Happy Halloween, everyone! I hope you and your kiddos all have a fun and safe day. Since house-to-house trick-or-treating really isn’t an option where we live (that’s country living for you!), all of our festivities took place on Saturday. Considering how the threat of the hurricane loomed, it made everyone happy to at least get a little bit of fun in.

Halloween 2012

First, we headed to the mall. I know, I know… “Malloween?” LOL, well it’s a safe and easy way to let the kids get some candy. We’ve been doing it for several years now. Honestly, some of the parents there makes me insane, but I keep my smile on for the kids. After that we zipped over to the library and town hall, where our town was doing a little event. I really enjoyed that because, well, obviously I knew most of the people there so that helps! Good candy, delicious cake pops, and friendly faces. How can you go wrong?

After that, we came home and Drew and I changed into costumes for the Halloween party at the comic book store. Laura also had a quick change into a superhero outfit. She and I went as Batman & Robin! Good grief, I still can’t believe I wore that outfit in public… even if it was only for about 20 minutes! LOL… well, the boys thought it was great that I played along.

Halloween 2012

And here’s Drew in his Cobra Commander outfit. I think he looked great!
Halloween 2012

Tonight I think I’ll try to come up with a fun Halloween treat for dessert, and maybe watch some kid-friendly spooky movies like Goosebumps or something. What about you? What kind of creepy plans do you have for today?

Hard to Believe

I don’t even know where to start a blog post after something like Hurricane Sandy happens. Luckily, our little spot upstate-ish barely felt any effects. Yes, it rained, and yes the wind was blowing like mad, but aside from a 10-second power blip, and a whole lot more leaves down, we are no worse for the wear. My heart absolutely breaks for everyone in New York City, New Jersey, and other affected areas. My thoughts are with them.

Last year at this very same time we were hammered with that freak blizzard. If I remember correctly, we had 18 inches of snow on the deck! Here’s what our yard looked like:

A year ago

Today it’s just gray and windy (still). Last year I crocheted my way through the storm working on baby elf hats. This year, I hooked away at dozens of granny trees.

Tonight I just plan on being cozy in my little home, and being grateful that I have power to cook, unspoiled food to eat, munchkins to hug, and a sound roof over our heads. Disasters like this have a tendency to remind us of what’s really important, don’t they?

A Fantastic Birthday Weekend!

I know everyone is focussed on Hurricane Sandy right now, but I’m distracting myself with other pursuits (creamy chicken noodle soup, poached chicken, brownies… you know, the important stuff). What a way to wind up my birthday weekend. That’s right — I turned 37 on Friday! I had a great weekend filled with friends and family.

My parents came down on Friday and we always have a great time. For dinner I got my favorite veggie pizza and made a salad. I also had a ginormous chocolate mousse cake (so good!) Then Drew lit off a few fireworks in my honor, LOL…

my birthday :-)

The kids made me very sweet homemade cards and picked out thoughtful presents, including nail polish, chai tea, and prosecco. (I think that maybe Daddy helped them with that last one!)

Saturday was a trick-or-treat extravaganza! I’ll talk about that more on Halloween, though. And yesterday Drew’s mom and aunt came down for lunch. His aunt made me the coolest scarf! I want to look up how to make it before I blog about it though. But it’s lovely and I can’t wait to show it off.

And now I’m waiting to see what this storm brings! School is closed today (as is most of the Northeast in general, it seems), so I think that after lunch I’ll pull out some crafts for the munchkins and try to get in some crochet, myself. Which reminds me — I need to print off a few patterns before the power inevitably goes out!

To all in Sandy’s path, be safe! Here’s hoping for the best!

 

A Clean PC

So, I already got my birthday gift early this year (we went to see Lewis Black live), but I did ask Drew to do one more thing for me: clean up my old laptop which (I thought) still had a virus on it. So the other day he looked at it, ran all of his magic programs, and nothing came up. Guess when I tried a removal a while back, it worked! Luckily we didn’t have to do any tricky Registry repair. He’s done that before and it can be so time-consuming. So, I am happy to have my little Acer back in action. I had been using my father-in-law rather old Macbook. Hey — it was fine, it worked, and it was free, so I am certainly not going to complain. But it was on the slow side, and it had been so long since I used a Mac that I could not remember how to do things like copy and paste. Duh, right? Well, now we again have it as an “emergency” computer. Let’s just hope I don’t get this laptop infected again.

Back to the Grind

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I hope you all had a great weekend! Ours was fun, though busy. Although the Sheep & Wool festival was at the fairgrounds, I did my best to avoid that general area. I know, I know — I love crochet and knitting. How could I possibly not go to one of the country’s most famous fiber festivals? Honestly, I just didn’t feel like fighting the crowds. I’d rather spend a leisurely afternoon at my favorite yarn store than waiting in a line to check out a booth. But that’s just me.

So Saturday morning I worked at the library, then in the afternoon I went grocery shopping (at a store in the opposite direction, LOL). Yesterday I did a whole lot of cleaning, both inside and out. Time to get the place ready for winter! Last night D. suggested we go out since we’d busted our butts. Oh, Endless Shrimp at Red Lobster… it was so delicious! Of course, now it’s back to the grind. Here’s what I’m planning on for this week’s meal plan:

  • Sunday: Out to dinner
  • Monday: Turkey burgers, oven fries, steamed broccoli & cauliflower
  • Tuesday: Spinach & artichoke pasta, garden salad
  • Wednesday: Pot roast (slow cooker), potatoes, veggies
  • Thursday: Drew’s cooking since I have a suppertime staff meeting
  • Friday: Pizza & salad & birthday cake & whatever else I want 🙂
  • Saturday: Leftovers (assuming the kids want to eat after trick-or-treating at the mall and the town hall!)

For more menu ideas, visit Organizing Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday feature.

What a Week

Well, I had every intention of writing a few blog posts this week, but… it just didn’t happen. So instead I’ll give you a quick recap. It was such a weird week here. Hopefully things will get back on track next week.

I’d planned to tell you all about the Lewis Black show Drew took me to for an early birthday present. It was so great! His mom watched the kids and we went into the city last Saturday night. Times Square was ridiculous. I know that it’s the place most tourists like to see, and I try to keep that in mind, but I don’t have the patience for it anymore, LOL… Nevertheless, it makes for a cool picture.

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Then it was over to the Richard Rogers Theatre!

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I loved the eclectic mix that comprises Lewis Black’s fan base. From young to old, it ran the gamut! The show itself was very funny and included topical bits (including spouting off about the VP debate) that were just right on target. Love him!

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But when we got back home Sunday night, after the trip to the Botanical Garden and ComicCon, we quickly realized that something wasn’t right with our cat. To make a long, heartbreaking story short, we made the difficult decision to put her to sleep on Tuesday. Her bloodwork came back with very bad news, and considering her age… well, she was just not well at all. I do love this photo I took of her, not long before we talked again to the vet. I’d spread out a tablecloth to take photos of a recipe I plan on posting, and as soon as I carried the bowl back to the counter, she plopped down to watch the world outside.

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Drew had her for 15 years, and I’ve been with him for 14 of those. She definitely had personality, and she is missed. I keep thinking that I hear her coming through the cat door. So sad!

It was a hard week.

But the weekend is here. We don’t really have anything going on, so that’s nice. After all our driving around last weekend, I’m looking forward to just hanging out at home.

A Visit to the New York Botanical Garden

What a weekend! I have so much to tell you about, but I thought I’d start by sharing some photos I took yesterday. While Drew and Jake were at ComicCon, my mother-in-law suggested the rest of us spend the day at the New York Botanical Gardens. I’d never been there and she certainly didn’t have to convince me — I was so excited to finally visit!

We saw the gorgeous Monet’s Garden exhibit, as well as the Haunted Pumpkin Garden (very non-spooky, very fun, and great for children). Noah had a great time planting buckwheat seeds and dissecting an owl pellet, while Laura enjoyed playing in the outdoor puppet theatre and just looking at all the incredibly creative pumpkin sculptures.

Seeing all these beautiful plants makes me wish I was a better gardener! Just gorgeous stuff. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

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I could have spent the entire day wandering around. If you live in the metro New York area and you’re looking for something fun and Halloween-y to do, this exhibit was a lot of fun, plus the grounds are just so beautiful. We plan to go back for the holiday train show and I can’t wait for that!

Lazy Friday Night

Ah, nothing quite like relaxing at the start of the weekend. I am planning on looking through my new library books, the boys are watching Phinneas & Ferb, and D. is looking at guitars online.

We have a very busy weekend coming up so I don’t feel the least but guilty about taking it easy tonight. Lots of fun stuff planned, but lots of running around, too. Hope you all enjoy! And keep warm — it’s supposed to dip into the 20s tonight! Brr!

Back to the Dentist

Remember how I had those fillings a couple weeks ago? Well, the teeth continued to really hurt. In fact, I couldn’t even chew on my left side and my teeth were extremely sensitive to hot and cold. I gave it some time, thinking that the teeth just had to heal up, but after last weekend when I was popping Advil to dull the pain so I could sleep, well… I decided I had to call the dentist.

So today I went back for him to check on things. He took a couple X-rays and the filling isn’t cracked or damaged, but he did notice some inflammation around the roots as well as a couple high spots in the fillings themselves. (The inflammation is due to stress on the teeth or something like that.)

Anyway, he filed them down and I am happy to say that already I feel a difference! I just drank a cup of tea and the sensitivity was nowhere near as bad as even yesterday. So I hope this quick fix takes care of things because I really don’t want to have this filling removed, a temporary one put in, wait to see how I feel, and then a permanent filling finally placed (this would be the next course of action — blech.)

I will be so happy when I can chew on that side again! Such a pain.