Fall

The last few weeks have whizzed by, here are some highlights.

We visited the Denver Botanic Gardens one last time before it moves on, this time at night for the illuminated experience. We loved it. I was glad FFM and I know the paths well, between sculptures it was pretty dark.

 Travis had a business trip so we asked Granny Annie to come with us to our symphony season opener, Spooktacular! F's costume this year was a mad scientist. The dangley bits on his hat lit up and flashed and his test tube full of "molecules" glowed.

 The symphony runs a low key costume contest, winners get to go on stage during the performance. See our little mad scientist on the right side of the photo. He was not shy at all and had plenty to say about his costume and molecules.

under the green arrow

 Trick or treating with old and new friends was extra fun this year. I couldn't keep up and ended up taking a short cut home.

We went to a bowling birthday party, got there half an hour early, and killed time in a photo booth.

 I had surprise surgery on my foot in early November. It required 2 weeks of zero weight bearing. That's HARD. I switched couches periodically for a change of scenery. I'm starting to walk this week, should be out of the boot in about two more weeks.

 A good friend kindly loaned me her knee scooter. I would have gone crazy without it. Crutches work OK but it's hard to carry much when your hands are full of handles. I scooted my tiny path and only spilled a couple glasses of water.

 Our most recent symphony was Symphonic ComicCon. We've been before and knew that wearing a costume was encouraged. Darth Vader was thrilled to walk in to the lobby to find his troops waiting for him. They asked for some time off and raise.

Now we're in the throes of a very low key Thanksgiving week. Being hobbled makes it easy to justify doing little to no prep. When I explained to F that we were having a traditional dinner this year he got upset and told us quite clearly he wanted fondue again. Fondue is now on the menu for Wednesday night with turkey to follow on Thursday. We also had to explain why people camp out in front of Best Buy and he remarked that he still didn't get it, why anyone would want to buy something that badly. Hard to argue with that.

What Comes Around Goes Around

Sometimes slaving away on a costume pays off.  You know all those hours (ha ha) that I spent cutting and gluing foamy bits for FFM's penguin costume last year?  Well, THIS year it won the 1st grade best class costume!  That's not a typo, last year's penguin costume got recycled by the lovely Miss Emma whose favorite animals of the moment are tigers and penguins.

Halloween party

Click HERE to remind yourself of last year... they've gotten SO MUCH BIGGER!  I had to let out all 4" of the penguin pants and they were barely long enough.

Trick or Treating

 Jake the Pirate was popular with other kiddos who recognized him right away.  Most adults just thought it was a regular old pirate costume which unfortunately kind of annoyed F.  Here's a picture of Jake for reference, Jake's a Disney cartoon character and the show is a Peter Pan/Captain Hook spinoff.

And, a random reminder of how incredibly warm it's been.  It's been so balmy the bugs are still out, mid 70s on Halloween day.  Last week we found this giant katydid hanging out on one of the tires while the car was parked in the garage.

I will admit, the Jake costume wasn't nearly as easy as the penguin costume.  Not having a pattern to piece from made it tricky for me.  I managed OK until it was time to come up with the fancy oversized collar for the vest, then I ended up cutting and throwing away a whole lot of blue fleece.  

The yellow trim was a lesson in frustration, too. FFM picked out lovely yellow shiny ribbon that I was not able to sew on without puckering or glue on without the glue making the ribbon so translucent it looked like blue fleece.  After a lengthy discussion I convinced him that perhaps we really, really, really needed to go another route and simple edge binding worked just fine.  By then I was in a bit of a rush and some of the edges aren't up to snuff, but it held together through more than a week of festivities and is now safe and sound in the dress up trunk.  Whew.  Until next Halloween...

Halloween Project '12

I am resigning myself to the fact that Halloween costumes will never be simple as I anticipate they will be.

November 1, 2011- "Mom, I want to be a mummy next year for Halloween!"  Cool. A piece of cake.  FFM was consistent and told me for months (I guess some kids are planners and think about costumes year round) that he wanted to be a mummy.  End of summer arrives.  Suddenly the whole costume idea changes.  No more mummy, it's Jake the Pirate.  Now, if I have to manufacture any part of a costume I need a looooooooooooong lead time.  I am not a zippy seamstress. I need like weeks.  Or months.  Just in case it takes a try or two.  Or three.

Jake is a licensed Disney character.  Easy costume methinks! Simply order one from Disney and be done!  Even better, this summer a Disney store opened in our nearby mall.  Super.  I rang them up and asked 1) if they would be recieveing Jake costumes and 2) When they would arrive and 3)What sizes they would get.

Yes, they were in, and biggest was 5T.

Uh oh.  FFM hasn't been a 5T for a while. Now, it's a costume, so maybe I could squeeze him into it and not worry about it being too short if it got me out of constructing one from scratch.  Short OK.  Not going all the way around, whole 'nother ball of wax. grrrrrrrr

So the premade costume idea didn't pan out so I came home and googled and checked Pinterest for ideas.  I am not alone.  The vast knowledge of the internet yielded instructions for a homemade costume.  I'm cobbling together several patterns, mainly with the help of this one from Between the Toys and another from Lu Bird Baby.

My mission, now that I have chosen to accept it, is to turn this:

into this:

Note: Mr. Detail pointed out that the shiny gray fabric we picked is NOT the right color but it passed his approval anyway.