HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Okay, you KNEW I'd have to show another photo of Coconut in her new Halloween costume, right?

Halloween is over for another year. Sadly, I only had 3 (3!!!!) trick-or-treaters this year, down from 95 last year, and 137 the year before that. Can you believe it?! *sigh* Actually, it's not surprising since we moved from the middle of town, on a fairly busy street, to the back edge of town near the end of a dead-end road. Chuck went to the school to pick up Zach at what should have been the prime trick-or-treat time, and said that he saw NO kids out and only one street where some houses had their lights on. The kids from the family who always goes all out with a haunted house each year were on their porch waving to try to attract people to stop.

I only made two dishes this year - baked buffalo chicken dip and pretzel logs covered with caramel and purple sprinkles. Both were good, but the dip was REALLY good. It was just Chuck and I, Stewart, Reagan, Amy, Zachary, Mathieu and Seanna for 'dinner' tonight.

These were our first two trick-or-treaters - Mathieu (a pit crew member) and his cousin, Seanna (an angel). The third one came quite a while later - Maura S. who was a fairy. I wish I would have thought to get her photo too.
But we had a good time, overall, despite the low numbers.

DEFECTIVE COMPASS

These two pirates showed up at my door tonight. The wench was disgusted with the wobbley pirate for his defective compass, but he insisted it worked fine...
but finally conceeded that there was no understanding the ways of the compass.
Well, they pulled themselves together and presented their most respectable visage...
and so I invited them inside.
Later, they had to say good-bye and set sail for town to bedevil the good citizens downtown. I hope that compass got them there safely.

MORE TREEHOUSE PHOTOS

I got home Saturday, and Mathieu wanted me to come over and look at the treehouse progress. He is thrilled with it, and he's having a ball constructing features inside it. So I went and got these photos. It's a good thing I took them when I did, because we have had another deluge since then. There is water everywhere. I went to Corpus Christi this evening to pick Stewart up from the airport. When I got home, I had to hang my jeans and socks to dry before I could put them in the laundry hamper. Ick!

GETTING READY...

slowly for Halloween. I've kind of lost my steam for the holiday this year. Just too much going on and too scattered with other things. Now it's less than a week until Halloween and no way do I want to drag all the scarecrow frames down from the attic at the other house and construct and dress them for just one week - and all the rain, as well... But I did manage to snap this photo of Barbara, Marlene, Violette Spice-Blythe and Falba the little witch girl the other day between rainfalls.

Currently, I am nursing a horrible sunburn I got from helping my friend, Annie, sell flowers by the highway yesterday. Ouch!

TREEHOUSE

There's been a lot of hammering next door where Mathieu is getting a treehouse (without the tree) built onto the end of the swings. I should have waited to take a photo when it's finished, but I didn't. I'll get that photo and post it another day.

FASHION EXPERT STAMP OF APPROVAL

I told Zach he looked nice when he came home from school a day or two ago. He said he was wearing his new favorite outfit, so I took a photo of him. "Even a cheerleader said I looked good!" he said.

THE WANDETTES RETURN

SHREK: Presenting the long promised return of the Wandettes! This little episode begins in a land Far, Far Away....over at the mailbox.



COLONEL CARVER: Careful there, soldier.

MAJOR BANNEKER: Got it! I think Barbara will want to see this.



MAJOR BANNEKER: Barbara, Colonel Carver and I encountered something interesting on our reconnaissance mission earlier today. I think you will be glad we intercepted this packet.

BARBARA: Thank you, Major and Colonel. I'll open it.



BARBARA: Hmmm...what is it??? Let me get it out.
MARLENE: Could it be....? Is it.....?



MARLENE: NEW DRESSES!!!!!
BARBARA: It's about time! Now if Wanda could just be bothered to find and unpack our shoes and jewelry.



MARLENE and BARBARA: HAPPY FALL EVRYONE!
SHREK: And they lived happily ever after...for the rest of the day.
THE END

P.S. For anyone who is interested, I bought these two dresses on Etsy from "sewgrandmacathy". They are very well made; she has a large stock of cute doll clothes for Blythe, Barbie and American Girl; reasonably priced and I received them very quickly.

CHICKEN SNAKE? RAT SNAKE?

That's what I thought this one was, but he doesn't match the pictures I googled to check for sure. Chuck found him in the yard this afteroon, and shuttled him safely across the driveway away from the house. He is about 2 feet long.

HAUNTED HOUSE

The is the painting Mathieu did yesterday - "Haunted House".

WOMAN IN FALL DRESS AND SENSIBLE SHOES

Never underestimate sensible shoes.

BLUE PEA VINE

This blue pea vine has the most gorgeous deep blue flowers! It's planted over the arbor at the cabin. In fact, it's about taken over the arbor.

PLANTING A MINI-FOREST?

We have had the deck and part of the carport piled with boxes delivered by FedEx and UPS over the past week. It was hard to walk anywhere without running into the piles. Stewart, in Baghdad, has been ordering lots of things delivered here - tools, hydroponic things, other unknown things, and the first 30 trees that he plans on planting when he comes home next time. They look like the cutest tiny Christmas trees to me. Chuck opened the boxes so I could take a photo of the trees and their condition to email to Stewart. Now we have to keep them alive and healthy in pots for a few more months. Wish us luck!

GOOD BUDDIES

Trigger and Mathieu

HAUNTED HOUSE POSTCARD

This is the postcard I received from the "Handmade Halloween Postcard With Verse" swap I joined on Swap-Bot. Thanks, Terry F. from Canada!!! :) On the back was a poem she found, although she couldn't identify the author:

ALL HALLOW'S EVE
I hide behind the sofa quivering in fear
Now the witching hour is near.
The curtains are drawn tight,
And I've turned off the lights,
The TV volume is way down low.
I sit and cower in its feeble glow.
Then comes the knock upon the door
And I curl up quivering on the floor,
My heart is pounding, my breath is shallow,
My mouth is dry, it's hard to swallow.
On All Hallow's Eve I live in mortal dread,
But not of monsters or the un-dead.
The fear that turns my heart to stone
Is Trick or Treaters knowing I'm home!

Well, that is not at all like me, but it really IS funny. :)

HORSE CEMETERY

This is the spot in the pasture where Ruff is buried. These yellow wildflowers cover just this one spot. As soon as we walked out there, the horses saw us and all came running. That is Starlight's mane that you see in the foreground. She insisted on standing right in front of me no matter where I moved.

SHEERING GOATS

This isn't exactly in keeping with my resolution to have a Halloween or Fall post each day for October, but I guess you could say it IS Fall. Reagan and Zach were getting all the goats sheered and groomed when I walked by yesterday, and it looked like snow flying when the breeze picked up.















Patti-Jo accompanied me, and visited with her goat cousins for awhile.

TIE DYED JACK-O-LANTERN SHIRT

I missed getting cool pictures of putting the rubber bands onto the white t-shirt and then putting it in the dye bucket in the yard. That was really a fun part, and I'd love to do some more in different colors.
This is after it went through the washer and dryer.
Then Mathieu took out the rubber bands.
It looked pretty good just like this.
But then we used fabric paint and drew faces in the circles to make lots of jack-o-lanterns. He couldn't wait to wear it.

SCARECROW

The county 4-H clubs each had a garden area on Washington Street in Beeville to decorate for Fall and Western Week this year. Reagan and Amy came up with the roping scarecrow idea for the Rockin' H Club to use in their space. So this afternoon all the clubs were out decorating the downtown area. I had them take a photo of Zach and Mathieu when they were done. Their club took second place in the competition.
I usually put up a scarecrow display in our yard for Halloween, but I think I am going to skip it this year. Where we lived before got lots of traffic, but out here there are few cars going by. Plus it is kind of a lot of work to put them together and take them down and then do their laundry after being rained on or having their hats blown off for a whole month. But... I don't know... I may relent and go get the old rusty bike from Andrew's house and at least put a scarecrow on that one...

MEOWRRR!

Another day, another Fall/Halloween photo. ;) This is a postcard I painted a couple of weeks ago for a Swap-Bot swap.
Today was a lot like every Sunday - Mass, religious education classes, long afternoon nap. I really hate naps, but have been so tired lately, and Sundays tend to wear me out anyway. This morning, after doing the paperwork for the program, I had two restroom plumbing problems to take care of. Yikes! But, I got it all remedied....I think. I guess I'll find out next Sunday. ;)
Zach and Mat were here a lot today, but we didn't do anything artsy/crafty. Tomorrow, I'll heat-set the jack-o-lantern t-shirt Mat and I made and then he can wear it. Also, I plan on working on the dead tree attached to the mailbox. Mathieu secured it to the mailbox, and I wired crows to it, but still have little jack-o-lanterns and hopefully skeletons (if I can find them) to attach to it.
I finally made the deviled eggs Andrew had requested and sent 2 dozen over to him and Samantha. Tonight I made a chicken pot pie for dinner, which was good. Tomorrow I think I'll make chicken with broccoli sauce and noodles.

Farmer's Market & Fall Fiesta

Mathieu was here before I got up this morning, so when my alarm went off early enough to get to the Farmer's Market right after it opened, he was more than happy to accompany me. Actually, we were in Beeville before it opened, so went to Walmart first, then Zimmer's, then Dollar General and then finally the Farmer's Market. We mostly got Fall and Halloween stuff. At Zimmer's they still didn't have malabar spinach, but said to check back next month, again. At the Farmer's Market this time, they had less booths, it seemed like, losing some of the craft vendors, but gaining a couple more veggie vendors. I 'posed' my veggies I bought, on the table outside. I think we'll have the spinach for dinner tonight.
On the way home I dropped off my cake - alas, store-bought cream cheese brownies - at the parish's annual Fall Fiesta, for the cake walk. Later Chuck took Mathieu up there, where he won two cakes in the cake walk and a float toy in the toy walk. He said he got to select which cakes he wanted when he won. Why he picked two nearly identical plain white cakes, I have no idea.

CREPE MYRTLE BLOOMS

I almost waited too long to get photos of one of our crepe myrtle trees blooming. Unlike the others, it is a really dark purple, although after a number of sunny days and two rainstorms, the blooms had faded, and many of them had dropped, before I got the picture taken. I did catch Shrek up there though, hiding, waiting for yummy autumn faeries to fly by. Chomp!
Mathieu and I have started working on Halloween decorations and touches. I had told him that we wouldn't start on Halloween until it was October, so he was here and ready yesterday after school. At this rate, I should have a photo to put up every day for quite a while.

HURRAY FOR OCTOBER!!!!

And doesn't Coconut look so cute in her new Halloween costume?!