It's beginning to look a lot like...

We've been spending some of our spare weekend hours over the past few weeks getting the house ramped up for the holidays. If it doesn't happen before December then it won't likely happen at all. Things just get too crazy from December 1 onward. I know some people begrudge the extended timeframe during which Christmas is celebrated, but I don't mind it one bit. If you're going to go to all the trouble then you'd might as well enjoy it as long as possible. Plus, there have already been some Christmas events that have come and gone to start putting us in the mood. We have already gone to our local Santa Claus Parade, and our Operation Christmas Child gift boxes had to be packed and dropped off last weekend.

So, other Christmas tasks have been on the to-do list, too. Tasks such as planting my amaryllis... which I really hope I did earlier than last year, because last year the bulb bloomed... on December 30th. I stalked the stores starting on November 1 this year and bought the first bulb I could find.

The  garland has been strung on the mantel. Last year's lights bit the dust and those were the last incandescents we had been using. These ones are LEDs and they're a little blinding if you look at them for too long. Not quite the 'warm' and 'homey' vibe I was going for, but it's the way of the world, I suppose.

The side table has been transformed from 'Halloween' to 'Christmas', but this will soon disappear - maybe even this weekend - because this is the spot where we put our tree. The table gets relegated to the basement for the season.

The display on the buffet in the kitchen. I'd still like to get a banner made to hang along the top of the mirror.

My wreath survived a year of storage in the basement and it's back, baby! Still love it just as much as I did last year.

And, the stairs. It has taken me several years to work the kinks out of our holiday decor but I think I am finally there. I have tried a few things in different areas and now I know what I like. I like red and turquoise and white and silver and a little bit of green, I like vintage, I like clear lights rather than coloured, and I like the garland swagged on the staircase like with ornaments and stockings mixed in better than any other way I've tried it. There are lights, too. They just weren't on for this shot.
Perhaps best of all is the outdoor decor we put up this year... for the first time since we've moved here, I simply adore it. Pictures to come.

Just a regular Saturday

Subtitle: All Hockey, All the Time

The day starts when one of Liam's neighbourhood friends rings our doorbell shortly after 9 a.m. The two of them wind up playing 2011 NHL Xbox in the basement. Liam makes a point of running up to his closet to get two jerseys from opposing teams for them to wear while they play, lest they forget whose team is whose.

 Neighbour boy goes home, and another neighbour boy comes - he's actually brothers with the first. (They're two years apart in age and Liam is between the two, so it works really well for us!) Now they're playing road hockey on the driveway.

We send neighbour boy #2 home eventually, because Liam has to get ready to go play an actual ice hockey game with his team.

The day finishes up with an LHL game. That's the Liam Hockey League, for the uninitiated among you. That deserves a blog post all its own so I will leave it for another day.

The spitting image of my public school self

Tonight before bed, Liam finished reading the greatest book of all time. Well, one of them, anyway.

He was a trooper. It took him a couple of weeks to finish and I hung over his shoulder half the time, reading along with him. "You can't put it away for tonight!" I would say, "Don't you want to find out who gets the next Golden Ticket? Don't you want to know what happens to Augustus Gloop when he goes up the pipe? Don't you want to know more about the Oompa-Loompas??"

He enjoyed the book and has already asked me to track down a copy of Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator for him. I'll do that, and while I'm at it, I will also look for The Twits. That was another great Roald Dahl book and the nastiness in it will appeal to his little boy self.

This is fun stuff, enjoying the same stuff as your kids - whether it's a book with Liam, or a song with Mallory (singing along with Taylor Swift in the car) - it's hard to miss them as babies when they are turning into such cool little people to hang out with.

Ready for the Zombie Apocalypse

Since the iPad came to live with us a couple of months ago, we've been playing a lot of games on it. For better or for worse, one of the kids' favourites is this:

So I suppose I should not have been surprised when Mallory brought this home from art class today:

Should I be mortified? Really I just can't stop laughing.

Halloween 2012: Post-Sandy edition

I am behind... I know everyone else posted their Halloween photos three days ago. I guess my excuse is that I wasn't overly smitten with my Halloween night pictures this year and if I'm not excited about it, I'm not chomping at the bit to share. I was later getting out of work than I'd hoped to be and things were a little rushed as a result. I don't think we got costumed up much later this year than we have in years past, but because it was raining, it was already dark. Consequently... not nearly as many pictures this year as in the past. THANK GOODNESS for our little session in the woods!

Chad dressed up as Metro Man this year to be the counterpoint to Liam's Megamind, and I was Glinda to go along with Mallory's Dorothy. Though to be honest, I look like a pretty half-hearted version of Glinda... I mean, I'm wearing an old prom gown with a running jacket underneath to stay warm, and a cardboard crown from Burger King on my head. I think in the future my mantra will be: I either go all out, or don't go out at all. Mallory, though, loved my outfit, as did lots of little girl trick-or-treaters we passed on the street.

As we've done in the past, we had a quick dinner with the family before going our separate ways trick-or-treating. I was lucky to get this one picture of them all on the porch (in the rain) before we parted. In this shot, Mallory has been outside for all of twenty seconds, but she is freezing to death. She wore a winter coat over her costume for the rest of the night.

The boys... you'd never guess Chad's costume was sized for a 12-year-old boy. He cut it apart and fit pieces of it over top of other clothing that ensured he was, well, covered. I think Liam thought they made a pretty cool pair. I think the neighbours wonder about Chad now.

Liam's friends actually came knocking this year, and the three of them went out together, with Mallory and the other parents and ourselves tagging along behind at a bit of a distance. I think Liam felt very grown-up about the whole arrangement.

We didn't get a shot of Mallory and I together until we came home from trick-or-treating. She was not really game - can you tell by her face??

But, the loot made up for it. The best part of the night for these guys is separating all their treats out into piles. Chips with chips, chocolate with chocolate.

So, we had our first Halloween rain-out, but it didn't really dampen spirits. Liam probably stayed out longer than ever before - Mallory threw in the towel a little earlier. I'm hoping it's a little warmer next year, and that whatever I wind up dressing up as, I can fit some warm clothes under my costume a little more discreetly than this.

Having the power to summon the storm of the century

I really did not mean to Beetlejuice up this Frankenstorm when I posted the Halloween pictures and so glibly stated what a great idea it would be in case it rained on Halloween. Ha! Well, it looks like we are in for a soaker of a holiday this year. Let's hope that's all it is, and we are not fighting basement floodwaters or damaged roof shingles or broken windows at the same time. We are supposed to have high winds and heavy rain, but hopefully nothing that will cause any damage. If the storm takes a turn for the worst and we are stranded, house-bound and powerless, for multiple days, then we have a large stash of chips and candy to live off of, so we should make it out the other side.

Seeing as that Halloween itself will not be going off without a hitch this year, we decided we should have some holiday fun with our preparations on the weekend. A last-minute trip to the local Halloween farm fest was kiboshed Friday night when it started to rain. But we did manage to paint up a motley assortment of Halloween-themed peg dolls...

And we spent some time yesterday carving pumpkins. This is an activity that Liam loves, Chad hates, and Mallory can't stand the smell or sight of. I fall somewhere in the middle and that 'somewhere' changes from year to year. We got three of our pumpkins carved, the fourth was too hard to cut so it got some Mr. Potato Head pieces, and the fifth pumpkin was taken to school by Liam last week since they are doing some carving in the classroom as well. Liam insisted that we should roast the seeds, too, which we did, but I think he was a bit disappointed. I did them with worcestershire and garlic salt and thought they were pretty darn good, but Liam was more interested in the already-open Halloween candy.

Halloween preview

 

I mentioned that I was out of town with work for three long days last week. So I didn't feel guilty taking Friday off work. The kids had a PA day and I was looking forward to spending it with them.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I think it's a great idea to get the kids into their Halloween costumes ahead of the holiday itself. It's a dry run that lets us work out the kinks (these tights itched Mallory terribly; she'll wear some different ones on Halloween night.) It lets me take a few pictures while it's daylight and we're not rushing to get out trick-or-treating. And if Halloween night turns out to be dark, cold enough to require a coat on top of the costume, or heaven forbid, rainy - I still have my pictures. We did this Friday morning, before the rain came down.

Mallory decided to be Dorothy long ago. May this be the first in a long line of redheads that she impersonates! (Chad tried to get her to be Ariel from The Little Mermaid years ago, and she was just not interested.) I ordered her costume back in August from a seamstress in Hong Kong I found on eBay for all of $9.95. (There is something to be said for the global marketplace.) Her shoes came from Walmart, her Toto came from Liam's stuffed animal collection and the basket Toto is in came from Value Village for 99 cents.

I'd hoped Liam would choose to be the Tin Man (I wanted to make a costume from dryer venting SO bad!) or the Cowardly Lion... or even the scarecrow... but in the end, he wanted to be a superhero named Megamind. So here he is, saving Metrocity from the bad guy. This was an internet costume shop purchase... not as much fun as homemade, but adorable nonetheless. (Though I admit it could be anybody under that cape and mask, and I really wouldn't be able to tell the difference!)

I'm glad we got the pictures in last week because I hear we are in store for an arctic blast in the next few days. It may indeed be another coat-over-the-costume year. As long as the loot bags come home full, I don't think the kids will mind.