Halloweenies

If loving Halloween is wrong...I never, ever want to be right.

Here is my Halloween goon squad, in all their frippery and finery:

When you go to the trouble of making a bespoke custom tailored jacket for a 2 year old, you better believe that you want to maximize your ROI and re-use it.  The Purple Rain-era Prince costume was just as good the second time around.  You know me and my slavish devotion to all things thematically sound, so I had to make Quincess be 2015-era Prince.  A custom toddler-sized afro wig made from a knit cap and black roving,  a Nehru jacket assist from MHui, and last-minute perfectly matching leggings from my neighbour GT helped me pull it off.  

The Big Yam wanted to be a vampire (zzz).  Could I have bought a cape for $5 from Value Village?  Probably.  Would I ever do that?  Unlikely.  He got a glossy reptile-print black cape with red line and a stand-up collar, because I like to make my life difficult for myself.  

I dropped off the Big Yam at school on Friday in costume - turns out that's not a thing (?!)  I felt kind of foolish for a few seconds before coming to my senses and acknowledging that Halloween is for the children, AND the adults, and if you can't be a goofball when you have kids, then what g-d hope is there for humanity?  People who can't be goofs around their kids make me so sad.

I had a day off on Friday so I spent that day visiting with the Roomie and carving pumpkins and doing last-minute Halloweenie type things.  Saturday was all about final prep and the Dotytron fussing over the $20 worth of dry ice he bought.  You would think that, noted domestic miser that I am, I would have kiboshed the dry ice plans, but when it comes to Halloween...all bets are off.  Really, when you see this:

So worth it, right? 

Trick or treating was fun, but exhausting.  All the kids on my street go together, which means a gaggle of parents follows around kids moving at different speeds, yelling things like, "Remember your manners!" and "Don't run across people's lawns!" from the sidewalk.  I took the twins out to just a few houses on our street and then we dumped  them in the basement to watch a movie.  I went out with the Big Yam and was totally knackered by the end of it.  We had to do a mid-run candy dump back at home, before heading to a street in the 'hood where a local real estate agent pays to close off the street and then pays for a fire eater to do a series of shows.  That street goes ALL OUT.  It is awesome.  There was a house with a giant mechanical spider on the roof that was lit up and moved around.  There was another house where they had rigged up fishing line to make a skull pop out of a pumpkin at the street level.  It was all kinds of awesome.

I went back to form with my pumpkins this year.  The theme was "queens"

Bad girl RiRi

bell hooks

Freddie Mercury

Halloween and Thanksgiving spirit is my favorite kind of spirit.  It's just weirdos being weird and creative!  I love it.  

The next day we had a Dia de los Muertos ceremony at the cemetery for Poppa D.  More correctly, the Dotytron, the Big Yam, Momma D and Emdo did something, while I chased the twins through the cemetery and made sure they didn't desecrate any graves (much).  After that, was a Halloween party my neighbour threw.  It was exhausting!  

Although we did get some cute shots that day:

Lindsay's face in the two family pictures, kills me.  Look at what an innocent little bobbin he looks like!  Nothing like this guy:

 Exhibit A: Bam Bam trying to wrestle something to the ground with sheer force of will

After living with him for 2+ years, I can easily say that Lindsay is the most stubborn and willful of my children, which is kind of saying a lot.  That guy is VERY entitled and self-assured and has been seemingly from birth.

Here's a video of the Quincess conducting.  He LOVES pretend conducting more than even the Big Yam did.  Any time the Big Yam plays piano, Quincess will be quietly conducting in his high chair, transported to another place.  The way he does the little cut at the end!  

Quincess has also been referring to the movie Fantasia as "decoration" which is cute in and of itself, but even cuter when you hear it in his little lisping, Quincess voice.

Two weekends ago we hit the pumpkin patch with our neighbour, which officially means we've hit every item on the fall bucket list.  We ate doughnuts, went through the corn maze, walked on this musical bridge thing, saw a meteor crater (this pumpkin patch had an alien-invasion theme - weirdly), went on a hay ride, picked out our pumpkins, shot corn cobs through these hydraulic gun things...basically all the standard stuff (how weird is it that shooting corn cobs through a hydraulic gun is now de rigeur pumpkin patch fare?):

Starbucks has already brought out their red cups which means I officially want to bring out the barf in my mouth.  

That's all for now!

Fin.

busy busy busy

guys, halloween is SO SOON! and we have AMAZING costumes this year! mine has the following going for it: comfort, funny, dashing. the dotytron's has this: historically relevant, a wig, a women's sized MEDIUM coat. lol!

what have i been up to the last few days, eh? well, on thursday night my mum and big d took us out to big mouth kee for dinner along with some of their friends who gave us wedding presents (cash) that my parents promptly stole. lol! i think that's how it works in chinese culture. basically, you're always giving money back to your parents for having birthed/raised you. when i was a kid and i asked my mum what i was getting for my birthday, she'd inevitably reply, "ummm...what are YOU getting for ME?" chinese people in general don't really do birthday prezzies (or maybe it's just my fam?) that's not cash, which made the grade-school post-birthday debrief of, "sooo...what'd you get for your birthday?" kind of squirm-inducing. what was i supposed to reply? "uh, i got the gift of being born 8 years ago"?

anyway, big mouth kee is kind of dingy on the inside. i think i've mentioned before that it's rigged up to look like hong kong circa the 1920s or something. big d is a HUGE big mouth kee champion but i've never seen it before - but that meal on thursday was INSANE! INSANE! we had:
1) roast suckling pig - one of the best iterations of that dish evers! the perfect balance between the crispy skin, a sliver of pork fat and a sliver of tender pork - just enough to support the weight of the bristling skin
2) sea cucumber (which i usually hate) - stuffed with shrimp paste and served with perfectly cooked broccoli
3) shark's fin soup but in a rich, crab bisque reminiscent broth
4) these little nests made out of thin, rice noodle threads that had been deep fried to shattering delicacy, holding asparagus and scallops
5) the veggie dish was mushrooms (maitake, i think) and shanghai choy
6) braised duck with shitakes and more veggies
7) a GIANT like, 8 lb lobster that had been hacked apart and deep fried and showered with crispy bits which was browned garlic and the tomalley
8) a "high class" steamed fish (i guess even fish aren't exempt from hong kong chinese people's obsession with class consciousness)
9) fried rice
10) dessert #1 was silken tofu in a ginger syrup
11) dessert #2 was deep fried, black sesame paste stuffed glutinous rice balls
12) dessert #3 was steamed asian pears in a sweet syrup with gingko and nuts

bliss of blisses! the dotytron was enthralled! i was stuffed to the gills! and what a fitting and decadent way to end off my short work week.

yesterday was my day off. i celebrated by:
a) showing up 3 hours early to my massage, thereby scaring the beejezus out of my lovely rmt, not to mention waking earlier than i had to
b) doing all of next week's grocery shopping, which meant wrecking my back by carrying about 40lbs of groceries on my bike in the sleet and rain
c) going to the dentist and getting a cleaning
d) then showing up LATE to my scheduled massage, thereby cheating myself out of my rmt's restorative ministrations
e) coming home ravenous and eating 2 cupcakes (1 was for the dotytron) and 4 pepperoni sticks (2 were for the dotytron)
f) crafting my heart out.
g) hosting s-dawg for some low key hangs and popeye's fried chicken
h) having gut rot and then being a giant buzzkill

the plus is: i got all the stuff i needed for the dotytron's costume. and i made my halloween bunting.

this is what lil' ugmo's dressing up as for halloween:





pretty cute, huh? the bunting turned out really sweet. i used my new favorite font: cooper black. i'm really obsessed with 70s style fonts lately (bodoni, cooper black, etc.) i didn't do a very good job sewing the cut-out letters so the edges might fray away to nothing - we'll see! it would have been easier to use a font that had all right angles - but this looks so nice! don't you think?

i cut out the pumpkins using this tutorial as my guide/inspiration and put them up in the windows of our enclosed porch. then i cut out some leaves from some random wrapping paper i had around and placed them around the pumpkin heads. they turned out really well! i'm also supposed to make the grave stones today...finished project pics will be posted accordingly. and tomorrow i'm going to pick out my pumpkins and those will add the finishing touches (plus "monster mash" playing on repeat) to lil' ugmo's first halloween.

i'm also supposed to start/finish my costume today. then i will call it a day. and by "calling it a day" i mean: "sit on the couch and organize all my photos into albums or if i don't feel like doing that, knitting and reading all the comics i ordered from the library"

tonight we're purportedly meeting with some high school crew for dinnie at caplansky's. i had previously reviewed them in their former incarnation at the monarch. now they've added kishka and knish and all sorts of other jewish deli staples that i'm itching to try. the smoked meat was always good as were the fries. the sides tended to be lacking. my sis ordered matzoh ball soup there and it was TERRIBLE. tasted like dirty dish water. i'm going back in their new, self-standing location so i can know whether to close the book on the place or not.

we're hoping to follow that up with some "where the wild things are" action.

okay...costumes don't make themselves!

fin.

p.s. in case the neighbours didn't hate us already, the monday after the move, on my first real day to start tackling lil' ugmo, i made it my first priority to do this:

yep, i spray-painted "fire walk with me" in red stencil letters on our garbage, green, and recycling bin (i also put the address on the other side).