Trick or Treat!

Hey Ya’ll!  Has it been busy for you too?  I got sick, and it so slowed me down!  I kept saying that I had to get better-I had things to do.  I’m sure I just couldn’t take anymore-after all the stuff I’ve been doing outside my house, with guidelines (I’m more of a free-artsy type-with neat tendencies. heehee).  Anyway, every time I do a party, I get sick!  I think it’s just stress trying to get it all done.  I’ll have to refuse next time they ask based on my health, and past experience. (Ha!  Let’s see how well that goes over!)

Anyway, we’ve had a Halloween!  The kids were storybook characters on Friday, but Calvin didn’t translate so well going door-to-door.  Clay said he just looked like a kid in a red striped shirt!  He wanted to buy a new costume (and I did go by Target Sunday afternoon), but no luck.  So, he pulled out our basic backup: the ghost.  We have a white sheet with eye holes that we keep around just for this reason!  We need another back up-the Ghost just doesn’t show up in pictures! : )

Here’s one of our favorite babsitters and her friends: (I’m glad they aren’t too old to trick-or-treat!  They don’t need to grow up too fast!)

And remember those luminaries we made at the party?  I had some candles left, so: Voila!  I think we had 10 including our practice ones and Clay’s from school!  It looked good, and when one fell over, the sand fell into the candle, and put it out right away-no fire (yay!):

And this is their bounty:

 

after Trip One-Clay went back out again!  We always buy their candy so they don’t eat it, so Clay wanted to up his dollar amount (he’s still earning to buy stocks!)  We offered 10 cents a piece, but we meant chocolate!  The starburst and Dum-dums should only be about 3-5 cents, but we went 10 cents.  Now, they picked a few to eat and keep, but I’ve got the rest.  (Ahh…power! Hahaha!)  Actually, we bagged up all of Clay’s extra, and he wants to take it to Mrs. Lee for her candy jar.  (She’ll have to get a bigger jar!)

Now, we are on to the next big thing: Clay’s party!  He’s having a Megamind movie-watching party this Saturday.  He’s getting excited, and Mary Claire is too.  She changed our Pig’s sign from Halloween to Clay’s birthday.  I’m glad that the kids take on some responsibility-I’ve been in bed sick, so I appreciate the help!  Next up: take down all that Halloween stuff! : )

They light up my life!

Church, Jose's (and it was only $15 something this week!  Kids eat free on Sundays, and I got water, Clay didn't get Root Beer and Ethan didn't get juice (soda is free, if you can imagine!), and we got only the chicken and steak fajitas instead of the trio (we usually get shrimp too), so I was so shocked!  I gave her three times her tip-I don't want the wait staff to suffer for free food!), a birthday party for Ethan to go to, Girl Scouts, and a patch ceremony-busy days!
This is Mary Claire at her ceremony-today it was her turn to hold the flag : )

All the girls were dressed up in their Halloween costumes, and they said the pledge, and the Girl Scout Promise and Law.  They were super cute:

Here she is after receiving her patches-I think she likes to pull her arms up lately in pictures (why?):

Then we checked out Sandra's construction-we are so jealous!  They are adding three new rooms, opened up their bonus room, converted an existing room to a beautiful office-it's all amazing!  Mary Claire could only beg for a new room..all the way home!  It is awesome, and we'll check into it.  We found a good house (9000 sq. ft) for pretty cheap, but it had some damage that had to be repaired, and we were going to look at it Saturday, but it got an offer on Friday, so it was just as well.  The taxes would have been $1000 a month!  I should clarify: I have NO desire to have this many square feet (I can barely clean what I have!), but it would be more bedrooms-that's why it showed up on the automated search we get.  It was just a good deal in a big neighborhood in Rogers (which I also have no desire to live in!).  It'd be a good investment, and we could've moved again in a few years.  So, we are still here! : )

Anyway, my husband has decided he needs a dessert every weekend again!  He wanted to take us all to Chili's for dessert tonight, but Clay had a killer headache (I think it's hereditary), and I had changed into jammies already! (new-well, I've had them a while, but first time I wore them!-super cute shoes and I wanted to change!)  So.. I had to think of something.  I had a new package of chocolate Almond Bark, so magic: Chocolate Pretzels!

I used almost an entire bag to use up the chocolate!

It made sooo many!  Here is a close-up.  I don't do them the way my best friend taught me when I was in eighth grade.  She would dip them in completely, and pull them out with a fork.  It was too messy to me.  I hold one side of the pretzel, dip, and lay out to cool-it goes so fast!  Then you can pick it up with the dry side, so you don't get your fingers all chocolate-y (not that that is a bad thing!)

As you could probably tell, it made way too many-and it's dangerous to leave these laying around my house.  I'll eat them all.  Too tempting.  So..I bagged some up to send to school tomorrow!  I used a stamp, stapled them onto some cellophane baggies, and stapled a bow on-pretty darn easy!

Then.  I'm still working on Clay's Halloween party.  I wanted to make some luminaries with the kids for them to take home.  My plan was to use a paper bag (I got nice thick white ones, but not enough light showed through.), so I tried two tonight as my trial run.  I wanted to know if they'd catch fire (!), if you could see a design on them (and from how far away), and which was better.  I tried the plain old brown paper bag, and a super thick white bag (slick, coated paper-I thought it'd be more fireproof).  Here is the picture (please appreciate how hard it was to take a night-time picture with no flash!):

The left one is the brown paper bag, and the right is the thick white one (with some cut-outs on it).  Ches went to Wal-Mart again (I'd already been this afternoon!), and got some white ones that were thin.  I'll have to do test trials again tomorrow night, and hopefully hear from the teacher about whether or not she's okay with us doing them!

You just use a bag, a tealight candle (with a metal holder), some sand from the bottom, and then cut out designs to put on it.  (Actually you are supposed to cut out designs, but I don't want the fourth graders using X-acto knives!)  My idea originated from this article-so cute!