halloween party prep

we all worked hard this evening, preparing for tomorrow's big halloween party.

there was pumpkin carving:

resulting in these:

and these:

salty pumpkin seeds were baked:

and a spooky spider web-y ghost costume worked on:

it was adorned with spiders too:

the street has been warned that 20 2nd graders will come trick or treating (it's not a trick or treat country, after all, so we had to warn people so they'd have candy on hand.

we even made the warnings spooky, with burned edges and old, creaky type.

we'll be back tomorrow with pictures of the actual party itself.

pio-lows

pio-low #1

both of our pio-lows in the chairs:

and the new one i'm working on:

because you care about hair

i know you're pretty into hair-related issues, so i thought you should see this:



where do you want to go next hair-wise?

are you lookin' at me?

been wanting to take pictures of these birch tree eyeballs for such a long time:

and then i spied a monkey in a tree:

cooking and sewing

because one often feels like nesting with the approach of winter, we've been making some yummy things with the last of the tomatoes from sabin's tomato plant and we've been sewing some throw pillows for the chairs in the living room.

fabulous tomato pasta sauce

8-10 ripe tomatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
1 medium onion, diced
3 fat cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1 small chili (can be left out of kids are being fed, or just use a mild one)
salt & garlic pepper to taste
T of fresh thyme leaves (or other herbs you have access to)
drizzle of cream

sauté the onions and garlic and chili, add the tomatoes, salt & pepper and thyme. simmer 'til the tomatoes are cooked down.  put in a drizzle of cream just before you serve it--it takes out some of the intense, acidy tomatoiness in a good way.

i served it over fresh pasta with garlic-butter portobellos as the "meat."  it was fabulous.

i made a similar version of the tomato sauce (sans cream) and with quite a lot more chili to use like the patatas bravas sauce we get at the tapas place in greenbelt over a potato omelet.  yum.  what was left over, i threw into a batch of The Soup, so you might say that it's a very versatile thing to have around the house.  and it's good for those last tomatoes that aren't quite ripe or tasty enough to eat in BLTs or salads.

* * *

and now, for the pillows. sabin wanted to sew and since i've been stashing fun fabrics for awhile now, we decided to see what we had that could be turned into some pillows for the chairs in the living room. sabin chose these fabrics and with a little bit of help from me, even sewed herself on the sewing machine. we ended up with this cheerful and autumny pillow:

side 1

side 2

and last night, i got a 10 p.m. creative rush and started making this one:

fun!

are you a real american?

take this quiz and find out. :-)

fall holiday in pictures

christmas ideas

don't you think that owen and finnie would like one of these for christmas?

is it real or is it legoland?

real?

or legoland?

legoland?

or real?

scenes from halloween in tivoli