I always liked Halloween as a kid but as an adult, I have come to love it. Being in town and getting trick or treaters was so much fun. Growing up in the country we never got them of course. When I moved from the townhouse to our house the number of trick or treaters quadrupled. Then taking our girls trick or treating is possibly more fun for me than them. Compton Park in Macomb(one block from our house) would get packed with kids running from house to house. It was community chaos that was pure fun.
This was the first year Morgan trick or treated. She was pumped about going as a mermaid pumpkin head. Lol. You can obviously see how warm it was that year. (2018)She loves handing out candy too. Macomb has two nights of it so we tried to stay in one night for that part. I remember having Natalie in the carrier and she was fighting sleeping. She cried/screamed and was asleep the next moment. In 2019 we were not nearly so lucky with the weather. Dexter loved it but not so great for trick or treating. However the assisted care facilities are fantastic and always opened up for trick or treating so that’s where the whole town went. Lol. It was packed but also fun. I knew the directors of those places due to work and they all talked about having to run out and buy more candy multiple times that night. I’m sure the residents loved it. Of course 2020 Halloween was different but it is probably my favorite. Everyone was so creative with candy shoots, candy fishing poles, decorated tables, etc. that it was extra memorable. I was hoping the candy shoots would stick around, but they didn’t. 2021 was the year Natalie got into it, so I would say three is the age kids “get it.” We pumpkin carved and ate homemade pizza and walked about 10,000 steps that night. It was great weather and more houses than ever had lights on. I think that was because we were on an upswing from Covid and people saw it as a celebration. This is a screenshot from the video I took of this house. They do such a great job with their decorations. This is from 2020 but it looked about the same last year.
This year will be different living in the country again. I’ll miss handing out candy but it will be fun to trick or treat in a new place. The girls are so excited to go so I hope we find lots of houses with lights on.
Adding pops of color to the girls’ rooms and also functional.
As you know by the posts about fixing nail holes, my grandma had a lot of pictures on the walls. I salvaged a couple after I realized there was an easy craft project I could do with them.
None of the frames were high quality so I had zero issues with painting on the wood. (I do sometimes cringe when I see people painting nice wood furniture.) I kept with the theme of cheap and bought regular craft paint from Walmart in bright, fun colors.
I should have primed them first but since I didn’t, they took about three coats to cover the wood and get the shade I wanted( yellow might have been four coats). This is one of the three smaller frames.
I was going to take the pictures/canvases out of the frames but decided to paint them instead. I thought that would give a better background for anything the girls hung up instead of their purple walls. Brandon just painted them white. A little bit chipped here and there but I didn’t even touch it up. I figure the girls will be rough anyway so why worry about perfection.
Then I just tacked in a couple of nails and strung some gold wire across. A few gold clips finished them off. Morgan has the big frame and Natalie has the three smaller ones.
The big frame was a picture that always hung in the living room. The picture itself was bowed out from the frame quite a bit so we had to use a nail and wire to hang it. After all those nail holes we fixed I’m hesitant to nail anything in the walls. The smaller frames have command strips. I added the felt ball string to add even more color. Plus, I’m really loving all the felt stuff these days.
Natalie’s desk is always a mess. I’d like to change out the hardware on it, but that’s a project for down the road. Natalie chose this spot. It gives off major Friends vibes.
I think they turned out really cute, adds some fun color to their rooms and breaks up the purple. I’ll keep adding to their walls but I’m taking my time with it to find functional and fun pieces.
This weekend was a good mix of being productive, fun and relaxing. We were going to kick off the weekend with a football game but it was cold and rainy at game time so we opted to stay home and play Qwirkle. We play once a day, and I haven’t beat Brandon yet. I have tied and been close, but not a win yet.
Qwirkle is not a game for Natalie so we played a round of jenga first. Our table is the worst surface for that game. It’s wiggly and the girls are constantly leaning on it. Normally we play on the floor and quickly learned that would be site for all future jenga games. Natalie is surprisingly good at jenga. And that really annoys Morgan.
Saturday started off with me moving the girls desks around in their rooms. And cleaning up. Now, they both need a rug to play on and warm up the rooms. And maybe muffle the THUMP of them getting out of bed. While I was up there, Brandon worked on scraping and painting the porch.
That night we ate at Harley K’s (I always want to call it Harley Quinn’s) for some Philippino food. I was extra adventurous and got the pork stewed in pigs blood. It was good, but I like the pancit better. What was really amazing was the fresh rolls they brought us out to try. They were not as sweet as Hawaiian rolls but close and just delicious. They make them to order so we agreed they would be perfect for thanksgiving. Then we made a quick trip to Princeton for pumpkins.
Since the guys were combining on Sunday, we had my mom come down for pumpkin carving and lunch. We even fit in a game of Qwirkle. We roasted the pumpkin seeds because Morgan insisted she liked them. She might have ate 5, but Natalie ate a small bowl. I tried both a salty and a sweet kind, but the sweet kind got a little crisp. I should have been watching them closer since it was brown sugar. I think the salty would still have been better. They were really yummy. Morgan liked the scraping technique for hers. We eventually put it in a closet so she could see how much she needed to scrap for the light to shine through. These pumpkins were really thick this year. Natalie wanted a scary pumpkin so this is her design. It took a bit to finalize the plans but it turned out really good. Then we went for a little walk in the timber and checked out the deer stand. It’s really getting pretty back there now. We finished that walk with some hedge apple bowling in the corn field.
We plan on planting some pumpkins next year by a shed. I’m rethinking that plan after Natalie spotted a snake going into the tall grass there. We were walking up to the house and made a couple trips back and forth and the snake was out every time to sun himself. He would slither back in the grass and wait for us to leave before coming back out. I am not a fan of snakes. This was a small, harmless one, but I still didn’t like it.
Next weekend is a trip to Macomb for WIU’s homecoming and more packing. I made good start in the basement last time we were there so I’m hoping to wrap that up and move on to the kitchen. Moving is a pain but moving in chunks is really hard. I want my stuff in both places for when we are there. Eventually, everything will get to Wyanet and will will make due with paper plates and takeout in Macomb when we go there to work on THAT house. Some day we will just have one house to work on. 😁
So it’s Friday Favorites on Saturday. I almost remembered to post this yesterday. Fall is the best time of year. It’s cooler and there’s so many activities to do to fill up the week and weekends. The girls had a three day weekend so I took Monday off with them so Brandon could work. So we packed a lot in the past week.
We started out at Verizon to get new phones. Our current carrier’s service ends in our county so we have terrible coverage here. Our current phones are iPhone 8’s and we are going to the new 14’s (when they arrive) so we are really upgrading. It’s never quick at those places so Natalie took some pictures to pass the time. Then we headed to Hornbakers to check out what was left if their stock. They were running end of year sales so we took advantage of that to get a tree, two shrubs and two planters. It’s nice to have some plants in the yard.The girls and I headed to a Halloween parade while Brandon went to a concert. They got just enough candy to be excited about it. Then we heading to the fairgrounds to see if there was anything left at the Halloween garage sale(there wasn’t) but we stayed for the Hocus Pocus Dancing Hags (that’s close enough to whatever their name is). Monday was spent at Tanners with Tony and Abigail. So glad they came to play all day with us! And they did play all day. I was tired, but kids have endless energy so we followed that up with swim practice for Morgan.
The rest of the week was pretty normal with school and work. This weekend holds no plans so I’m planning on wrapping up a couple of little projects. Hopefully I’ll get those posted next week. Have a great weekend!
