Crafting Away

Annabelle has had (and will be having) waaay too many days off this month.  She has fours day or less of school every week this month.  Thanksgiving week will be the worst, with only a half day on Monday, a giant feast on Tuesday and Wednesday I'm pretty sure will be pointless.  I can remember being so excited about all the days off when I was a kid, but as a parent, I'm annoyed.  What am I supposed to do with her on all these days off?  She wants play dates but the PTA hasn't felt the need to send out the school directory yet so I have no phone numbers.  So instead we craft.  It gives us a few hours of fun without all the same old stuff to do.

First we laid out all the pieces.  And yes, we are still in our pajamas even though it's the afternoon.  Don't judge.

And made four super cute owls.

On to the next one.

Mr. Turkey

We made a few others as well.  Once they were made, I got about an hour of piece and quiet to watch Grey's while she played with her new little owl family.  I think I need to go buy more crafts!

So Clean

I'm starting to get my house in order for Christmas.  This week my plan is to do some crazy deep cleaning so that I can get the decorations out and up the day after Thanksgiving.  Yesterday I scoured the kitchen, top to bottom.  I mean I even Pledged the cabinets.  Once I did that, the floors were Slippery with a capital S.  Luckily, my Shark steam mop fixed that problem.

I LOVE my Shark.  It's so easy to just plug it in, clean the floors and in 15 minutes I have shining, sparkly clean floors.  It has only one drawback.  The smell.  There isn't one.  When I was growing up, and obviously before the purchasing of the all mighty steam mop, when the floors were cleaned there was a scent.  Pine Sol or lemon or whatever I was feeling that day.  And it smelled CLEAN to me. 

Maybe I need to come up with a way to add a scent to the Shark's water without leaving a residue or gunking up the machinery inside.  Hmmm... maybe I should start some research.  Or have Mark do the research for me because, you know  I don't like doing it:)

A Great Big Pile

We've had some really beautiful weather here in Buffalo the past two weeks.  Temperatures in the 60's, even hitting the 70's once.  This is usually pretty unheard of in November.  All I can say it Thank Goodness because it makes raking those leaves so much more enjoyable when you don't have to do it while wearing winter gloves. 

This year Annabelle did a great job helping out.  Actually raking instead of just waiting for me to finish so that she can destroy my pile almost immediately.  Once she got into the pile though, all those big leaves were crushed down into tiny little pieces.  There were bits of leaves inside her clothes, in her hair, in her shoes.  But she had a blast and then had more fun afterwards in the bathtub with lots of bubbles.

So strong!

Running and running through the leaves.

Getting into the pile.

Where's Annabelle?

This is when the real mess started.

Leaves in her hair.

I love seeing her so excited to do something so simple.  It reminds me of when spending the whole day outside, playing in the leaves, was the most fun.  I hope that she doesn't grow up too quickly on me.

I Need an Intervention

I have noticed a pile up around the house lately.  Groups of two or three on the end tables, in my purse(s), on the night stand.  Mark has been saying for years that I'm addicted.  That I need to talk to someone about it.  I just can't stop the need to accumulate.  The more I have the better I feel. 

Do you want to know what it is?

Lip balm, chapstick... I need it on my lips at. all. times.  Seriously, I even put it on before bed.  I reapply if I have to get up in the middle of the night.  If I don't my lips will crack right open!  This is just the stash that I found downstairs.  I didn't pull out all the tubes in the bedroom and linen closet and bathroom drawers or my purses.  There has to be at least three or four partially used ones in every purse I have ever owned. 

Mark says I need to find help.  That it's all in my head.  That my lips look fine, not chapped at all. 

 Do you think I have a problem?

A Halloween Party

For the past 7 years, my friends Scott and Joleene have had an adult only Halloween party.  It is always the first Saturday after Halloween.  They always go crazy with the decorating and we all dress up and have a great time.  Every year, they say it will be that last one.  It's a lot of work and I know they spend quite a bit of money, so I would never pressure them to keep doing it if their heart wasn't in it anymore.  So I thought I would show I few pictures of me and my friends having a fun, adult night out:)

I was a sexy spartan.

Mark as the Fruit of the Loom grapes.

Scott was the Mask.  Isn't it awesome?

Pacman was hungry.  Needed a grape-y snack.

Steph and Keith were Flo from Progressive and Humpty.

Joleene was Edwinia Scissorhands and my cousin Amy was Jem!

Billy and Krissy  were Barney and the girl from How I Met Your Mother.  I don't watch the show so I didn't know who they were.

Steph and I sang some karaoke.  Bel Biv Davoe's Poison which was harder than we thought it would be.

Black Swan and my weirdo husband.

Eating pudding shots.  On the end is my cousin'd husband, Mike.  He was Bob Ross.

Rick as Teen Wolf.  He did this costume 6 or 7 years ago but it is still so good!

The next day Annabelle couldn't wait to try on Daddy's grape costume.  She looks so cute.  I think that we will be having another grape costume to make next year:)

As you can see, we like to get creative with our costumes.  It's so much fun to see what everyone will be wearing.  It's always a surprise beacsue most people keep it a big secret until the unveiling.  I 'll be sad if there is no party next year.  Hopefully we'll still have a reason to dress up and be silly next year.

Vulnerability

On this past Friday, I got a strange package in the mail.  Five pairs of blue suede shoes, men's sizes 10-13.  I did not order these shoes.  I was beyond confused.  After some time on the phone with Macy's, where I received the order form, I found out that my credit card information was stolen.  I guess we were lucky that the person using my credit information forgot to have his big, ugly shoes shipped to his own home.  We were able to get things set into motion only days after my card was used.  Mark was on the phone right away, getting all the info that he could.

We found that $900 was spent on shoes at Macy's, $700 was spent at Bed, Bath & Beyond, an on-line profile was paid for on true.com and two orders of Chinese food were ordered in Philly.  We know their e-mail address and the general area they live in, Philly/New Jersey.

Mark had to tell people at work to be on the look out for him, just in case they got any of his info.  National security here people, lol!  He's so low level that they wouldn't be seeing much but hey, you never know.  We put all kinds of fraud alert protection on our cards, information, etc.  We checked all of our credit reports, got new credit cards and have been manic about searching through all of our records just trying to figure out how this happened.  I don't think we will ever know.

Except now, I have this awful feeling like my privacy has been invaded.  I've always been the girl that doesn't think that it will happen to me.  My wallet won't be stolen while on vacation, the accident won't happen, the lightening won't strike.  Will I be more cautious?  I know I am right now.  I paid cash for my gas yesterday instead of using my credit card like I usually do.  Though I did use my card at Target and Wegmans.  The gas station seems more seedy to me.

I hope this isn't going to be a long battle.  My mom's credit was stolen and it took her a few years to get things squared away, but they had opened other cards in her name which did a number on her credit score.  That hasn't happened to us.  It's just so frustrating to me that people think that its' OK to take from others.  It makes me kinda sad.

This Is Halloween!

Our Halloween was pretty uneventful.  Annabelle was so excited to start and then decided she was finished after a half an hour.  That's OK with me.  Less candy in the house means less temptation for me:)