My Kingdom for a Star Cutter

I LOVE to bake and cook. The more creative I can be, the better. I don't have time, however, what with the five kids. Nor do I have open silver palettes waiting for me to whizbang them with delectable dishes. So, Christmas is the time to go all out - what kid ever said no to a cookie, especially when I have to make about ten different varieties?

My problem? Cookie cutters. I don't have any. I can kind of remember maybe buying some (or was I dreaming that? Or was it my friend telling me about those awesome stackable snowflake cutters and I just thought it was me?)

Okay, I do have some. I have a rocking horse, a snowman with a hat, a tree and a gingerbread androgynous person, a heart, a heart with an arrow through it, a hammer, the state of Michigan (?????), a really big leaf from some deciduous tree that resembles maple, 10 ghosts, a handful of bats and a crescent moon. Or a banana. Depends on how old you are, I guess. And how you look at it.

It seems that I forget which holiday I actually have cookie cutters for, and keep buying Halloween cookie cutters and turning my head away from the display at Christmas time.

So, it looks like for the past decade I have talked myself into the fact that I don't have any ghost cookie cutters, the last five years I included a bat, and for some reason last year I needed a banana. I mean crescent moon.

The funny thing is - I haven't made any cookies at Halloween. We are so inundated with candy, I can't bring myself to make a single cookie.

The cookie cutter syndrome seems to have gotten progressively worse with the amount of children running around. Coincidence? I think not.

Stuffing Fit for a Superhero

From Sonja:

1 cup onion chopped
1 cup celery chopped
1/2 tea Tabasco
1/2 tea poultry season
1/2 cup butter
cups bread (cut to cups if not stuffing a turkey)
2 TB parsley
1/4 cup Sherry
1/2 cup pecans chopped

Cook onion, celery, Tabasco, poultry seasoning in butter until tender. Pour mixture over bread and parsley. Add mushrooms, Sherry, and nuts.

Stuff turkey OR cook at 350 - 40 fr 1/2 hour

Tricks- if not stuffing a turkey, you may need to add more "juce" - butter, mushroom juice, and Sherry. Bump up the Tabasc an use fresh parsely instead of the dry stuff.

Happy,.. er,.. Irrelevant Holiday!

Yep, it's that time of the year when we get to eat all sorts of yummy fall foods,.. turkey, cranberries, pumpkin guts,.. it's almost Thanksgiving! So you know what that means,... I'd better post some Halloween pictures before they become totally irrelevant. Nothing like getting down to the wire,...

We started the holiday in grand tradition by going to the local pumpkin patch. Between figuring out how to squeeze the visit between football practice and games for three boys, and making sure the pumpkins weren't green mush by the time Halloween rolled around, it was an orchestration of scheduling.

After finding Jared at the culmination of his school sponsored (but parent funded - there's a recession, you know) fishing trip to the regional park, we headed to the patch with about 55 minutes of pickin' time before the scarecrows start to give you the ol' evil eye to get the heck out of the shrubbery. Even farmers want to eat dinner at a relatively normal hour. (Did I blog this already? It's been so long, I forget,...) Well, we got lots of cool pumpkins, played some mean football in hell, I mean, Thermal, California and hosted the annual 'Silly Chili and Halloweenies' at the homestead.

The fam. Notice the Paul Bunyan and his real axe. Also notice the ghillie suited kids. Oh, you can't find them? Yes, I did a good job. Tinker Bell. The unicorn, and me, showing my horns.

Here are the son and daughter of the original Thing 1 and Thing 2.

Now you know what I mean. (Isn't that CUTE??!!?!?! Wen, I got some cushions that could use some covering, if ya know what I mean,...)

The crazed clan. We had a great time. Boys trick or treated for about an hour, came home for sustenance and then went back out to jump out of bushes. The girls did great. Fifi figured it all out and had a blast. We have enough candy to last us until, .. well,.. next Halloween.

Geography Matters

Kudos Washington Post! As a BA degree holder in geography from the University of Washington, I couldn't agree more! (Go Dawgs!)

Pumpkins!

First installment of the pumpkin carving ritual. We really should just buy into the whole 'family pumpkin' instead of carving five. And somehow an errant sixth pumpkin made it into our wheelbarrow at the ol' pumpkin farm (that happens when you have a gaggle of people you are trying to control in a retail establishment. Too many pumpkins, bunches of skittles in fists of toddlers who are in the plastic vehicle part of the cart at the grocery store that you have to carry back in with said child and profusely apologize for raising a clepto, wondering the whole time if it's some sort of a sting operation.)

We made it to the pumpkin patch at 5:10pm (patch closes at 6pm). Got pumpkins. Little boys trekked through the corn maze. Big boy was too cool to do things like that so he hung out. Little girls bounced in an oversized air filled pumpkin. The whole time, the young male attendant would come over to comment on how cute they were, and Fifi would cry for mommy and stop jumping. Finally I had to be a meanie and just plain out tell the dude in the pirate hat, "my kid's afraid of you. Don't come over here." I'm sorry to hurt your feelings, but really,...we paid $3 for her to jump. Leave us in peace.

Sunday meant trunk or treating at the Church parking lot. Every year I have visions of decorating our Suburban and doling out candy and every year I am waylayed by too much football and small children needing my attention. And this year, it was the dreaded ghillie suit.

Argh. What's a ghillie suit you ask? It's a camo suit covered in tree branches and the like that hunters use to hide from those maurauding ducks. Then they became popular with paint ballers. Now, we don't hunt ducks or shoot paint ball guns, so I wasn't about to buy $70 ghillie suits for two boys who thought it would be fun to dress up like that for halloween. I'm all for delusion in my life, so even though it's a well known fact I can not sew (nor am I really too crafty - I had white flowers at my wedding because I couldn't pick a color) I am a bargain hunter and set out to make the ghillie suits, not buy them. To walmart for $15 camo sweatsuits. To Michael's for spray on adhesive and various fake leafy plants; ivies, fronds of ferns, waxy deciduous leaves, along with a big needle and some thread. (Seriously, I send my clothes to the cleaners for them to sew on a button. Pathetic.)


HOURS (and I mean hours) later, I have one suit ready to go for Sunday's 'dead run' at trunk or treat. The suit has leaves sewn all over it on the top with moss on the top and the bottom. It sheds. A lot. So it can not come in the house. (that's saying much from an owner of a German Shepherd and a Husky - too majorly shedding dogs).

I lay it carefully in the back of the Suburban so we can transport the specimen to the Church. Carefully put child into ghillie suit. He refuses to paint his face in camo to match, so most people have no idea what the heck he is and start to refer to him as a 'tree.'

What are the rest of the clan? Let me break it down for you: I went EARLY to KMart (gack! Of all places!) to get costumes or the girls - B was a cute fairy with a light up skirt. She didn't want her hair combed or to wear shoes. She was going for that total 'Tinkerbell lives in the forest with a bunch of orphan boys and so do I' look, but I finally talked her into some ballet slippers. Other than that she totally looked the part of the fairy on the island of lost boys,...

Fifi was to be a CUTE, cute, cute little unicorn - complete with an adorable little body suit in the shape of a white hershey's kiss with purple wings (I know unicorns don't have wings, just go with it. It was cute.), little white hoof shaped shoe covers and a white hat with a purple horn. She DID NOT LIKE IT. I threw her little blue ballet jammies complete with frilly skirt from Grandma Z and some pink sparkle shoes on her and she was good to go.

K was the ghillie monster, er, tree. J (the cool one) was to be a mad scientist like last year, but he left the lab coat and crazy glasses at home, so all he wore was a crazy hair whig. Which was enough to have the middle school girls thinking he was that-kind-of-minimalist-halloween-cool and slyly follow our group around the parking lot. (I saw you girls.)

Z - ddn't have the ghillie suit done in time so he threw on an old skeleton costume, his Duck's hockey jersey and put a bag on his hockey stick. Dead hockey player. Excellent, CHEAP, easy,.. and he won FIRST PRIZE for scariest costume. Go figure.

I threw on some stuff (complete with stuffed parrot! It's amazing the stuff we've accumulated in the halloween box after 12 years of kid halloweens!) and went as a pirate wench.

Pumpkin patch again with B and about 50 crazy toddlers this past Tuesday, today is her 'harvest party.' I've got the orange jello ready to go. Friday is the Radio Disney party at the Elementary school (there are good things about being in Southern Cal), and the necessity for me to torture myself for 30 minutes in the 'crush the can' booth. Saturday is three football games in Thermal, Cal. (so appropriate for halloween - we're playing football in hell! Excellent!) Then small dinner party for whoever wants to show up at our house, then trick or treating through our neighborhood. Then, a few kids will spend the night, ensuring we don't actually rest until next weekend. Oh wait, that's Z's birthday. Never mind then.

Faith Matters

Get on the newsfeed for a little introspection to your day. Faith Matters Now with Fr. Edward Beck and Chris Cuomo.

Some Spam is worth a can opener

You just need a good laugh on a Monday. Especially after pneumonia made you cancel a shopping trip with your best girls (and boy). And then you were stuck home all weekend long with yet another child feverishly ill.

This was sent over from Sonja, it's worth the post!

If you are an owner of a dog or know someone who has a dog which belongs to the 'dangerous breed' category; or if you have a child visiting your house, please take this as a warning.

Don't leave your dog with any small child unattended under any circumstances! Only one little moment was enough for this to happen: