Halloween fun

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I own three Halloween shirts, five pairs of socks, and almost as many decorations as at Christmas time.

Naturally I wanted to have a Halloween themed party for the neighbor kids. The plan was to have the kids over in two batches too correspond to the ages of my two sweet baby girls. We invited two families over for cookie decorating and dinner in a pumpkin and dancing and playing with Meredith early. We invited two other families over for round two later for the same plus a spooky kids movie and game night for the parents. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry....

Meredith got sick the night before and has been sick since. So we canceled the parties and just did those activities as a family.  It was still a pretty good Halloween weekend.

Halloween begins

I took the girls to a Halloween activity at the Disney store tonight. Honestly, it was a bit lame. However the girls had fun in large part because they got to wear their costumes to the mall.  Every one waved and said hi to Audrey as if she really was Ariel.

Me and Meredith

I took this with my poor quality camera phone this morning.

Socks - finding my way

I use Susan's basic sock pattern. However, some where along the way I felt like the pattern needed tweaking to make it fit better.
So I've tried different sizes of needles, more stitches, and short row heels. In the end I have come to the conclusion that Susan's sock recipe is pretty great just the way it is...  And I have a few less successful sock starts to frog.

A maker

I love to make things myself.  Food,crafts, anything. One of the big ways that I am trying to be thrifty is by making gifts for people instead of buying gifts.

I have been toying with various ideas for cousin gifts. My latest idea is ornaments with their names on them.  Today I whipped up a prototype (without any colorwork) using leftover sock yarn.  I love how it turned out and this may become a good way to use up the little bits of leftover sock yarn.

Decluttering challenge

I decided to declare October declutter month. My challenge is to get rid of one thing each day for all 31 days. I can do more than one thing on any given day. 

I am three days in and happy to be doing well so far.  Today I took a load of items to a donation drop. It felt awesome to move stuff out forever.