Not Exactly a Pinterest FAIL, But....

A C+, maybe? It's like when you have your hair done, blow-dried and styled. The way the magician - I mean, hair-dresser does your hair , is awesome. But you'll never be able to duplicate it at home.

The Inspiration:

I saw this and KNEW I had to do it. I also wanted to do it because I already had the black paint for the bench ( I hated my park bench and figured I would paint it black to achieve this), and the eyeballs would be easy to do. 

The Result:

:Sigh:
I know it needs more Orange. There is actually more orange on the porch - it's just not showing in this picture. Turns out, the eyeballs were not as easy to do as I thought they would be. Figuring out what glue would work to keep them together was a trick (turns out puffy fabric paint works best...who knew?) and trying to figure out how to attach them to the bench is still a work in progress.

Mikelle is frustrating me. Well, she's 13, so of course she's frustrating me. But specifically, what I mean is, she sees me fiddling with the porch and says, "You don't need to do all this to try to be better than everyone else." 

Where did she get that? I don't do designs and decorating to compete.  Eeeeuw!

I do it because it's fun! Then she said something about Halloween being only one day and not all the craziness that I make it. Gee - I thought it was just fun! It's Fall. It's Fun. It doesn't have to be balanced with any deep spiritual meaning (like Christmas and Easter), so you don't have to worry about that. It's just...fun! 

I can't win.

I've heard kids complain that their parents don't do a lot for Halloween and they wish they did. And here is MY kid who is complaining that I am doing a lot for Halloween. :facepalm:
She also thinks I work out and exercise to avoid being fat. While that is usually part of every woman's motivation, it's not the whole reason. She knows it's also for combating stress, keeping healthy, feeling better, and having more energy. However, from her, all I get is, "Stop it. You don't need to keep doing it."  I'm trying to figure out if she truly believes what she's saying or she's just trying to get under my skin. Probably both. No wonder I have to keep exercising.

I wanted to take pictures with the kids yesterday morning, but I knew it would be more of a struggle with Mikelle and Christian. So I grabbed X-man and just had Mikelle take some shots. I threw them into a little montage. You can see some of the orange in these angles.

He needs a haircut so bad! I wanted to get him one last week, but he had that bump by his eye and it was all purple. A week ago he and Mikelle were having a good time playing in her room and he ran into her bedpost. That stopped the fun real quick. 

He's not asleep. He was goofing around (morning after injury), so I took the picture.

Mom! Give me the camera! Mom! Mom!

Speaking of hazards around the house, we have a demon washing machine. It's about 20 years old (almost) and it has a fit and a seizure and shakes back and forth if you give it a full load. I always find it in a different position in the laundry room when it's done.Keeping the clothes "balanced" is only part of the solution. The washer is just nuts. But it still works and I'm not striving to get my dream washer and dryer until the Wickenburg house, so I'm good with the demon washing machine here. 

However, I do have two candidates for my dream washer and dryer in the next house:

Dream Candidate 1

Dream Candidate #2. Oh Baby!

Anyway, around the same time (same day?) as Alexander's eye mishap, the demon washer was having one of its fits. Christian comes in and matter-of-factly says:

"Someday that washer is going to kill us all...."


HAHA! Love that kid. 

And I couldn't end this post of randomness without more pumpkins, could I?

Big and Little. I'll offer the big ones more next year.

Black and White Polka-dot toes! All is good....

 This one is going to Florida tomorrow. My friend Corrine saw it and wanted it. I had to tell her she couldn't have this one. She said to make her one with the same spider and she's going to name him Fred. Plus, she said the owners of the below pumpkin can't name their spider Fred.

Until next time...