Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, everyone! We actually have all our celebrating in already, since our town does a downtown trick-or-treating on the Wednesday before and neighborhood trick-or-treating on Thursday. We took full advantage though, going out both nights and enjoying watching Colter soak it all up.

Let's back up to Tuesday though, which was a beautiful day. Keith managed to get home a bit early, so the pumpkin carving was able to happen outside. Three cheers for pumpkin gunk staying outside! I am not a fan of getting my hands down in that goo, and Colter wasn't so much either, but he did want to help with the carving.

Meanwhile, Elliott had no qualms about slimy stuff on his hands.

Ok, maybe a little unsure.

Hmmm...what is this stuff?

 I wonder how it tastes?

 Let's take some nice photos out front with the pumpkins! Right...

On Wednesday, we suited up to head up Main Street. 

Let's try those pictures out front again!

Colter wanted to be a hermit crab, so a hermit crab he was.

He managed really well all night with his bulky shell, which ended up a bit heavier than I anticipated.

Elliott was an avocado because, well, because Colter said he should be an avocado. Green head to toe, with a hat I knitted for him and a produce label made with an iron-on transfer.

 Colter was so excited to wear his costume, and I'll admit I was pretty excited about how it turned out.

As for making it, I was a little stumped at first. You know you have a challenge ahead of you when a Pinterest search only has about three results. I texted a bit with my fantastically creative friend, and landed on a long tube of fabric, stuffed and spiraled into a shell. I sewed it onto a thrift store backpack, and then sewed and stuffed legs and attached them to the straps.

His claws were made out of the same fabric as the legs, and attached to a long piece of yarn that went through the sleeves of his shirt like mittens for little kids so he wouldn't lose them. I also put a piece of elastic on the underside of each claw so it could stay around his wrist without flopping around. His eyeballs were one of those silly headbands for parties with springs and two balls on the top; I just painted the balls white and added some goggly eyes. By raiding my mom's fabric bins, pulling apart some old pillows for stuffing, and checking the thrift store, the only new thing I bought was the headband (and it was on clearance at Target). Even Elliott's costume was all things my mom or I had on hand. My little eco-crab and eco-avocado!

I do find it funny that for three of his four Halloweens, he's gone as a shelled creature: a turtle, a lobster, and now a hermit crab. Perhaps a manifestation of his introvert ways?

Keith's parents were able to join us on Thursday night to see the boys dressed up, share some snacks, and bring the boys lots of goodies and some Halloween books. What a treat for all of us!

I think we'll be swapping the usual afternoon cartoon for some Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin today, just to make sure we do something Halloween-ish on Halloween (besides eating candy!) Hope you all have a wonderful Halloween, with just the right amount of spooky and sweet!

Yo! It's Yogurt!

Sometime in the last couple of years, post-Colter but pre-Elliott, a yogurt maker was passed along to me via my Mom-mom. Making yogurt sounded right up my alley, and I thought I would put it to use. And then it sat, and sat, and sat. I even considered taking it to the electronics recycling because I wasn't using it, but then forgot to send it along with Keith when he took a bunch of stuff over on the scheduled day. 

Then, a month or so ago, my mom told me she found a yogurt maker at a flea market and she was so excited about it. After she told me how simple it was, I got mine out and cleaned it up. By this point, I had lost the hand-written cards that came with it telling me how to use it. If I needed any proof that you can find anything on the internet, it came in the form of being able to find manuals to early 1970s yogurt makers. I was in business.

Really, the process is so simple. Take a quart of milk. Bring it to a boil. Let it cool down a bit. My yogurt maker came with a handy spoon thermometer that actually shows you when it is cool enough, then you stir in starter you can buy at a health food store or a tablespoon of fresh yogurt with live active cultures (ideally, a tablespoon from your previous batch).

Once the starter is mixed in, you pour it into the five glass cups and put the lids on, place them in the yogurt maker, and plug it in. 

The top of the yogurt maker has a little "time out" dial so that you can show what time to take the yogurt out, about 10 hours. It isn't actually a timer, just a marker so you can keep track of what time it  will be done.

My first batch was an experiment. Since Elliott can't have milk, we sometimes buy coconut milk yogurt. At over $4 for 16 ounces, it's a little pricey for me. Coconut milk is more reasonable though, so I thought I would use some of the coconut yogurt we had for the starter, and try a batch using coconut milk. I was really excited about the possibility of making our own, because of both the price and that our local grocery store doesn't carry coconut milk yogurt so it is a special trip to get it. Well, lo and behold, it didn't work. It never thickened up. Maybe the coconut milk yogurt I was using as a starter wasn't fresh enough, maybe there is a totally different process to making yogurt out of a non-dairy milk. Anyway, it was a bust.

But fear not, I carried on. Armed with some packs of yogurt starter, I started a batch using 2% milk we buy at the donut shop in town. It came out perfectly. Nice and thick and smooth, just as it should be. The next batch, I kept just a little yogurt from the first round and used that as my starter and it turned out just as well. I know it is hard to tell, but that's the finished yogurt below.

So, now we are making yogurt using local milk, and it comes out cheaper than buying it if we don't have to use a pack of starter each time. Plus, there is no extra sugar or anything in it to start. And we aren't using yogurt out of plastic tubs all the time so that waste is eliminated as well.

Boy, am I glad I didn't pitch the yogurt maker!

Turning Tables

A friend recently offered us a plastic picnic tables his girls had outgrown, and we were pretty excited because we have been on the lookout for a kids table for the patio. The only downside was that it was pink. And purple. A little too girly for our little men.

Lest you think color would deter us from accepting a freebie, we had a remedy for that. Keith was off to the hardware store to pick up some spray paint for plastic in some tamer tones, and had that table painted in no time. So fast I never got before pictures.

Ok, not quite that fast. I just didn't take them. Colter and I scrubbed everything down really well, and the following weekend Keith got to painting.

The can recommended letting it sit seven days to fully cure and prevent chipping, so we waited a week to put it back together. It isn't totally chip-proof, so we'll see how it holds up in the long run.

For now though, we have seating for the little folks. Even if one of them refuses to look at the camera.

Well, C, if that's the way you are going to be, we'll bring in the second string.

When did E get so big?

Parking by Number

I've been doing a lot of pinning lately, and not a lot of doing. But then I saw a really simple little game for Colter, and actually got around to make it in less than 24 hours.

It's a little numbered parking lot, made out of a box lid. First I cut a little driveway in the end. Then simply draw lines for parking spots and number them with a Sharpie, and number the cars. I put the numbers on painters' tape and stuck them to the cars for easy removal. Then drive and park and practice numbers!

Colter was pretty pleased with it, and I found him going back to it himself throughout the day, so that's a real win.

Random Wreath

Forging ahead with the informal fall decor series...

In trying to keep my hands and mind busy while waiting for Elliott, I put together a little fall wreath for the front door. I wish I could give you step by step instructions, or at least tell you what little seed pods I used, but I didn't take pictures of anything but the finished project and I picked up the seed pods off street a couple years ago and don't know what they are.

I simply wrapped a styrofoam wreath with some strips of fabric leftover from Colter's quilt, covering about 3/4 of the wreath. Then I stuck the little pods, which had a stem, into the wreath, tucking moss in between to hide the styrofoam. It needed a little something else, and my mom took one look at it, glanced around the yard (I was working on the back steps) and nabbed a few dried pieces off the cornstalks in the garden to tuck in.  (I've since pinned them on so they didn't flop forward so much.)

Anybody know what these pods are? They came off a big tree down the street from our house.

And that's it. My random, thrown together, autumnal wreath. Happy fall, y'all.