Tales of a Shoebox Princess

Another cheesy B movie title! It's the story of a young woman who goes to a carnival and makes two wax hands at a booth. Unbeknownst to her, the wax hands were made from cursed wax. Her parents wake one morning to find her strangled in her bed.  Her distraught boyfriend realizes the wax hands are gone. He hunts them down and melts them with the very last match in his pocket that he'd been saving for a special bonfire date with his girl. Then he dies when a bear eats him. Think I can pitch it to Hollywood? Anyway, Jake asked for pictures of the wax hands mentioned in the last post. Here ya go: Just stick a battery-operated tea light inside a wax hand for a pretty neat Halloween decoration! Here's a movie of my wax hands: I like the flickering effect. Happy Halloween! Enjoy the last day of Octobery goodness!

Just got home from the ward chili cook-off and costume party. Hayley worked hard all morning and afternoon to finish up the costumes in time. Matt helped for about 5 seconds. I refused to do any of the real work of the costumery, except for the hoods. I did those. But the eyes and nose on the dog costume were mostly by Hayley. Princess Bubblegum, Finn holding Peppermint Butler, and Jake the dog Lots of people of all ages at the party recognized the characters. During the fashion show portion of the party, when Gabby, Hayley and Matt came out, they got a huge round of applause. Then the three yelled out, "What time is it?" and everyone yelled "Adventure Time!" EJ asked me to make him a costume for the ward party. This is what he wanted me to sew for him: pirate EJ Then there was Paul. He came up with his idea five (5!!!) minutes before he had to leave. He originally wanted to sew a vest, but we convinced him to let us cut up an old shirt of Jim...

Hayley came home from school today with the news that there is a viola in her band class. She said, "I wish we had orchestra in our school. Then we could combine the two groups into a big group and call it bandestra." I tried to tell her that there already exists a combination of band and string instruments and it is called orchestra.  And then I laughed.  And then things just got silly.

This has nothing to do with school. I don't go to parent/teacher conferences anymore because (at least at the middle school) the teachers are not part of the process. Seriously. In fact, there was an email recently from the principal at the middle school that read: " To best accommodate the greatest number of parents with concerns, we suggest that you consider only visiting teachers in whose class your child is struggling or those with whom you as a parent have a question that needs to be discussed in person." So I didn't even go. Why bother when all I do as a parent is sit across a lunch table from my own son who I see every day after school and talk about his grades for 2 minutes? Instead, I logged onto the gradebook (which is available online), looked at Matt's grades, decided they were good, searched for missing assignments (none), and asked him how he thought he was doing in school. He said fine. I did that all without leaving my house. I wasted neither...

Hayley has been bugging me to put pictures of her Halloween costume on the blog. She finished it last week and we got a wig to go with it. This is the cartoon character she is trying to look like: Princess Bubblegum from "Adventure Time" And here is the dress: She's trying to be pretty Here is Princess Bubblegum Hayley with the wig and crown and the stuffed Peppermint Butler she made a while ago: And one last picture because we found it funny. See if you can guess why: Do you see why we found it amusing?  Here's a hint mixed in with some labeling requested by Hayley: Did you guess Paul's face on the computer is what made us laugh? Cuz that's what it was. I'm still chuckling.

I have plenty of words in my life. I like most of them ("moist" is one I do not like. My children know this and like to use it whenever they can to annoy me. Matt's friend, Colton, even likes to use it around me just to see my pained reaction). I like to say them, write them with a nice pen on nice paper, type them on a keyboard that makes little clickity sounds. I like to turn them inside out, use them in unconventional ways, and add suffixes and prefixes that don't really match just to keep things interesting. Matt and Hayley share my enjoyment of words, and a few days ago, Hayley and I had a usage discussion about three words (actually one is a phrase) and the various situations in which they should be used.  She had asked about the difference in "dawdling" and "fiddling." I explained that when I say "dawdling," I mean someone is purposely making us late to church (or another outside-of-the-home activity) by moving very slowly, not...

One of the perks of my job is that I have a sewing machine in my office. If I'm facing my desk and I want to get a bit of sewing done, all I have to do is swivel in my wonderful office chair and say the magic word and my office chair turns into a sewing chair and I am seated at my machine. I haven't done much sewing until Monday, when I began on EJ's Halloween costume. He had gone to the local Renaissance Festival twice this season and wanted his costume to be like the clothes he saw at the Ren Fest. (Honestly, I don't know what he needs a costume for; he certainly isn't going trick-or-treating. But I actually kind of wanted to sew and this seemed like a perfectly legitimate excuse to exercise my sewing muscles). I got some muslin and a peasant shirt pattern and got to it. Unfortunately, on Monday, my ring finger on my left hand was in a tetchy mood and picked a fight with the sewing machine needle. The machine chunk-chunk-chunked to a halt and I had to extrac...