Halloween 2013

(c) 2013 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Happy Halloween, everybody! Well, happy day-after-Halloween anyway. I'm so excited to share the girls' costumes with you this year! They had very interesting ideas, and I think their looks turned out great! Without further ado, here you go!

(Click on the picture to see it bigger.)

Can't quite tell what they are, exactly? Not too surprising, since they were both combination costumes. Pumpkin was a ghost-owl*-vampire while Penguin opted for zombie-vampire. Here are some close-ups of their faces.

Fun, huh?!  I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with (and what we accomplish) next year!



*Barn owls are white, so that helped with the ghostiness!

Freaky 5K - Beekeeper edition

(c) 2013 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

As you probably know, I've been doing this 5K running thing for a few years now - 4 to be precise.  I ran in one my first year, 2 my second, 3 my third, and now I've completed 4 in my 4th year as a runner!  The only one I've done every year is our town's invariable HOT one in July, but I've now completed the Y's Freaky 5K for three different years!

One of my favorite parts about this race is that it's a costume-friendly one.  And I LOVE costumes.  (But I think people who enter the costume contest in outfits they didn't run in are totally cheating.)  

Anyway, presenting my 2013 Freaky 5K costume...

Beekeeper Being Chased by Bees!

I'd been toying with this idea in my head for a while, but last night I decided I really did want to do it, so after the girls went to bed,  I made the bees with some scrap fabric, a really big Sharpie marker, some rubber rings (for their heads/to hold open them in a windsock fashion), and milk carton side wings.  And thread.  A lot of thread.  Fishing line to attach them to my hat/veil combo.

I was worried that the wings would make them top-heavy, so I ended up sewing a largish bead inside each one at the bottom of the last stripe.  I think it helped.  Not that I ran fast enough that they really flew, but still...

The hat was a little more annoying than I thought it would be in that the front kept wanting to slide down lower than I liked, and my earbud cord was pulled on some by the elastic of the veil, so it kept falling out, but overall, not an awful one to run in, for a costume race anyway!  Lots of compliments and smiles, so that was nice.   I figure I'll just detach the bees' string from my hat and throw 'em in my costume tote 'cuz you just never know when this sort of thing will come in handy!  :)

Car Talk, WI Dells to Home edition

(c) 2013 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

We were enjoying [maybe not the right word!] a long [extra half-hour due to stop-and-go traffic on I-94 for at least 18 miles] drive home from a wonderful weekend at Wisconsin Dells we'd enjoyed [right word!] with most of my side of the family.  Here are a few snippets of our conversations.

 

Me:  What was your favorite ride this weekend?

Penguin: Hm... the family raft ride!

M: Why?

Penguin, our more extroverted child: I think because you got to go on it with more people.

 The girls, pointing out to me that it was almost October, and since I don't start their Halloween costumes until October, wanting to get those settled.

Me:  Well, then, have you decided what you want to be?

Pumpkin: Yes! You know!  I want to be a ghost-owl-vampire!  

Me:  Um... how are we going to do that?

Penguin, interrupting:  You can guess mine!  "I vant...to drink...your BRAINS!"

Me:  Yeah?  You're sure you want to be a vampire-zombie?!

...discussion ensues regarding how to make Penguin a zombie-vampire.  Basic consensus is vampire (already have cape!) + greenish face & sores...

Me: Ok, then, how are we going to do a ghost-owl-vampire?  I don't know if I can make all those three things work.

Pumpkin: Well, the owl is a barn owl so it's white like a ghost.  

Me: Ok... tell me more.

Pumpkin:  So I need a white owl costume, then add FANGS!

Me:  So... like a vampire bat, but a vampire owl?

Pumpkin: YES!

 

Slightly later, still in a Halloween-related conversation...

Mr. Kluges:  Hey, did you think about being a vampire-fairy?!?!?!

Pumpkin, subtext, that is ridiculous: Nooooo!

Mr. Kluges: Why not?

Pumpkin:  'Cuz that's not real!

It's a good thing I wasn't driving, 'cuz we would've went off the road with my giggling after that last bit.  Vampire-fairy =/= real, but vampire-zombie AND ghost-owl-vampire? Totally possible!

 

  

Woo-hoo!

(c) 2013 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

So this happened today, on the last day of the first session of swimming lessons... 

That'd be my 8 year old daughter jumping off the low diving board... and my 6 year old daughter leaping from the high board!  Penguin said today, "I want to try the high diving board now!" So she climbed up, looked around briefly, and then just jumped right off!  No hesitation, no "maybe not today; I'm coming back down," just JUMP!  

It was so much fun, she did it again, several times, sometimes even with the two of them trying to coordinate their jump.  Well done, Penguin!

Color Run 5K

(c) 2013 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

I did my first 5K of this year this morning, and it was a color run!  As in, while you're running along the course, occasionally you run a gauntlet of people throwing colored paint powder on you!  

It was fun for something different, and a fun way to get my first 5K of the year done.  It's been raining lots lately, and the course was SOAKED.  A couple of times the water was deep and sucky enough that I almost lost a shoe.  There were a couple of small hills, and the trail on them was slippery, slippery clay, so I walked for safety on the last uber-slick one.  I was just glad that it wasn't actively raining while we were running, and the temperature was lovely.

Here's how I looked when I got home afterward....

  

After a LONG and scrubby shower, I'm pretty much back to normal, with the exception of my blue hand.  Apparently that blue's a little more persistent than the rest of the colors, and has taken up residence on all my knuckles and between my fingers.  Oh well. :)  We'll see how the color sets on the shirt - it's already more blendy than I'd've wanted, but it's definitely not white anymore!

 

Rainbow Day!

(c) 2013 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Today was "Rainbow Day" at school & the kids were encouraged to wear rainbows, tie-dyed stuff, and bright colors in general.  Nice and cheery for the middle of winter, don't you think?

We kinda got into it....

A close-up of that fancy hair!

Also, I maybe had a little fun with their bento-style lunches, too...  

Penguin's lunch on Rainbow Day!

Close-up of the fruit - dried cranberries, clementine sections, dried  mango, dried banana chips, kiwifruit, and blueberries!

They usually just have one rubber band holding their lunch box together, not 5 in rainbow order! :)

 

Turkey Bento Box Lunches

(c) 2012 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

I HAD to share this cute lunch I made for my girls today 'cuz it's rather more fancy that I usually do.  But since we're pretty much at the end of fall, and I still had a turkey cookie cutter in my bento stuff drawer, well, here's what they got...

 

(Click on the picture to make it larger.)

That'd be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cut into a turkey shape, with carrot ribbon feathers/wing (Just take your peeler to the carrot & voila! Ribbons!) and feet colored in with a food-safe marker.  I used the cookie cutter on the edge of a fruit strip to cut out the red head part, and a small straw to make the eye on each.  It's surrounded by some Pirate's Booty puffed snacky things and 3 candy corn.  Underneath all that hides a sausage stick.  In the other, sealable container there is homemade unsweetened applesauce with cinnamon and some fall leaf sprinkles. 

Now isn't that just the most fall-ish lunch you've ever seen?! (Other than a leftover turkey sandwich, of course! *grin*)

(In case you're wondering, this is the kind of bento box I'm using today.  Love it!) 

Not exactly a gingerbead house...

(c) 2012 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Sorry.  I guess the missing of a day really took the pressure off posting daily! Well, I still managed to post more than I had for ages, so we'll call it good anyway.

Back in October, Mr. Kluges had been back home to Minnesota and saw his folks. Grandma Yori sent back a cute kit to make a haunted house cake for Halloween. Fun, cute, and tasty, right?!

Well, we didn't quite get to it by Halloween.  So, last Saturday, while my parents were visiting, we decided to make it anyway, and just change the theme a bit.  I think it turned out pretty well!

Presenting, our Fall House Cake!

      

#6 Plastic Shrinky Dinks

(c) 2012 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

I came across a craft idea on Pinterest a while back.  It sounded interesting, especially since my girls had done a fairy-themed shrinky-dink kit this summer.  Basically you take #6 recyclable plastic, cut out the shape you want, punch any desired holes, color it with permanent markers, then shrink it in your oven.

Cheap, easy, potentially pretty result... is this too good to be true!?

 I'm here to say that, no, it's not!  I got a hold of some #6 plastic (a berry container or two, some take-away clear plastic, a Taco Bell nacho top), cut them into flat pieces maybe a couple inches per side (circles, rectangles, paisleys!), and let the girls color them.  With a paper punch, we punched holes in the ones we wanted for necklaces/bracelets.  Then we popped them, well spaced, on a parchment-paper-covered cookie sheet and threw 'em in a 350F oven.

They curled up, I worried they'd get stuck to themselves, then they curled back down and laid flat, we pulled them out and let them cool, and voila! Shrinky-dinks!!! Hooray!

Whose Home is This?

(c) 2012 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

This evening, our girls found a small tunnel.  A hole, the entranceway to a burrow, a home for some sort of creature.  So, as any scientifically-minded youngster might do, they gathered a couple of reference books to see if they could figure out exactly what sort of creature belongs to this home.

These were the reference books they brought out:

and

'Cuz magic is real, my friends, and don't you forget it! :)  

(Also, kids are awesome.)

  

Three cool things from Friday

(c) 2012 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

1) When I wished Penguin's 4K teacher Happy Star Wars Day on Friday, she grinned and responded with, "Oh yes, May the Fourth be with you, too!"  

2) Along with it being Star Wars Day, our school had Twin Day, where the kids could dress alike.  My two girls wore matching dresses.  I wore this shirt and killed two birds with one stone.  :)  

3)  When I went to sign Pumpkin's Daily Planner from school, I found this at the top of the column. 

  

Happy Valentine's Day!

(c) 2012 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

I hope you all had a lovely day yesterday, spent with your significant other, your family, and/or your own lovely self! I adore you all, by the way!

Here's a picture of the valentines my girls gave out. The one of Penguin is a preliminary version - the final one had five hearts going down the left side, reading "Happy" "Valentine's" "Day" "From" Penguin. I can't take credit for the idea.  I first saw it on Filth Wizardry, but it's all over Pinterest now, too.  So fun!  Plus, even Penguin's 4- and 5-year old classmates know who it's from without having to try to puzzle out a name.

NaBloPoMo #6 - Halloween Picture Fun

(c) 2011 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Those of you who know me in real life know how much I love Halloween. I adore costumes and dressing up and the creativity involved in taking an idea and turning it into reality.  I mean, one year I made my husband into the Arby's Oven Mitt using a couple of thrift-store mattress pads and some foam. 

This year I decided to unleash that creativity on the photos that sit on our mantle.
(You could click onto the images if you want to see them in more detail.)

Cute, no?!

ZhuZhu Pets + Mini-bilibos = Great Fun!

(c) 2011 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

WW - Pint-Size Pine Trees

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

(Photo taken by my good friend GH, JH's mom.)

WW - Caving!

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

WW - The best skirts are twirly!

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

P.S. Thanks, TNGreatAunt! They're a hit!

WW - Penguin's PomPom Bugs

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

(Is it just me, or are these bugs just itching to get little word bubbles with clever dialogue? You think so, too? Yeah? Ok, hit it! *grin* Be funny enough & I'll put it in some little word bubbles & post your cleverness, you funny, smart reader(s), you!!)

Warning: Earworms

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Lately I've ended up with a few songs stuck in my head. And since the surest way I know to get rid of an earworm is to pass it along, well...

These first two are kid songs via Jitterbug.

• Green Anaconda (Pumpkin's current favorite)

• Polar Bear Over There by Uncle Rock (Penguin loves this one and will sometimes randomly point and say, "Polar bear ova dere!")

Also,

• Beyonce's Single Ladies as performed by Pomplamoose, via Mighty Girl.

• And then as a result, Beyonce's Single Ladies.

...and there was another one, but danged if I can remember it now. Oh well, if I do, I'll just add it on later. Gotta hit "Publish," you know, and move on to the second half of this NaBloPoMo month!

WW - 'Cuz Picnik.com is cool & she is going to be one for Halloween

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com