Halloween wrap up

We had a busy month, and a good Halloween. The girls chose their costumes – Thing 1 was a spider and Thing 2 was a witch. Thing 1 drew extensive mock-ups and blue prints of her costume, making sure she had it just right in the design. I ordered a black hooded sweatshirt and pants on line, and bought corresponding fabric and the fabric store to provide the extra legs, and the cowl across her face where her red mandibles were to be.




Thing 2 was a little easier. I simply let out her witch costume from last year, and added a little long skirt at the bottom. She already had a fabulous cape I had made her before, and a hat and broom we’d picked up.




Hubby took them trick-or-treating with some of the neighbor kids, I stayed home to mind the door. My folks came down, since Halloween is typically an event they look forward to missing. My dad hates to answer the door, and they don’t get many trick-or-treaters anyway, it just worked better for them to leave town.

I’ve been writing the primary sacrament meeting program. I had this idea that if they were telling stories they were comfortable with, even little kids could have bigger parts. We had our practice today, and I’m not sure how well my idea is going to work.

An unfortunate thing happened this morning.
Hubby has been making a big wonderful breakfast on the weekends. He has recently added making some coffee for himself to his line-up. Coffee kind of comes and goes, sometimes he makes it for a while, but for several months he hasn’t. It made an appearance yesterday, and this morning. He makes coffee by packing the grounds into the bottom part of this little two part French press coffee urn thing, and then placing it on a kitchen burner turned on high, which percolates the water through the grounds and makes the kind of coffee he likes.

So I also need to add that a couple of months ago our teapot finally bit the dust. Instead of replacing it with another teapot, I splurged a little and bought an electric tea kettle. I’d heard about them, knew people who loved them, and liked the idea myself of the quick hot water. I found a reasonable one at Costco for about $30… but didn’t buy it. I decided to look around. I found a wonderful one at Smith’s, it was really cool, a Krups, and cost $80. It had quite a higher watts rating, which I figured meant it was even faster, and it had a sleek stainless steel design, and I justified it to myself. I decided I use this fairly frequently and will take care of it and use it forever, so I bought the Krups. I have absolutely loved it. It’s amazingly fast, it’s cool in every way.

Well, this morning, I was sitting at the computer taking care of something, and he was rushing around making breakfast. I have a tendency to get busy and occupied with other things on these weekend breakfasts, instead of helping in the home stretch of getting breakfast on as I should. He started up the tea kettle for me, for some tea. Only he didn’t start the tea kettle, he did what he does to start coffee, which is putting the French press directly on the red hot burner of the stove to get the coffee boiling through. So, being distracted, rushed, and probably a little annoyed at me for not helping, and thinking about other things, he took the fabulous Krups kettle and put the pot part on one of the stove burners and cranked up the heat to HI - instead of putting it on its little electric contact base. What clued him off was either the smell or the smoke, I don’t know. But now the bottom of the kettle is melted and warped, and the thing won’t heat up unless you apply a fair amount of pressure on the top of it to hold it down on the electric unit. I am more than a little bummed. But what can I say. I should have been helping him with breakfast, I should have been the one starting the kettle, not him.

Yes, I am rather bummed. Tomorrow I’ll go to Costco to see if they still have the cheaper one there.

When our house was broken into and my ring was stolen, I started thinking why bother spending extra money on NICE stuff. It just gets stolen or broken and then you have to pay all that money AGAIN to replace it. I’ll just buy the cheap crappy stuff that costs half as much or less, it’s not as expensive to replace when the first one gets broken. Well, we’re back there again. If I ever do get another diamond, I think I’ll just go for the big flashy Costco rock that has all sorts of crevices and cracks filled in with paste, but costs half as much as a nice diamond. Sure as I do, I’ll have it the rest of my life, it will never get stolen or lost. That’s the other ironic thing. Crappy stuff generally lasts longer.