halloween

summer's end . .

have a wonderful halloween and enjoy the beautiful autumn day.

the pumpkin patch . .

the pumpkin patch . . during the day,

and at night.

halloween morning and early afternoon

chanda was the first one out this morning in her costume . . she went off to acting class dressed as a pilgrim. oops! actually, i was the first one out of the apartment . . i went to meet korrina at penn station and help her home with her backpack, pikachu pillow, and sleeping bag. she came home from her sleep away tired, but happy.

the pilgrim costume is actually one we didn't make this year. we borrowed it from c's good friend sami. it's a sweet costume.

after class we worked on making apple pies for our dinner at janet's after trick or treating. we made one pie for the get together, and one pie for us afterwards, at home.

morgana was extremely relieved to find the blouse korrina had made for a costume a few years ago. she thought it would be perfect for her jedi costume, and it was. she also braided her hair on either side and then i did one long braid. she's actually a character from the jedi apprentice series of books by jude watson: siri.

morgana quickly vacuumed the house before we ran off to gingerbread rehearsal.

morgana wore her jedi costume to rehearsal, but chanda decided to be an immigrant girl for it. she thought she would be able to dance more easily in this dress.

it was a bit chaotic, first, at rehearsal. but, melissa soon got everyone in order and they worked for an hour before being released to the halloween night.

here they are on the way home in the subway station. c is wearing a beautiful shawl janet made for me. it's perfect for an immigrant girl . . but she didn't wear it for the rehearsal, so i had to include this photo.

there was a great band playing on the l line on the way home. everyone was out, traveling, working, going to parties, having fun dressing up. we thought these guys were good and enjoyed listening. the drummer, of course, reminded me of jason (as drummers often do) and i thought he was wearing a waldo hat, which also reminded me of jason (and of adam).

(unfortunately, i think i turned the sound off on my camera . . so there is no sound for this movie!)

halloween night

when we arrived home, korrina was there with her friends getting ready for the night. she finally decided to go with james as little red riding hood and the big bad wolf. however, we had to first search for the red cape. i was happy when we finally found it . . in it's proper drawer which was, of course, the last place we looked!

here are m and c, all ready for the night. we got out a little later than usual, but all worked out fine. we met janet and her family, cindi and tessa, marisa and deychen. the night was rather chilly, but wonderfully autumnal! it was one of the coldest halloween nights that i can remember. i enjoyed that.

here is the whole gang. sandrine is in the red beret. she has a great camera that can shoot at 1/3200th of a second . . so a flash is not necessary. it's amazing what the new digital cameras can do. it's a canon powershot s90. one of these days i hope to have a camera with similar magical powers! this photo was taken with my camera. when sandrine emails me a copy of her's, i'll put it up for comparison.

i don't have a picture of all of us at janet's house, relaxing with hot cider, chili, and dessert. but here is one of my pie! (oh my! i mean . . my and chanda's pie!)

trick or treating

getting ready for halloween

after her morning acting class, morgana worked on her jedi cloak (from the material we bought at weaver's on thursday), while chanda sewed a hole in her ballet tights.

i then took them to a nutcracker party scene rehearsal on the upper east side. when it ended we came home to a nice dinner of chicken pot pie . .

. . and a nice dessert of fresh farm milk with molasses spice cookies . . also known as "joe froggers."

woof!

at the vet's, at the coop, and at home

jack had the oddest growth on his behind by his tail last night. i was very squeamish and couldn't even look at it closely . . which was really silly because if i had, i would have slept more peacefully. since i didn't, i slept fitfully thinking he had worms! (greg was away in boston, or he would have set me straight. i had korrina and james examine it for me . . but they couldn't tell what it was). morgana and i were up early today to take him to the vet at 7:30 am. he had his paws and the folds on his face thoroughly cleaned, and his growth electrocauterized. he also went nuts because he got too close to another dog and i could hear him squeaking and barking in the back room while i sat in the waiting room. i came home with an oral antibiotic medicine, an ear ointment, and little scrub pads for his facial folds and between his paws because he has a lot of "bacteria" that must be cleaned out. (sigh.) when we got home, he was exhausted and collapsed in the hallway by the front door and kitchen. I got ready for a coop shop!

this is the pretty house that the car was parked in front of when we went out. it has a lovely round stained glass window above the door. i'll have to include it better in a picture . . next time! i was going for the pumpkins and gourds in this shot. it's part of an apartment building . . a new construction that i actually like.

we tried to keep the grocery items to a minimum, but we were buying cider and other goodies for halloween (and some necessities that hadn't been bought in awhile) . . so it was a bit of a sizable shop.

afterwards, we delivered some groceries that janet needed to her home. the girls climbed up to the second floor window.

"oh," janet sighed as camille helped them up, "yes, let's show how easy it is to climb into our house!" such things we have to worry about in the city . .

back at home, korrina left for her unitarian universalist youth conference retreat in shelter rock, and m and c started working on their pumpkins.

i worked in the kitchen baking cookies.

the kitty is finished!

but the bulldog still needs a lot more work!

it was later than i liked when all was finally completed . . but they were very happy with the results.

. . this moment

(joining amanda and friends in this weekly observance.)

busy thursday

our coop had a company come and clean out the shaftway in the bathroom and kitchen. i'm glad they were early, as we needed to go to the fabric store after our work, and i knew there would be quite a bit of cleaning up to do. when i had finished with that, chanda put the dishes away, and . .

. . morgana worked on her guitar. she has a concert next week.

chanda did a little practicing with jack.

we walked through the courtyard to put in a load of laundry on our way to the fabric store. we stopped by our wildflowers and found that because of the warm weather these past few days, our little bud had opened just a little more.

we also observed this fluffy flower/seedling . . could it be bog cotton, a hebridean wildflower? i don't know. i'll have to look more carefully tomorrow. it's a little finer than the cottongrass, i think. cottongrass is thicker and more like it's namesake: hare's tail. it'd be exciting if it was, though!

weaver fabrics is a great place. we bought TEN yards of the lining material for chanda to be wrapped up in during the opening of her dance. she changed it quite a bit, and now begins by rolling onto the stage. ellen is very happy with the changes (yay!) and feels that the dance has really grown. morgana also bought a few yards of brown linen for her jedi costume. she is going to be siri from the jedi apprentice books, and will borrow james' purple light saber.

james and korrina carved pumpkins this evening, toasted pumpkin seeds, and had some apple cider.

they came out so well! with the cooler weather today, it feels wonderfully like autumn and halloween.