costume clad

I know, I know, it is already November, but I did promise to post photos of the costume-clad wee ones... so better late than never. This year Jasper wanted to be a robot, so the hubby and I fashioned one out of a car windshield reflector and loads of duct tape. Baby Cedar inherited Jasper's hand me down costume (Max from Where the Wild Things Are)... and as you can see in the pic, he was pretty cosy wearing it.

happy halloween

A little pic of our pumpkin creations carved earlier this week. Will post pictures of the kids' costumes soon too (just need to get them all dressed and posed together). Have a Happy Halloween!

pumpkin patch kids

After a bit of a hiatus from the blog, I am finally starting back up again. My last post in June was of our new addition to the family (thanks everyone for all the sweet well wishes!)... and then things got kind of busy... 2 kids, working freelance and keeping the online shop open was proving to be a little time consuming. I figured trying to add blogging into the mix would have resulted in a lot of non-sensical posts, so better to wait. Fast forward to October and it feels like time just flew by. Cedar is now almost 5 months old, and his older brother Jasper is a little over 3 yrs. Ok, so bear with me and my typos (and perhaps some rough postings.... they may still occur), as I try to get back into the blogosphere (ugh, I hate that word, did I really just use that?).

whooooooo, me?

 I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween! Here are some snaps of Jasper's costume... he was a little grey owl. It started with a fleece track suit I got at Old Navy.... and some felt additions sewn here and there... and then voila!... a fluffy grey owl emmerged... not too shabby for a non-sewer (just, maybe, don't look too closely at the stitch work). The last pic is of our hallway of bats... which are soon to come down... sigh.

pumpkin patch time

Ok, I am just catching up on my Halloween postings right now.... so there's going to be a bunch of Halloween themed posts today and tomorrow. This past weekend we went to the pumpkin patch.... well, this was actually our second trip... the first trip (as you can see from the bottom pic) there was quite a bit of rain so it was a rather short and soggy one. Second time faired much better, so I was able to get some more snaps of all the decorated jack-o-lanterns. I will post more photos soon of our decorated house and, of course, Jasper's Halloween costume!

a night of treats

As promised, a pic of Jasper trick-or-treating in his costume. This year, he was Godzilla. I bought the dinosaur costume from a store, but then added the angry eyebrows, as well as the burning buildings and cars around the legs. Thankfully, he didn't try to pull off all the flames and skyscrapers I sewed near his knees and his behind. All in all, it went well... went to a little over a dozen houses until one lady dressed as a witch who answered one of the doors freaked him out a bit. Overall though, he was pretty brave for a 17 month old.

happy halloween!

Happy Monday and Happy Halloween! Here is a little snapshot of our little pumpkin family! I am crossing my fingers that tonight will be nice and rain-free... we'll be taking little Jasper out trick-or-treating, and there is nothing worse than a soggy costume. Will take pictures and share soon! 

a wild halloween

This was Jasper's first Halloween. So after much contemplation, we thought it would be fun if he dressed up as a character from one of our favourite children's book, Max from Where the Wild Things Are. Since my sewing skills are subpar, I cheated a little bit – I only made portions of the costume (the tail, claws and crown). I can't take credit for the white snuggy suit part... I can thank Old Navy for that portion... so, in the end, Jasper was able to roam wild in his little costume without me having to worry about it falling apart. Hope everyone had a great Halloween weekend! ;)

pumpkin family

We have finally carved our pumpkins! We carved them a bit last minute this year, and sadly one of three big ones we got from our trip to the pumpkin patch was a wee bit rotten...ugh. So, instead I carved a wee baby pumpkin fella for our wee baby. Here is our pumpkin family! Hope everyone has a Happy Halloween with lots of treats! We will be enjoying some yummy sweets (yummy store bought pumpkin and chocolate tarts)... mmmmm.

pumpkin pressure

Ok, so we still haven't carved our pumpkins yet (where has the time gone?)... and Halloween is coming up fast. I think that is what we will be doing tonight. For inspiration though, we did venture out last night to view other carved pumpkins. The pumpkin pressure is on! Alas, I haven't been a total Halloween slacker... after some struggle with the sewing machine and needle and thread, baby Jasper's costume is done! Check back this weekend for the big reveal!

spooky train

Halloween is fast approaching... hooray! To get into the Halloween spirit, we visited the Stanley Park Ghost Train for our annual spooky ride (only a little spooky, of course, since it is for kids of all ages). The theme this year was Alice in Nightmareland. The wee one pretty much slept the entire train ride... but I guess hard not to when you are too little to see the actors and scenes while being genlty rocked in a train in the dark. At least we didn't have to worry about him being scared. I'll post some more Halloween goodness soon!

ravishing beasts

As an answer to what we did this Halloween weekend: we went to the Museum of Vancouver to check out their new exhibit Ravishing Beasts - an extensive collection of taxidermy from the 1890s to 1950, followed by a screening of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho... a great combo indeed! Seeing all the life-sized stuffed animals was a bit creepy, but pretty interesting, since it gave everyone a sense of scale of some of these large beasts. And the bonus was, I finally got to see Psycho in its entirety (yes, I must have been one of the last few on earth who hadn't seen it)... and it was great!... love how the taxidermy theme ran through the whole night.... spooky!

happy halloween!

Some spooky photos today courtesy of my hubby Roger... he managed to capture some pretty cool shots the other night while the moon was out and the sky was actually clear. Happy Halloween and have a Spooktacular weekend! 

spill the guts

So after much digging around the internet, I stumbled upon a Bobby Flay recipe for roasted pumpkin seeds... but alas, I didn't have the right chili powders in my pantry, so the recipe took a turn... and we ended up improvising a bit... ok, a lot. We took the washed seeds from three fabulously carved pumpkins (yes, I am going to too my own horn here), a tablespoon of olive oil, chili powder, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, salt, and a dash of worcestershire sauce - no measurements, just sort of eyeballed. Into the oven at 275 deg F  for 1 hour and taa-daa... yummy pumpkin seeds! Off to munch on some more!

spooky reads

Ok, so as you may have guessed from the amount of Halloween posts that I have been uploading, we are a bit of Halloween fanatics. So, yes... more spooky goodness today to share with you. One of the things Roger and I love to collect are vintage children's Halloween books (I am using vintage loosely here, since the books are from the 60s - 8os). Our future children are going to have such a kick-ass library.... er, hopefully they'll like Halloween too! But for now, we will be the big kids hoarding the collection. We seem to find a couple every year when we are in second hand books shops... and it has snowballed a bit over the years... above are some of our faves! Do you have a fave Halloween childhood favorite?

knives out

We got our knives out and went head to head with the pumpkins... mwahahahaha (that is my evil menacing laugh, btw). We went pretty traditional this year and stuck with the good 'ol classic jack-o-lantern faces... well, with a few twists here and there (I had to add ears and eyelashes on mine). Mmmm... the pumpkin-y smell still lingers. Tonight we'll be roasting the seeds.. still trying to find the right recipe... so if any one has any suggestions, do share!

welcome great pumpkin

We have been decorating our place with hints of Halloween-ness this past weekend. One of our fave things to put out on display, and which has become an annual tradition for us is our set of Peanuts figurines (note that they are figurines, and not "toys"... husbands get really touchy about that, FYI). I couldn't fit them all into the frame here, but you can see Chuck with his pal Lucy, Snoopy, Linus, Sally and Schroeder... and a sliver of the little red headed girl on the edge there. I can't wait until the special airs on TV! Maybe this year the Great Pumpkin will rise!

halloween ghost train

The other night Roger and I ventured to Stanley Park, here in Vancouver, for our yearly ride on the Halloween Ghost Train, a small train that takes you through the dark forest with Halloween-y scenes and actors along the way. It's not as scary as it sounds, since it is catered to families... when we went it was mostly big kids over 20, and mostly couples. The theme this year is Legends of the Underworld... spooky! Unfortunately, it was really dark during the ride, so we don't have any pics... but we did manage to get pics of the Haunted Barnyard around the corner (the train ticket price includes admission to the petting zoo/barnyard which had some elaborate displays). If you can, check it out... it's quite fun!

ps. Thanks to Brandi for featuring the Hob Snobs booth design on her blog Craft + Show Designs and thanks to Jodi for featuring a Cabin + Cub collage on her blog The Creative Jar.

pumpkin picking

After two sad failed attempts of trying to grow our own pumpkin plant this past summer (yes, they just shriveled up and died before they even got to the pumpkin stage), we brought ourselves some closure by heading to the local pumpkin patch this past weekend. With said dead pumpkin plants now out of mind, we ventured out into the field to find three healthy contenders for our yearly carving rituals. They are sitting on our balcony now, not knowing what lies ahead.. mwahahahaha (that is my attempt at a sinister laugh). Hmmm... actually, I think this is the laugh that my Martha Stewart Magazine makes when I try to attempt to get fancy with my carving ideas after looking at the beautiful ones on its glossy pages.... hmmm.