First you must selectively clean. Pick up anything that is not spooky- like Hungry Hungry Hippo and all of those Melissa & Doug wooden puzzles. Put anything that has potential to be be spooky in a big heaping pile. Be creative with these selections. For example, a cute Raggedy Anne doll can be stuffed into a drawer with her limp hand hanging out. Finally, don't vacuum up the cobwebs that have been collecting along the ceiling in the family room all of these months. Do vacuum up those stupid pink and blue game-of-Life people (they should know better than to venture out of their box anyway). Do vacuum up candy wrappers left from Christmas morning under the couches.
Now that you have cleaned selectively, it's time to create some spooky magic. It may not look spooky at first but part of that is simply covering up. I covered up the play kitchen and even put a curtain in front of our board games and toy shelf. Who needs to see all that cute stuff when you're getting spooked? In fact, get rid of all the family photos too... unless you have photos of ancestors you've never met... chances are those will be black and white and potentially the most scary thing you could put in your haunted house anyway (didn't those people know how to smile)? Cover up mundane things like televisions and coffee tables. Chances are the cobwebs that you have been "saving" won't be sufficient so you will next need to cover walls with as much cobwebs as you can. This is one case where having popcorn ceilings or walls (what were they thinking?) actually comes in handy- no tape needed.
Do not underestimate the need for a tunnel. You must have a tunnel. Last year we used those cute crawl through tunnels that you buy in a store but this year we were afraid of impaling our children since the circular metal pieces started coming loose and sticking out at the entrance and exits. If you are like me and have a hazardous tube or no tubes at all, use blankets liberally to create a tunnel. I've got our blankets crammed between couch cushions and in the coffee table. You don't have to end there with a tunnel. I put yoga mats down for that icky sticky texture (and so I could have an excuse not to do yoga for two weeks while the mats were in use... genius). Under the mats I randomly put pillows to create "hills" in the tunnel. We all have vibrating foot massagers that we've gotten for Christmas. I have a flat one that heats up and glows red. I stuck it under a yoga mat thus creating a spooky red glow in the tunnel, a vibrating yoga mat and a fire hazard all in one! That's what makes a tunnel special; creativity. I'm just hoping we never forget to unplug it after a haunted house showing.
Accessories are next and I suggest spending $100 at your local party store on scary lights, dolls and decorations. Just kidding. In our spooky scary haunted house we have fierce looking toy dinosaurs, Liam's Batman cave (with accessories) and The Ghost Train. Ah yes, The Ghost Train. See, the more we spend on Thomas train sets, the less the boys actually like Thomas train sets and over the years, we have accumulated quite a bit of wooden and plastic train tracks, trains, etc... I am always looking for a good excuse to force the boys to play with these things. The Ghost Train is an excellent opportunity. We used the plastic Trackmaster so the trains could run eerie on their own around the track. With some cut-out ghosts and rubber spiders you can turn your train set into... The Ghost Train! Hmmm... it just occurred to me that parents of girls may have a hard time with this haunted house thing. I've seen some of those girl toys... you may have to be more creative like a spider infested Barbie Dream House or a gross-out play kitchen with bat soup and snake cake. The other advantage to using toys as accessories is that your haunted house is small so it will only take about 5 minutes for kids to get through it. With other toys, they will keep busy longer.
Here's another way to weasel out free or cheap decorations for your haunted house: Christmas garlands and toilet paper from the ceiling! I added a small fan in the corner to make the garlands sway a bit. Also feel free to use any odd decorations you have around the house that don't match with the nicer decorations you own (ex: random needlepoint ghosts, wooden figurines you never had time to paint, etc...).
Set the mood with lighting and horrible sounding music. A strobe light works great for a spooky effect but that won't be enough light for the kids to see all of the detailed work you put into the haunted house. You will also need to give each child a flashlight or one of those headlamps. For spooky music you can use a CD or the spooky Halloween music channel on TV (cover the TV to create an eerie glow). Also add musical instruments to your haunted house for that horrible sounding music I mentioned. A mini-piano, keyboard or xylophone will do the trick along with a drum and maybe even an annoying whistle... okay never mind with the annoying whistle, the piano will suffice.
We made our haunted house this weekend and the boys have spent each evening down there playing. They play with lights on or off, they fine tune their creation, reposing the dinosaurs so that they each have a turn getting eaten by the big one. They play their music and crawl through the tunnel. I was really cranky when we set it up. "Why won't anyone help me?", "Stop stepping on the tunnel", "Where are all the Batman toys?", "Could you just help me with this cobweb?" and then I realized, wow setting up this haunted house is a lot like setting up the Christmas tree... the set-up is part of the tradition and the holiday spirit. So what if it's all that work for only a couple of weeks and so what if not many people see it, it's offered endless entertainment and something a bit out of the ordinary for the kids for a short time during the year. Pretty soon the haunted house will be all packed up and in its place that Christmas tree. The garlands will be re-purposed on the mantle and who knows? Maybe I'll even set up the Thomas train in a little winter wonderland scene
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Clothes Karma
I don't deserve nice pants. It's a fact and I've had to learn that the hard way. Last year my sister, Lori, got me Ann Taylor pants... and they were pink. At first I wondered what I would wear with pink pants and then I discovered a world of brown and white tops that coordinated perfectly especially when paired with a delicate scarf that tied all of the colors together. Sigh. I was in love.
See, we don't often get nice things for ourselves, now do we. You can spend top dollar on a new dining room table but... in a few months it's going to be all scratched up. Clothes are even more subject to wear and tear and there is just no avoiding it.
After I got my pink pants I became inspired to keep shopping. So 8 months later I went out to spend my left over Christmas money (4 months after Christmas). This time I was spending my own money so I stuck to the discount stores but quickly became frustrated. Then I discovered... Target. Oooh. The clothes were super cool and they looked so much like those designer clothes. What I loved the most was the fact that I didn't have to go searching through racks and racks of clothes with a crazy variety of incorrectly labeled pants. I mean, Target is super fancy. The slacks are hanging with the slacks, capris with the capris and jeans with the jeans. Different colors were even hanging separately. This was terrific news because I was running low on time for my mommy-shopping-night. On a side note- I hear these stories about kids getting lost in clothing racks, I've been there- both as the kid inside the rack and as a mom trying to pull the kid out. Based on actual experiences I've come to the conclusion that there is no way I will leave the store with the right pair of jeans if I am shopping with children... so it's best to leave them at home in front of a television set (just kidding, Bill plans enriching activities for them while I'm gone). I left Target with a cute t-shirt, a pair of capris and a new pair of black ballet flats. They had a distinctively cheap black plastic finish on them but they were very cute. So what if they didn't come with a shoe box and they were instead held together by an elastic band.
It didn't take long for me to see the error in my ways. The hem came loose immediately on my new capris so that they kind of could pass as pirate pants. By mid-summer I realized the shoes were embarrasingly cheap. The plastic actually started peeling off of the shoe. Here's the thing about the shoes though- they actually cost $20. Now this is cheap if you're comparing the cost to real fancy shoes but I'm used to shopping at those discount stores where $20 can actually buy you a pair of last season's fancy shoes. I'm actually a fairly smart shopper, I do keep a look out for good deals on specific brands so imagine my frustration when I try to save time by spending only slightly less on a pair of trendy Target shoes and... peeling pleather.
I put my Target shopping experience aside and moved on to summer garage sales :) I will not disclose what I actually purchased at garage sales but next time you see me in a nice sweater think... could that be the sweater she picked up for a buck or was it the one she wore yesterday (or both?). The beginning of the school year started and with it, every teacher's favorite part of starting the school year: chalk, dry erase markers and trying to get glue out of the glue containers.
I don't know how it happened. I don't know why it had to be the blue marker and I certainly don't know why I had chosen to wear the pink pants to school that day, but somehow I ended up with a small dot of dry erase marker on my pink Ann Taylor pants. They weren't the Target capris, mind you. They were the pink Ann Taylor pants. I tried to apply and reapply water and soap throughout the day hoping to coax the stain out but apparently (a) dry erase markers are unwashable and (b) everyone at work thought I looked funny with a big water spot on my pants all day.
"Oh,"said my sympathetic sister, "those were probably the only pants you owned that were bought at full price." Well, to be fair, I did pay full price for the Target capris.
It wasn't long after that Bill and I went out to fancy Chinese restaurant... you know, those places that actually give you plates have soy sauce in a glass pitcher at the table. Real fancy- I had a coupon. After dinner we had a little bit of time to kill since the kids were happy at home without us, with their grandmother & great-grandmother. It was then that I discovered... the outlet store. I've been to outlet stores... but this outlet store was having a super sale (it said so in the window). "Maybe they'll have pink pants!" I said to Bill. And, because Bill would like nothing more than to go shopping with me on our regularly scheduled (once-every-two-and-a-half-month-date-night), he agreed.
I walked out 45 minutes later with a bag containing 3 pairs of pants. I had spent $33. The total value of all pants (based on original prices) was over $250. Perhaps most importantly, one of the pairs of pants was a lovely lavendar color. Perfect with brown and white and, miraculously, still able to be worn with that delicate scarf to tie all of the colors together. And while I did love those full price Ann Taylor pants, I couldn't help but love my new lavendar pants just as much... and maybe more because they only cost $3.40 (originally $79.99).
See, we don't often get nice things for ourselves, now do we. You can spend top dollar on a new dining room table but... in a few months it's going to be all scratched up. Clothes are even more subject to wear and tear and there is just no avoiding it.
After I got my pink pants I became inspired to keep shopping. So 8 months later I went out to spend my left over Christmas money (4 months after Christmas). This time I was spending my own money so I stuck to the discount stores but quickly became frustrated. Then I discovered... Target. Oooh. The clothes were super cool and they looked so much like those designer clothes. What I loved the most was the fact that I didn't have to go searching through racks and racks of clothes with a crazy variety of incorrectly labeled pants. I mean, Target is super fancy. The slacks are hanging with the slacks, capris with the capris and jeans with the jeans. Different colors were even hanging separately. This was terrific news because I was running low on time for my mommy-shopping-night. On a side note- I hear these stories about kids getting lost in clothing racks, I've been there- both as the kid inside the rack and as a mom trying to pull the kid out. Based on actual experiences I've come to the conclusion that there is no way I will leave the store with the right pair of jeans if I am shopping with children... so it's best to leave them at home in front of a television set (just kidding, Bill plans enriching activities for them while I'm gone). I left Target with a cute t-shirt, a pair of capris and a new pair of black ballet flats. They had a distinctively cheap black plastic finish on them but they were very cute. So what if they didn't come with a shoe box and they were instead held together by an elastic band.
It didn't take long for me to see the error in my ways. The hem came loose immediately on my new capris so that they kind of could pass as pirate pants. By mid-summer I realized the shoes were embarrasingly cheap. The plastic actually started peeling off of the shoe. Here's the thing about the shoes though- they actually cost $20. Now this is cheap if you're comparing the cost to real fancy shoes but I'm used to shopping at those discount stores where $20 can actually buy you a pair of last season's fancy shoes. I'm actually a fairly smart shopper, I do keep a look out for good deals on specific brands so imagine my frustration when I try to save time by spending only slightly less on a pair of trendy Target shoes and... peeling pleather.
I put my Target shopping experience aside and moved on to summer garage sales :) I will not disclose what I actually purchased at garage sales but next time you see me in a nice sweater think... could that be the sweater she picked up for a buck or was it the one she wore yesterday (or both?). The beginning of the school year started and with it, every teacher's favorite part of starting the school year: chalk, dry erase markers and trying to get glue out of the glue containers.
I don't know how it happened. I don't know why it had to be the blue marker and I certainly don't know why I had chosen to wear the pink pants to school that day, but somehow I ended up with a small dot of dry erase marker on my pink Ann Taylor pants. They weren't the Target capris, mind you. They were the pink Ann Taylor pants. I tried to apply and reapply water and soap throughout the day hoping to coax the stain out but apparently (a) dry erase markers are unwashable and (b) everyone at work thought I looked funny with a big water spot on my pants all day.
"Oh,"said my sympathetic sister, "those were probably the only pants you owned that were bought at full price." Well, to be fair, I did pay full price for the Target capris.
It wasn't long after that Bill and I went out to fancy Chinese restaurant... you know, those places that actually give you plates have soy sauce in a glass pitcher at the table. Real fancy- I had a coupon. After dinner we had a little bit of time to kill since the kids were happy at home without us, with their grandmother & great-grandmother. It was then that I discovered... the outlet store. I've been to outlet stores... but this outlet store was having a super sale (it said so in the window). "Maybe they'll have pink pants!" I said to Bill. And, because Bill would like nothing more than to go shopping with me on our regularly scheduled (once-every-two-and-a-half-month-date-night), he agreed.
I walked out 45 minutes later with a bag containing 3 pairs of pants. I had spent $33. The total value of all pants (based on original prices) was over $250. Perhaps most importantly, one of the pairs of pants was a lovely lavendar color. Perfect with brown and white and, miraculously, still able to be worn with that delicate scarf to tie all of the colors together. And while I did love those full price Ann Taylor pants, I couldn't help but love my new lavendar pants just as much... and maybe more because they only cost $3.40 (originally $79.99).
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Worst Best Mom: Revisited... Again
Perhaps some of you may be thinking that I am a candidate for the Best-of-the-Best Mom list but I assure you, my position of worst of the best must stand. True, I do help Liam with science experiments and true, I do stand behind Joshua any time he climbs up a steep playground ladder. These things alone may make you inclined to think I'm simply the best at what I do. However, I have evidence to the contrary that proves without a sliver of a doubt that I'm not too great at being a good mom. Here is what I've come up with so far...
1) I missed Liam's first picture day... his KINDERGARTEN picture day. I know the picture will come out bad, with him pressing his lip back into a false lipless grin... but that's a picture I just want to treasure. Plus I know he was looking forward to wearing his new shirt and tie so I kind of feel bad for that too. Now he'll have to dress up on a day that no one else is dressed up and there's a serious chance that he'll look ridiculous and/or will get paint on his tie because inevitably it will end up being an Art day.
2) Tonight at dinner I accidentally served both boys rotten applesauce. To be fair, it wasn't moldy or anything but after they had both finished their first serving and were begging for more I realized there was an overpowering scent of fermented apple sauce in the air. Gross.
3) Tonight at bed time I accidentally scratched Liam under his eye with my thumb nail. I had bitten off my right hand's thumb nail earlier this week so imagine my surprise when the left thumb nail, still razor sharp and long (but not in a pretty long-nail way), ended up somehow gouging my poor child under his eyeball. And now he's bleeding!
4) I'm considering not getting my kids flu shots this year.
5) I'm considering getting my kids flu shots this year.
6) The other day when I was trying not to yell at Liam for poor behavior in school, I ended up blurting out, "Well everytime you get in the red zone, you miss part of your playtime and that sounds pretty stupid." To which Liam responded, "What's stupid?" What I should have said was: "Your mother." What I ended up saying was, "Stupid is making bad choices." Not really correct, actually it's a pretty stupid definition... of stupid.
7) I bought Liam and Joshua light sabres but didn't really want any play fighting going on. Hmmm... can you say, "Stupid mom"?
8) Sometimes (lots of times) Liam leaves the house without brushing his teeth. I know, gross right?
9) I don't let my kids win at games. We played Uno Moo last night as a family (really cute) and I didn't let my kids win. Full disclosure: they won anyway, but they won fair and square. Liam has been playing tic-tac-toe the last few nights and I have won almost every round... until finally I lost a round. I'd like to think this made him feel good about himself, that he finally won the behemoth... or maybe I just don't like to lose?
10) Quite often at night, after the children have gone to bed, I make their favorite snack... popcorn... but eat the whole bowl myself. I have an air popper. Maybe I'll pop some for myself right now and throw in a few extra kernals for the kids' snack tomorrow. Maybe.
1) I missed Liam's first picture day... his KINDERGARTEN picture day. I know the picture will come out bad, with him pressing his lip back into a false lipless grin... but that's a picture I just want to treasure. Plus I know he was looking forward to wearing his new shirt and tie so I kind of feel bad for that too. Now he'll have to dress up on a day that no one else is dressed up and there's a serious chance that he'll look ridiculous and/or will get paint on his tie because inevitably it will end up being an Art day.
2) Tonight at dinner I accidentally served both boys rotten applesauce. To be fair, it wasn't moldy or anything but after they had both finished their first serving and were begging for more I realized there was an overpowering scent of fermented apple sauce in the air. Gross.
3) Tonight at bed time I accidentally scratched Liam under his eye with my thumb nail. I had bitten off my right hand's thumb nail earlier this week so imagine my surprise when the left thumb nail, still razor sharp and long (but not in a pretty long-nail way), ended up somehow gouging my poor child under his eyeball. And now he's bleeding!
4) I'm considering not getting my kids flu shots this year.
5) I'm considering getting my kids flu shots this year.
6) The other day when I was trying not to yell at Liam for poor behavior in school, I ended up blurting out, "Well everytime you get in the red zone, you miss part of your playtime and that sounds pretty stupid." To which Liam responded, "What's stupid?" What I should have said was: "Your mother." What I ended up saying was, "Stupid is making bad choices." Not really correct, actually it's a pretty stupid definition... of stupid.
7) I bought Liam and Joshua light sabres but didn't really want any play fighting going on. Hmmm... can you say, "Stupid mom"?
8) Sometimes (lots of times) Liam leaves the house without brushing his teeth. I know, gross right?
9) I don't let my kids win at games. We played Uno Moo last night as a family (really cute) and I didn't let my kids win. Full disclosure: they won anyway, but they won fair and square. Liam has been playing tic-tac-toe the last few nights and I have won almost every round... until finally I lost a round. I'd like to think this made him feel good about himself, that he finally won the behemoth... or maybe I just don't like to lose?
10) Quite often at night, after the children have gone to bed, I make their favorite snack... popcorn... but eat the whole bowl myself. I have an air popper. Maybe I'll pop some for myself right now and throw in a few extra kernals for the kids' snack tomorrow. Maybe.
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