Bringin in da Halloween

This year's invite:  salt dough  mummy and paper coffin.

This year we actually have a little garden to decorate.  I wanted to do some styrofoam grave stones, but for lack of funds I papier mache'd the cardboard left over from the installation of  our shower.  Might have been a great idea if it hadn't poured rain non-stop from the night before.  They are pretty much mush now, so I guess we won't be saving them for next year-at least they held up until Nov 1.

 

I couldn't wait for Sophia to be big enough to help carve the pumpkin and I thought this was the year.  I remember I couldn't wait to carve a pumpkin of my own and clean out the icky goop on the inside was the best part of all- (my parents might remember differently).  Sophia was not interested at all.  I had her design her pumpkin face on a piece of paper and then use my hem ripper (I lost the little poker thing that came with carving package) and she was totally into that.  But cutting was two difficult and pulling out the seeds and pulp was too goopy and messy, so she bailed after a few minutes of that mess.  In the end I ended up doing all the work and the clean up, but hopefully, like me, when Sophia is older, she will  only remember how much fun she had.

Family portait.

The first project was making Trick or Treat bags.  I bought some cheap orange cotton from the local fabric store (we call them Bella Gioia Amore (beautiful joy love) because that is what the old ladies that run the place call everyone) and sewed some bags for the kids to decorate and we used the excess clippings from the masks (the next project) as the eyes, nose and mouth.

Yara's mask is complete.

I got some glitter glue, had some stickers left over from scrapbooking and glue ghosts left over from halloween 2008-what a better way to use them up than stick them onto a mask.  I found the pattern online (have been searching for the site, but I've lost it now!) bought some $6 worth of felt and some elastic (which is a WHOLE other story-we went to the local market last Saturday, where I thought I could find some cheap elastic.  This guy didn't want to unravel this monsterous gigantic tangled up ball of elastic, so he said he'd only sell it to me if I took every thing- $10.  That's pertty much how much it would have cost me to buy enough elastic in a store.  I said forget it, it was too much elastic, what the heck was I going to do with it all??? He ended up lowering his price to $7 and I caved.  Anyone need some elastic???).  Anyhoo-the kids who chose to do it didn't had fun, and the ones who didn't were bummed they didn't have one to take home.

Francesco shows off his art.

We asked the parents to not attend the party because of lack of space.  Also I didn't think I could make enough food and have enough entertainment for everyone. Only the Amigonis and Wilhelms were asked if they could stay because they have small kids (and also I know that they I could put them to work and make them help :O) Speaking of food, I forgot to take a picture this year,but on the menu were:  mummy dogs, Finger Bread, mummy pizzas and pumpkin seeds.  There were so many more things I wanted to make, but the finger bread takes a long time!

We played Hover like a Ghost.

I can't find the site where I found this game, but basically you stick 4 balloons under a cookie sheet and the kids have to see how long they can balance on top

Count Pietrola

Max read the kids a spooky story.

 

Then we played Witches Brew.

(We also played a game where all the kids stand in a circle holding hands and they need to pass a hula hoop around the circle (going thru it) without breaking letting their hands go, that was a good one, but only lasts a few minutes.  I forgot to play shrinking islands which I think would have had a lot of success, had I remembered.

Last of all was decorating cookies.  This was the second largest success of the evening.  Everyone participated with enthusiasm and had loads of fun doing it.  We timed it just right, as the kids were just finishing up, the parents started arriving. 

All the kids (and an adult infiltrator), just before going out...

The greatest success of the evening was:

Trick or treating! 

This was a lot of work, but with a terrific outcome!  A couple of weeks before I sewed pumpkin wall hangings and Max helped me write a little note telling people about our party and asking if they wanted to participate in handing out candy afterward.  Max and Sophia went around to all the houses in our court handing out the pumpkins and notes. (Yes, I am patting myself on the back, it was a lot of damn hard work to organize this party, but I really wanted Sophia and her friends to have a real authentic good ole American halloween). Everyone participated, most people were not home and left candy at the door.  On couple made a great big bag of sweets and confetti and things to hand out to all the kids and  Mr Michele, downstairs,  even baked cookies.

Sophia checks out her stash at the end of the night.

And the famous Halloween Bath.  The water looked like Witches Brew after...ewwwwwww!

sMother - In - Law

Yes, yes I know Max's parents are very sweet.  My mom tells me that all the time!  I know they are, but that does not mean that they don't drive me crazy!  Ma'sx dad really wants to help us fix the house, but the problem is he wants to do it in his taste and not ours.  It's sweet that he asks us what we want help with fixing and is over joyed to do it for us, but the concession is that we need to yield to his style-and our styles not even being of the same century-it's sort of hard sometimes. Of course, beggars can't be choosers...we don't have a whole lot of money, so we also need all the help we can get, it's a frustrating balance.  Way back before we even signed for the house, one of the projects Beppe decided to take on were the stairs:

They were covered in a thin and worn down sheet of linoleum. There was no such thing as walking quietly, every other stepped creaked and snapped as though you were going to fall through.

 

Beppe made and installed these wood ones for us. The fronts need to be sanded and painted because the linoleum was badly glued on with some horribly sticky stuff, but it looks pretty good.   I would have preferred something to make the house look a little lighter and more modern, but it is much nicer than what we had before (and much safer) and I can live with it and most of all I'm grateful that Beppe helped us cross one more thing off our to do list.

What's the complaining about, what's concession have I made you ask!? The concession was not about style this time, but about life style.  The MIL got into another car accident a few days ago.  The woman is 84 is hard of hearing and should not be driving.  She is very active and alert for her age, but not for driving standards.  But, she has a hard head and like many older people don't want to believe that they are aging and willing give up some of their privileges, despite the consequences. This is what I found out about keeping your driver's license:  FIL 1) goes to the doctor and asks him to sign that the MIL's health and sight are fine (in other words, she doesn't actually have to go in herself and prove these things) 2) he goes in to the license place (dunno the DMV is called) and does the paper work for her and then 3) gives her the money to go and have the car fixed (instead of selling the second car).  He's says it's because it's easier to do all that, than to hear her complain and nag constantly.  If she is ever in a serious car accident where she seriously injures herself or others, I'm sure both (if they are both alive) will be very remorseful, but the damage is already done.  Chance has been very good to them 3 times already.  The hardest part about their visit was to try and talk to them about it.  If you say anything to the MIL, she gets defensive and does opposite of what you say.  Talking to FIL also gets you shut down and filled with excuses on how it's not his fault (despite points 1,2 and 3).  Yeah, I know this one is not so funny, I'll do a rewrite if I can find the lighter side of this situation.
Here is the other complaint.  The FIL was supposed to come by himself, but last time they were here, I said that both of them should come to install the stairs, MIL could spend some time with the girls while FIL and Max worked.  Really it was because of driving situation, leaving MIL alone is just asking her to take the car out and if anything happened, the nearest person would be 3 hours away. You know the MIL hates my cooking -it's gotten so bad that she brings her own breakfast - of STORE BOUGHT things that we have in our stores here.  She has done this the last two times and we don't eat the same things as them, this means that we still have the food from the other times, plus I buy things to try and make them feel more at home.  We have breakfast foods coming out of our eyeballs!  This time, since all the FIL did was work, even though it was against my better judgement (we're going to see Heidi with Yara and Christiana tonight and then the Halloween party is tomorrow), I asked asked if they would like to stay for a few more days-without working just to spend some time with their grandkids.  Amazingly enough the MIL said ask the FIL and she would agree to what he wanted to do.  My first indication that there would be trouble is that before she agreed she hemmed and hawed and said she needed to go to the doctors and appointments on Monday.  But, Monday is All Saints Day and everything is closed. Anyways they stayed an extra night and this morning we went to the market, which is about a half a mile away.  I bought some roasted chicken and a roast for lunch, plus some cheeses and cold cuts for tomorrow and last time I made fish, the MIL actually complimented me, so I thought I would make that for dinner on Sunday.  The MIL decided she needed some bread -she bought 3 huge loaves of bread (the heavy round ones).  The bag was starting to get heavy and full and was too much weight to be hung on the back of the stroller or it would tip over.  I now had to carry it on my shoulder.  Then the MIL said she wanted some fruit, so while I was buying fish, she went to the vendor next door...who was a big fat RACIST!  The MIL started to buy kilos and kilos of fruit - who knows why.  I kid you not, she bought 16 very ripe pears and then laughed and shot the vendor down when he tried to sell her 3 kilos of grapes, saying 3 kilos would be too much.  She bought 1.5 kilos instead, not a big difference.  All I could think was who the hell was going to carry all this back?  It was still a half mile walk back home and it was freezing!  BTW the racist part was that the idiot cracked some joke about which bell peppers did I want the red ones or the Korean ones.  At first I thought because the peppers were imported from Korea, but then I realized the asshole was saying that because they were yellow.  And then he asked me if I got it, I said yeah, but I didn't find it funny.  I would have thrown all the fruit back in his face, but I was laden down with 50 kilos of food and a MIL who is too old to have had to explain my motivations.  My only revenge is that I won't ever show at his stand again and I will post his picture the next time I go to the market.  Anyhoo luckily Sophia was being a good girl and the MIL pushed Vivienne's stroller (I needed two arms to carry all the stuff back and my circulation was already being cut off by the bag straps, I don't know how I would do that too).  Being elderly, the MIL strolled back at a leisurely pace-when we got within semi-visual distance to our house, I was freezing and about to fall down.  I excused myself and took off at a normal pace back to the house and abandoned everything on the floor.  
We ate lunch quickly and Sophia and I got ready to meet the Amigonis.  We had a wonderful time at the theater.  Sophia really enjoyed her first experience.  I was really surprised at how good they were.  A real goat even came through the crowd.  When we got home we found out that the MIL had stayed out of her bubble of comfort too long and decided to abandon the idea of staying with us and they quickly packed their things and took off while we were gone, without even saying goodbye.  Sophia was really disappointed.  But the worse part is, they departed so hastily that we were left with all the food I bought for the couple of meals, plus all that damn already over ripe fruit and vegetables and bread and breakfast stuff that will last for the next hundred years!!! So it's not just that they want to eat what they alike when they are at our house, but they also want US to eat the foods that they like when they are not at our  house! Curse you Smother-in-Law!