Oh, the Horror!

I have never written horror before but I got the idea for my flash fiction entry for Horror at Hannah's last night while Handsome Hubby and I were watching The Crazies (which was actually a better movie than I thought it would be).  My story really has nothing at all to do with the movie, so I'm not sure what about it triggered my idea.  Weird what your subconscious picks up on.  Anyway, now I just have to write the thing and see if I can actually pull off something decently scary.

In the meantime, here are a few pics to inspire your own scary stories...

 eek...

 Actual 1930's/40's Halloween costumes

Eastern State Penitentiary in PA.  I haven't been there but they do tours and host Terror Behind the Walls each year at Halloween.  You pretty much could not pay me enough.

Halloween Costumes

My children, like all children, are fickle when it comes to Halloween costumes.  We have an adorable Madeline costume that Tootsie Roll wore when she was little (well, littler than she is now, lol) that fits Curly Jones perfectly.  She loves to dress up in it (and dress her rocking horse in it) but she doesn't want to use it for Halloween.

So when she decided that she wanted to be "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse", I foolishly bought her a Minnie Mouse costume... that she enjoys dressing up in, but does not want to use for Halloween.

Now, I'm a nice mom and all, but I do draw the line at buying one costume per child per Halloween.  So she can choose one of these, or one of her ballet outfits from dance class, or one of the umpteen million costumes in the two giant dressup bins in our playroom.  Suffer. :)

Tootsie Roll is another story.  She has always wanted to be something unusual for Halloween.  When every one of her preschool friends was being a Disney princess, she would pick Madeline or "a pumpkin witch".  Last year, she had about a million places to dress up for Halloween.  She had her parade at school, a party next door, a masquerade ball at my school, and also got to dress up during Halloween week at both of her dance classes.  All that and we didn't even have to buy a costume... she wore the Snow White one we had bought for our trip to Disney last summer and made costumes out of stuff we had for all of the other events:

 For school and here with her dance teacher (who we didn't know would also be Snow White lol)

 For dance class #2 and our neighbor's party - her Easter dress and my wedding veil

By Halloween night she was bored of her other costumes and came up with the chef outfit on the fly.  We had a kiddie cooking hat and apron, so she decided to splash it with spaghetti sauce and draw on a moustache.  Curly Jones was a ladybug. :)

This year, my voracious little reader is currently on Book 11 of The Series of Unfortunate Events and wants to be Violet Baudelaire for Halloween.  Now, I can't say I blame the kid.  She's a pretty cool character and I wish I could dress like her every single day:

The costume designer on the movie was Colleen Atwood, who also designed the costumes for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland movie.  I can't say I was a huge fan of the movie itself (I am an Alicephile, I was disappointed) but her wardrobe alone was worth watching:

So here we are, trying to figure out how to create Violet when I can't sew.  Any ideas?

Moooooo! Willems, That is.

Let NaBloWriMo begin!  It's October 1st and the goal is a post every day this month.  Rock & roll!

Last night Mo Willems launched his third in the Knuffle Bunny trifecta, Knuffle Bunny Free, at our local B&N. 

They started handing out wristbands (to acquire one, you had to conveniently buy his new book) at 9am for the 6:30pm event.  For those of us who do this extremely inconvenient thing called WORK, a giant wrinkled nose in B&N's direction.  By the time I got out of work, picked up and fed my kids, and zoomed the half hour there, it was 5:30.  Needless to say, it was standing room only, and not even behind the seating area, I'm talking back in the book bays between shelves.  Where you couldn't see anything.  BUT we did get to hear Mo read and answer a few questions before we stood in line for an hour and a half waiting for his signature.  Luckily for us, he was also signing any books you brought along from home (which is probably why the line took so long, lol), so we got the first two signed as well.

 Curly Jones waiting for Mo - The kids got to dress in pj's and bring stuffed friends.  She was so excited to show "Serious George" a whole endcap dedicated to him!

 This was my momentary blurry view of Mo... behind a million people... between bookshelves.  For most of his short talk, he was over more to the left, completely obstructed to me by the bookshelf.  Darn bookshelf in a bookstore.  Sheesh.  This blurry photo reminds me of Sasquatch.  Like... snapped in the one tiny moment I actually saw him from afar...

 Tootsie Roll falling asleep between bookshelves.  We were actually stuck between the bookshelves from 6:00 to about 8:15 when they FINALLY got to our part of the line for signatures.  Good times.

 Tootsie Roll with a life-sized Knuffle Bunny.  Yeah, um.... in Holland.  You have to read the book. ;)

 Curly Jones, who I assure you was not quite this happy for the entire 2 hours.

 Mo!  Finally!

Mo!  Signing our books!  WOOOHOOOOOO!  He was incredibly patient and sweet even though he was winding down nearly 2 hours of signing.  Tootsie Roll gave him a 3-pg (single spaced, 24 font) story that she wrote about Trixie and Knuffle Bunny.  He thought that was great!

So it was long, and not super fun until the very end... but it was worth it. :)  Yay, Mo!

Um.... September Fools!

Ok, so you blinked and I changed my template back to the old one.  I'm not a superstitious soul, but I have seriously been in a writing funk since I changed my template a few weeks ago.  Seriously.  It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I don't even sit down at my writing desk until after a full day of teaching, picking up kids, dinner, homework, baths, if we're lucky a little playtime, reading, bedtimes, laundry... you name it.  Because, really, everyone else's life is super busy, too.  So clearly it was the new template, right?

So anyway, here we are kids, back to the old, and it feels like a pair of comfortable shoes. Ahhhhhh.  Yes, the text is squished, I guess it's a necessary evil.  And we're all about evil over here at Le Dangerous, anyway, so rock on.

SPEAKING OF EVIL...  two exciting things going on to get my stagnant and algae-covered writing juices flowing!!!  Join me if you will for... Horror at Hannah's , a flash fiction horror contest, woooooo!

(Don't ask me why my button is not working, just click on the text link above while I fret)

AND

NaBloWriMo

which is a challenge to blog each and every day in October (before the soul crushing NaNo begins in November!  By the way, NaNo's 2010 site launch goes live by the end of this week!  GAAAHHH!) 
So now I have no excuses not to be writing.  (Especially now that my broken molar is fixed and I am once again able to savor delicious, idea-inducing chocolate!)  Right?  RIGHT?!?!?!  K, kids... see ya there!

So..... What's New?

Hey happy blog readers. :)  It's good to dip a toe in over here.  This month has been crazy with getting all 4 of us back into the swing in our respective schools, Back to School Nights, Girl Scout camp, dance starting (Curly Jones' first year!  Tootsie Roll is an old pro), and Tootsie Roll's birthday.  Which meant I had to clean the house so family could come over.  I do think I should make a monthly family party mandatory in my home, it really would make me scrub a lot more often.  :) 

Tootsie Roll turned 8 today (HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BEAUTY CUTIE!) and it has been festivity central, including this out-of-this-world Greek Goddess cake created by my multitalented sister in law:

Here were Tootsie Roll and Curly Jones on party day:

It's pretty rare that they dress alike, so I had to have plenty of pictures.  For posterity.  And perhaps future blackmail. :)

Nothing is new on the writing front.  Sadly, I reread the WiP that has been lingering listlessly in its infancy over there on the right with a totally stagnant status bar, and I have pretty much lost interest in it.  I mean, I think it has potential, but it is lacking in voice.  It's going to need to be started over and I don't have the energy to revive it just now.  I do have a little wisp of a new idea dancing around in my head.  I think I may just write a scene or two that are bouncing around in my brain and see what happens.  I don't have anything plotted out yet, but I have found that plotting before writing is my worst enemy.  I am better at going with the flow because I tend to plot too hard and overanalyze and overwhelm myself right out of writing the thing.  We'll see what happens... October may be a better writing month once school routines are settled as they are becoming.  I'd love to take a real crack at NaNo, but November is hard because of all the school assessments and conferences and we host Thanksgiving.  50,000 words is hard in a good month, lol, and November is not a good writing month.  But never say never... so I'll say we'll see instead.

Otherwise, I am hearing from some of the people who know me well that this new blog layout is not me and they want the old one back.  Ha!  I am sort of feeling that, too... I like that I have more writing space and I've tried this new one to help me out of my writing funk, but it doesn't fit me as nicely as my old one did.  So you may see the return of the striped socks soon.  We'll see about that, too. :)

Anyway, I taught my first graders to use periods as stop signs at the end of sentences today, so at least someone is writing productively! ;) 

Distress Call to My Lost Muse

Exhausted but Happy Dancing!

This weekend was Tootsie Roll's first overnight camping trip with her Brownie troop, so they asked all the moms to go along, too.  Totally enjoyable, we had the best time, canoeing, hiking, cooking, sleeping in a YURT (best word ever... it looks like this:)

Absolutely perfect weather, and great quality time with my big girl.  I am now exhausted and just finished my lesson plans for the week, but before I hit the hay (to get the decent night's sleep I missed last night, lol), I have to share some big, exciting news!

Tootsie Roll has been selected as one of three children from her third grade class (along with, I imagine, some kids from the other 3 third grade classes) to get pulled out of her Language Arts period once a week for a Poetry Enrichment class.  They made their selections based on teacher recommendations and early writing samples.  It was pretty funny, she brought home this very official letter addressed to us that explained the program and we had to go over it with her (it basically said that it's pretty rigorous work, miss two assignments and you're out, plus you have to make up the LA work you miss in class) and we all had to sign it, her included.  I think she thought she was in trouble until we read it because no one had told her what it was, poor kid!

WOOHOO for my talented little writer!  I am so proud of her!  (And I didn't even know this program existed in her school, so rock on!)