anything can happen on halloween

Another Halloween in the books.

Wednesday I picked up Kevin after work – his mom (and my parents!) was on vacation so it worked out for him to come stay with us a few days.

Thursday as soon as I was off work started getting him and myself ready for Spooky Science. He wore ceremonial Luke and I wore ceremonial Leia. I got him into costume (and had to shave his beard off… as best I could. He’s still stubbly. I don’t know how to shave beards! I forgot to ask Chase to help him the night before!), and got my hair and makeup done and costume out. Had to wait on Chase to get home to lace me into the bodice I wear under ceremonial (it basically acts as a strapless bra – but much better than a strapless bra)

So somewhere I have a black flap that goes over the silver flap of his jedi tunic to make it work for his ceremonial top. I couldn’t find it, so he went as-is. I guess I could’ve just closed the flap now that I think about it LOL.

I didn’t realize my dress was bunched up around my waist the ENTIRE night. Ugh. One little tug down wouldn’t fixed it, but I didn’t have a mirror to look in after getting out of the car and Chase said it looked ok when I had him double check me.

I wish Kevin were looking at the camera in this shot because otherwise it’s really cool.

We wandered around and took pics with the kids and Kevin was a creep inside the old Piggly Wiggly.

It’s funny to look at this pic from that night versus the last time we wore ceremonials together, 2014:

Kevin is such a baby there (crying face emoji). My new ceremonial dress looks sooo much better than the old one.

(Also just remembered we did wear them together in 2017 – but we didn’t get pics together besides a selfie, so it doesn’t count.)

Anyway Chase took this to make us look like we’re looking at battle plans. I think it would be ripe for photoshooping other silly things onto the screen.

Some group pics:

Headed on out after a bit because we were starving.

Friday after work I again started getting ready immediately so we could be ready when Chase got home. Originally, I was going to put Kevin in Chase’s Beefsquatch costume. But then he said he wanted to wear Luke again but as jedi this time and carry his lightsaber. He made the lightsaber at disney a few years ago and really hasn’t had an opportunity to play with it outside of a few videos and photos at the house, so him holding it halloween night just to give out candy seemed like a good venue for it. So Friday I got him into Luke again, made sure his saber had new batteries, and I got into scarlet witch.

As soon as Chase got home we headed over to Nana and Kristie’s – they’ve invited us over to hand out candy with them at their house several times now (after me complaining we got hardly any trick or treaters) so this year we went. Their neighborhood really does halloween, and she was right, they had a TON of trick or treaters.

Had some pizza first.

Setting up the candy station outside.

Kevin’s lightsaber was a great flashlight once it got dark.

It made me jealous. Next year I’m wearing jedi Leia!

I did bring a couple of little LEDs to hold to compete LOL

It was cold out – I was ok except my hands got really cold.

Literal truckloads of trick or treaters.

Had to get Kevin’s pic with these decorations at the neighbors house. One of the neighbors thought I was Mara Jade at first and I was like… respect for knowing Mara Jade.

We wrapped it up around 8, didn’t have a lot of candy left and we were cold. Headed home and watched half of Get Out before falling asleep on the couch.

Saturday and Sunday I was on my own. Chase had his one weekend a year he has to go to work for annual inventory. I got up Saturday and took Kevin on home. Got back to my house and took down halloween in the front yard (well, most of it, I didn’t feel like getting on a stepladder to get the Stretching Portraits down), and then took all the inside halloween decorations upstairs. I haven’t put them AWAY yet, it’s all just sitting in kevin’s room, but I want to rotate out the christmas stuff first.

Cleaned up the house a bit, then finally got upstairs to my newly cleaned sewing room to FINALLY get started on my Belle embroidery.

Oh and the fallout of cleaning my sewing room? The guest room/my WFH office and Kevin’s rooms are both disaster areas.

I actually haven’t used my WFH office in months. Not since surgery. I’ve gone up there a few times to put my laptop on the dock so I can work with 2 screens, but otherwise, I’ve acclimated to working in the living room. I think I’m going to take the second desk out of there, it’s just taking up space. Also ask IT if I can send back the printer, cuz I don’t use it.

Anyway, I did chip away at this mess a bit this weekend – got the closet in there cleaned up, reorganized the art supplies in the cabinet by the door, got some of the stuff on the bed put away. There’s not a lot left to do but I need Chase’s input on a few things, so it’s on pause for now.

So – Belle embroidery. I started with one of the motifs on the side back piece as a test area. The first one is a little rough, but not horrible. Took about 4 hours. Started on the second one and it turned out much better – got it half done Saturday and finished Sunday, and also a 3rd one on side front finished. Those went much faster and again, looking much better than the first.

I really want to show yall these but they are proving IMPOSSIBLE to photograph. I think this is the best photo I got:

With the flash, but I think the non-flash pic is better.

In-progress.

They are also hard to press at the end, because of the HTV on the front, I can only press it from the back, or with a pressing cloth on the front. I’m going to wait til the end and get my silicone pressing mats out and use those on everything at once.

I’m hoping to finish a 4th motif today and that’ll be 2 swags down – 4 to go plus the shoulder piece. I’m hoping to do 1 motif a day, and have her ready for white backdrop after Thanksgiving. We normally start white backdrop on Thanksgiving (or even before like last year) but between cleaning the sewing room and updates I needed to do, we’re starting later this year. (I still need to do my new Wanda skirt too).

While cleaning my sewing room, I had decided that my reward for finishing it would be getting to open my Leia doll I got back in May. But I decided to leave her in the box. If I open it, the only place she’s going to fit is on top of the wardrobe, and she’s just going to get gross and dusty up there. So I might as well leave her in her pretty box for now.

That’s all I got this week. I would love to have the rest of the skirt motifs done by next week – doubtful, let’s see how that goes?

Edit:
OH MY GOD I forgot about the Saturday night dinner debacle.
So since Chase was still at work around dinner time, I went ahead and made one of our homechefs for me to eat, and I was going to put half in the fridge for him to heat up when he got home. It was a pasta, so easy heat up.

It was one of the oven ready ones, so just dump everything in a pan and put it in. I followed the instructions and when I took it out, I noticed some of the pasta on the top looked burnt. Weird. I picked those out and they felt hard as a rock. So I tested another one that didn’t look burnt… and it was also hard as a rock. I looked at the ingredient list – it was supposed to be pre-cooked pasta. Clearly this was not. I called Chase and told him – and he remembered that homechef had sent an email on like monday or tuesday that due to a mix-up, we may get uncooked pasta for one of our meals instead of cooked. He had told me about that and we’d both completely forgotten.

I was bummed because it smelled really good, and now Chase was going to have to stop and get dinner on the way home after a really long day. I decided to just eat around the pasta, and just the sausage and bell peppers in the sauce ended up being really good LOL I just picked the pasta out and put it on a plate as I ate. I even had the leftovers for breakfast the next morning LOL

So Chase stopped at mcdonalds when he finally got off work a bit after 7. He sat in line not moving at mcds for about 10 minutes. Cars in front of him started leaving without ordering. He’d placed a mobile order so he tried to wait it out. But eventually he canceled the order and had to go to a different mcds. Insult after injury! He got me some fries and they were unfortunately, pretty gross. What a night.