Happy Halloween!

Yep, we ran out of candy again. This time we must have had like 150 kids come to the door... at least that's about how many pieces of candy we thought we had.

This year we had big purple wizard guy answering the door. Most of the kids thought he was funny, but some thought he was scary. A Grim Reaper chick also answered the door, but she was too scary so we didn't let her open the door too often.

After running out of candy, big purple wizard guy was spotted playing karaoke!

We also found a little Musubi kitty hanging out with a green glowy pumpkin. :)

Halloween!

It's 7:36pm on Halloween, and we've completely run out of candy, glow sticks, Halloween erasers, Homies, and other assorted odds and end toys we had hanging around the house. We even gave away an Easter Bunny Spongebob Squarepants! It's hard to say how many Trick-or-Treaters stopped by, but I think it had to be way more than 100, even with the greedier kids (and in some cases moms!) who grabbed more than one item. We had nearly 50 glow sticks and 60 Halloween erasers... and then just bunches of candy, and maybe about 30 - 40 different little toys. So we've shut off most of the lights and we are hiding out upstairs hoping no one else will come knocking.

During a lull I took the above picture of our mostly unadorned front door. As you can see, there's just my already rotting Jack-O-Lantern, and Kenji's freshly carved one. His is really cute. :)

Pumpkin Time!

Last weekend Kenji and I bought pumpkins to carve into Jack-O-Lanterns. Today, while we were sitting in Panera Bread having coffe and hot chocolate, I figured out what I was going to carve. So when we got home, I made a nice stencil for myself on the computer that I used to draw my design onto my pumpkin.

Have I mentioned that one of Spammy's new favorite foods is spaghetti squash? Well, while I was gutting my pumpkin this evening, I realized he must have a thing for all gourds. As soon as I started digging out the seeds and stringy sloppy pumpkin guts, Spammy went crazy begging me some. He was munching on the strands, and then he even tried to get inside my hollowed-out pumpkin to lick the insides. It was very silly.



Musubi just looked on, like the polite little kitty she is:


And here's my finished product!

Plumbing, pumpkins, frogs and an ancient sewing machine

Last weekend was both productive and fun. Home improvements continued, as Russ installed a garbage disposal and fixed the leaky bathtub. Both activities seemed to go fairly smoothly, without much swearing and only one trip to the hardware store. :)

Because Russ needed a new pair of khakis hemmed, I broke out my grandma's sewing machine and brought it back to life. Well, most of the way back to life... we can't figure out why it won't sew in reverse. Actually, we're unable to change the stitch length at all. Fortunately, the machine was stuck on a stitch length that was good for the type of material, so I didn't let the fact that it wouldn't sew in reverse stop me from using it to hem the trousers. Not that I know much about sewing, but I do know that you want to back-stitch a little bit both when you start and end a seam - in lieu of tying a knot.

Funny, I know I was in posession of this machine for at least a year or two before I moved to Hawaii, and before taking it out the other night, I could have sworn I'd used it before. Then when I was trying to figure out how to set it up and encountered the problem with the stitch length setting, I realized I must not have used it - it was all foreign to me. I'm too used to using my mom's old Singer (which isn't as old as this one - a Kenmore). And I do have to say they don't make things they way they used to. I'm surprised the machine is broken, old as it is - it is very solid, and everything on it is made of metal. I didn't see a single cheap plastic part. And, according to the manual, it was tested extensively at the Sears Home Economist Laboratory, hehe. :)

So anyway, chores day was Saturday. On Sunday, we got up bright and early at 10 o'clock and, seeing the sun was out again, decided to go for a nice Sunday drive down to the little town of Lambertville, New Jersey. Lambertville's claim to fame is that it boasts good many antique shops. We're kinda-sorta looking around for a floorlamp and a coffee table, to go with our living room furniture if it ever shows up. I wish I had brought my camera with me, because Lambertville is a cute little town, just across the Delaware River from Hope, Pennsylvania. In addition to antique shops, there are a whole bunch of other interesting shops to poke around in, restaurants, and a nice view of the river.

On the way home, we stopped at a roadside stand and bought these two pumpkins for the cats to play with. Ok, the cats don't really like to play with the pumpkins. The only way I could get them to pose with the pumpkins was to entice them with little plastic flowers. Anyway, we'll carve them (the pumpkins, not the cats!) on Saturday, just in time for Halloween.

Of course, now that we have cats, I have to be like my friend Rebecca and talk about them all the time. Ok, hopefully I'm not as bad as she is. I thought I'd share this action shot of Musubi playing with her favorite new toy, the little green froggy my Hawaii mommy, Gail, gave me when I left. Actually, she put the frog on my desk a year or two ago, and she just told me to take it with me.