November and the leaves are finally turning

This is one of the two maples we planted last year when we had to take down the cherry trees. (Too much pesticide required.) We picked them for their fall color and they are living up to their reputation.

The graveyard is haunted!

Will be full of glowsticks and flickering LED candles tomorrow night. There are orange lights in the window behind this planter area. A long ways from when I used to use full size gravestones and took over my neighbor's yard, put a kid in a coffin and hauled out the guillotine...
(clicken to embiggen)

tricks or treats squirrel

Holy Great Pumpkin!! Abby says no treats for this squirrel, only tricks!
Story here

Our cupcakes are haunted...

So Emergency BackUp Daughter #2 decided to make cupcakes.
They were not successful...
But since they were supposed to be Halloween cupcakes they were successful after a fashion.

Project Runway endeth - Project Accessory beginneth

Thankfully! The winner was not a surprise, that said we didn't pick the winner.
So we watched Project Accessory. Was interesting. The mentor is so *not* Tim! I wonder if they are going to get to make anything out of real materials or will it all be spin straw into gold?

Zombies and pumpkins - what more do you need?

Go HERE to see more pictures and read about the sculptor who carved it.

You can never have enough pumpkins

Stolen from Tug

zombie-fied nativity set

If you buy this you're going to Hell.
via Etsy

pumpkins and angry birds!

well, it was bound to happen...

a Project Runway contestant haz a hubba.hubba! tape on the interwebz.

Just Desserts - an interesting challenge

Disguise your dessert as a savory dish. A challenge of both flavor and technique. Down to the final three and the finale.

Look$ like everything i$ bigger in Texa$ Top Chef and pay to play?$

Head on over to All Top Chef and it looks like the Magical Elves are harvesting the cash and taking legal steps to keep it all secret. So not surprising.

Abby gave Tar a shiner?

A bee sting? Ran into something? Allergies? A conspiracy to drive up this fall's vet bill into four figures?

update on roadtrip boys

Made it home 7pm this evening. Eldest has to get up at 4am to get back to Seattle and work so another four hours of driving. Had a good time with cousins in SanFran.

bring on the locusts!

The boys went on a roadtrip to see Aunt, Uncle and cousins in San Francisco. They took Eldest car because the SUV they were going to take is still in the shop ($1500 upcoming bill there).
Being 20 somethings they were driving in the middle of the night. At about 1.30am they ran over something flat and black laying in the roadway. Tore up the bottom of Eldest's car and the car stopped running. Bless AAA who picked them up and delivered the car to a garage and them to a hotel at 3am. Parts will have to be ordered..... are we seeing a theme developing here?
Workmen still here. Fixed the drawer that opened into the door molding. Painting over the fixings to the damage the second flood did to the bedroom.

oops. adventures in renovation.

New cabinet and sink and back splash.
Drawer....
oops.
The cabinet was done and then the door trim went back on.
Going to try and see if they take the door trim off, take off a bit of the drawer and
smooth it down?
Really, really don't want to have the cabinet ripped out, laminate destroyed, tile work messed up and all the TIME it would take to do that.

Abby is one tough animal

Tar update

He's home and doing well. Has special food to eat for a while.
And this med that you have to dissolve in water and use in a syringe.
You can't even believe how tightly he can clamp his jaws shut....
then we have to wait an hour before feeding.

Tar spending the night at the vet

Tar threw up all day. Managed to hit every new surface in the home. On the bed. Twice. By
evening he was lethargic and off to the vet we went. He is spending the night with meds and an IV. Vet could not feel anything but he was tender. Slight temperature. Tomorrow if he doesn't perk up he will be xrayed.
Abby is fine and sez she didn't do it....

I haz updates

update:

WE HAVE AN UPSTAIRS TOILET!!!

The tub we bought is narrower than our old one. The Engineer and GB do not fit in it sideways with the shower door. 86ed the door and are going to buy a bowed shower curtain. Are people getting smaller and shorter?!

The carpet for the stairs, ordered MONTHS ago, is not in. Where is it? We don't know?! The stairs are now covered in carpet pad and bristley nail tack boards. Dear carpet man covered all the nails with another carpet pad strip. Bless him.

WHY do all calls to the contractor go unanswered? Why do the workmen never know what is going on? Has anyone heard of Angie's List? The homeowners revenge tool?

The Truce

Abby, left, and Tar, right, sharing the same ratty sofa. Since we are in exile in the basement there are few cozy nests available. Abby, since puppyhood, has had an excess of PMS. Tar gets on the bed she will get all huffy, growl and get down. Tar breathes wrong and Abby tells him about it. But here, in dire times, she is forced to share the prime nesting space. Trying times.

nothing sadder than a toiletless bathroom

The new tub/shower. The new floor. The not-toilet-negative-space.

sob! I have a toilet in my driveway

Please, please, please - let this be over soon.
Or, at least, give me back my upstairs bathroom. THIS WEEK.

Abby in exile

We have all been in exile all week while the workers are upstairs. It has been a LONG WEEK. I'm going to run away from home.

Laura Bennett! Superwoman!

She leaps over snotty designers in a single bound! Wham! Zap! Zowey! Take that! Straighten up! Fly right! And eat your vegetables!
Thought the other person left standing on the runway should have gone home. The win - oh, who cares anymore?
The little showlet was kind of boring until LauraB showed up.

Our first computer was an Apple :-)

It looked like this.
And boy did we get grief from one of our relatives for buying it.
College Professor Aunt was so dismissive of our reasons "Why on Earth would anyone need a computer?"
We answered - for work, for the future children, for the future!
And, ahem, we were right.
The Engineer used the computer at work for years before the company started issuing computers to their engineers - can you imagine an engineer without a computer?
And GB - he took to the computer like a duck to water and is majoring in computer engineering.
Finally, I got to meet all you thru the computer!

So, yeah, buying that first Apple computer was a smooth move and thank you Steve Jobs for making it all possible.

Tar investigates the bathroom, Flood 2.0

This is where the second flood 2.0 happened. All bathroom stuff put in boxes and moved to our bedroom.
Which is why I got to utter the phrase, "The plunger is on the bed" when queried as to its location.
Surely a phrase only heard on Hoarders.

And.... we are back at the beginning. FLOOD 2.0

Let us think back to April 18. A huge flood out of the upstairs bathroom causing the flooring in 95% of the house to be ruined. Downstairs bedroom was gutted. New ceiling put in, walls, flooring.

Today they moved upstairs. Tearing up carpet and flooring in our bedroom and gutting upstairs bathroom.....

GB, Daughter and I are nice and cozy downstairs, working from home. Doggies napping.

All of a sudden MUCH MALE YELLING and COLORFUL LANGUAGE.

Someone forgot to turn off the water and there was a geyser in the upstairs bathroom and, OH NOES, waterfall sounds coming from the downstairs bedroom. The newly completely rebuilt bedroom.

Much heavy footsteps thundering downstairs. Doggies barking their heads off and trying to help the poor fellow who is on his back trying to turn off the water.

(Do you want to call the boss? No, you call him...)

And.... we'll have to take down that ceiling again.

Dear lord.
There are locusts around the corner. I just knows it.

dog on the go!

Picture from our paper.
Abby soooo wants one of these.
Tar is like, Duuuuuude.

sums it all up

My feeling about high stakes testing, of trying to stamp out children in a certain mold, of not celebrating a learning disabled child's gifts. This didn't happen on an individual level (teachers) but it is on an institutional level (dept of education).