All Hallows' Eve: the Dehatting.

This year we went with an unintentional garden theme for the children's costumes. The bug repeated her desire to be the same bunny she went as last year, and the monkey through no will of his own went as a peapod. Here they are at the bug's school, just after the Halloween parade:

The monkey deeply disliked the hat portion of his scheduled costume...



...and was not subtle about his displeasure...



...but he mellowed right out once I took it off:

I think the hat was reminiscent of a knight-of-the-round-table floppy plume, and perhaps he just wasn't up to all that chivalry.  Or, it might have been that he has a huge noggin and the velcro chafed under his chin even though it's supposed to fit babies up to six months.  Either way, he went forth to his sister's parade hatless.  She took off the bunny ears and threw them in the stroller as soon as she was allowed, so perhaps the temperature of the parade day also played a factor (76 degrees!).

Otherwise, he helped me distribute treats (or at least didn't protest while I did so), while the bug and Matt went after neighborhood fat lootz.  They came home an hour later, muchly candied, and with an oddly large number of Chinese fortune cookies.  I then discovered that the owners of the Chinese takeout restaurant in Niwot live right down the block, and are the sweet older couple I often see out walking in the mornings.  Neat to get to know the neighbors at last, and we saw a lot of cute costumes in the parade of kids that came by the house.

If you're wondering why it's taken me this long to post the Halloween pix, the next post may explain as it will be of the bug's birthday festivities.  Baptism weekend + Halloween weekend + Bug Birthday weekend = too many clean-house days in a row for me to post anything.  More soon--and I've loved seeing your kids' costumes, fellow mamabloggers!

For your election day enjoyment...

Get out there and vote, people!

In my house, we tend to cancel each other out, so participation is the thing.  Regardless of your party affiliation, you may be able to blame your great-great-grandparents for the policy failures of today...well, sort of:

Born to Party

Here at the residence we're between the monkey's baptism and the bug's birthday, so party planning and housecleaning and endless seas of spitup laundry have been occupying my days, rather than blogging.  Perhaps November will be a more reflective month once we get through today and see who gets to gloat in the morning.

Women Buying Health Insurance Pay a Penalty

When are we going to move past the "children are a choice" argument and realize that the continuation of society depends on at least some women having babies?  

The worst part of this is that many of the women who are paying more are childless but are paying as potential childbearers.  Yes, pregnancy and childbirth are more expensive than not having children.  Yes, I am a "redistributionist" for suggesting that the costs of pregnancy and childbirth should be distributed over the full insurance pool instead of over one gender.  I also want future generations to exist and I'd prefer it if they had adequate prenatal and postnatal health care so I'm not paying their emergency room bills.   Grrrrr.

Old faithful.

The Times published an article on the new fall cookbooks this morning, but the comments on the article are far more insightful than the piece itself. The question raised was, "What cookbooks do you find yourself returning to over and over?"  If you know my family at all, you know my mom collects cookbooks from all over the country, and that we all love to cook and really enjoy sharing recipes and cooking techniques with each other.

I have several new ideas for cookbooks I'd love from reading the first few hundred comments--if you're interested, you can look through the list here--but thought I'd share the ones we use most in our household:

1. Cook's Illustrated, The Best Recipe.  Goes through the science behind each recipe and explains things like "Why use butter instead of margarine for baking?" and "Do you have to sift the flour for cakes?" and "Why braise meat before roasting?"  The idea is that they cooked many, many versions of each recipe to test out the most effective techniques.  

2. The Best Make-Ahead Recipe. Same basis, but this time you can refrigerate or freeze things and serve them later.  Great for feeding larger groups of people, and the cinnamon roll recipe alone is worth the price of the cookbook.

3. Joy of Cooking.  I don't think we'd get through two weeks in the house without it, and I love all the explanations of ingredients and techniques.

4. Patricia Wells' cookbooks.  We haven't started working our way through the Bistro Cookbook yet but have made at least half of the recipes in the Paris  and Provence Cookbooks even though some of them have rather exotic and expensive ingredients.  She makes meat taste incredible.

5. Luscious Lemon Desserts.  My go-to cookbook for spring and summer desserts as Matt doesn't like anything too sweet so lemon desserts are an acceptable compromise.

What cookbooks do you use most?  Where do you get your recipes?

Tagged!

So I'm home with a sick preschooler, a two-month-old just starting to sniffle, and a cold. Recipe for a great weekend, no? But so far, today, so good. One is napping and the other is watching Mary Poppins. God bless a spoonful of sugar.

My friend Jenni tagged me to write a meme, but I realized I'd done a similar one before. So I kept the number of items on each list the same, but switched up the list headings a bit:

20 years ago I was:
1. In seventh grade "junior varsity" volleyball.
2. The tallest girl in my class...
3. With the earliest acne. (Darn puberty.)
4. Practicing piano 1.5 hours a day.
5. Obsessed with INXS, Tretorn sneakers, Esprit de Corps jeans, and Yo! MTV Raps!

5 things on my perpetual to-do list:
1. Clean out old papers in the basement
2. Write my mother a thank-you note
3. Job-hunt
4. Count my blessings
5. Family snuggle time

5 snack foods I don't understand why people eat:
1. Butterfingers
2. Pork rinds
3. Twinkies
4. Caramel corn
5. Powdered-sugar-dipped donuts (I ALWAYS inhale accidentally and get it up my nose)

5 things I would do to save money in a recession:
1. Get a job.
2. Go mostly vegetarian (meat is EXPENSIVE).
3. Turn down the thermostat to 67.
4. Re-evaluate "necessities" and "wants."
5. Clip coupons for foods we already eat, and use them.

5 places I would love to live besides here, at least a few weeks a year, if I had the means to do so:
1. New York City
2. North Shore, Hawaii
3. Omaha, Nebraska (in the penthouse apartment just off ConAgra Park in the Old Market, or in a big old fixer-upper in Happy Hollow)
4. Salida, Colorado
5. Minneapolis, Minnesota (especially in the summer)

5 jobs it would be fun to have some day:
1. Spa service-quality tester: Just how good is that facial and hot-rock massage?
2. Yoga instructor: fit, flexible, and getting paid for it.
3. Restaurant critic: see #1, but with food instead, preferably paid for by the place I work.
4. Director of American Revolutions: Theatre in-joke; it's the job title of the person at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival who is in charge of a series of new plays about American history.
5. Helpdesk technician at the Pentagon. (I stole that one off best-of-Craigslist, but seriously, can you imagine the phone calls?)