It was Halloween 2011

You recall the much time and energy I spent creating pioneer outfits for myself and others in July? Well, you may think this would translate easily into a Halloween costume and truck-or-treat idea.

Man, that was sooo July. October its all about HOGWARTS. Unfortunately that picture and the following,
were the only pictures I got at the trunk-or-treat. Yes, I forgot my camera. Yes, I parked in a poor spot for pictures. In my defense, last year I was all washed out so I was trying to get away from the big lights.

I think the big lights would have helped this year. I thought later I should have brought my oil lamp. Duh.

Other people took my picture (some on the sly) and a few said they would send them to me but I've heard that before (from me).

But never fear! My good friend Pat come over afterwards so she could take pictures of it all set up in my garage. Its what good friends do.When they saw me, most people said "Harry Potter!" To which I replied "Do I look like a boy?"Here's the outfit. I remembered the next day that I was going to do my hair in braids... For some reason the hair always gets forgotten in my costumes (unless I'm wearing a turban).
Can you tell which house I'm in? After "Harry Potter!" it was "Hermione?"
"BLUE TIE! What's my middle name?"
"Are you a teacher?" "I'm Penelope Clearwater from Ravenclaw... " (the four house colors and crest)
"And I'm making polyjuice potion in my NEWT level class."
(It was the only recipe I could find on line. Wanted to do Veritaserum cuz its clear but couldn't find a recipe.... not that it really mattered... )
Of course I had my book bag filled with books and parchment... and a water bottle. Wizards need to stay hydrated as well.
Here Pat is Vanna-ing the sorting hat.
I just took my witches hat and made a brown fabric cover for it. Elizabeth's older children tried it on and when I asked them if they were brave, smart, cute, or sneaky, they both replied "SNEAKY!" Slytherin it was.

I forgot to put a few things out for the photo shoot outside so I set it back up inside again.
I had already done a trial run the Saturday before. With all the ideas I had running around in my head (a chess set, random things in bottles, rolls of parchment and books) I'm glad I did. I had plenty to fill up my table and didn't need anything more.
Labels such as salamander blood, doxie eggs, eye of newt, and powdered bicorn.
And my pot, bubbling with dry ice.
A set of brass scales (which Emily told me looked like drug paraphernalia)
My escaping frog (I'm an older student so frogs were still in vogue).
I put some threads in this jar (essence of murtlap) so it would look nasty but you couldn't tell in the dark of the parking lot.
My father made this beautiful wand for me... which I didn't have time to paint but I think it has its own character. Ash, 9 3/4", Unicorn Hair.
All in all, I think it was a success. I might or might not still have it all set up in my living room.
I think I managed to keep up the standard I set last year. BTW, anybody need a nice white men's shirt (medium) and/or charcoal sweater?

PS. Here are some close ups on my color bands in the sweater. It took a long time to sew on so you need to appreciate it. The scarf I spent 3 weeks knitting wrong will get it's own post.I wore my costume to work on Halloween (minus the cloak) and it wasn't until 2pm that one of the engineers stopped on his way past my cubicle and said "Wait... its that kids movie! I've been trying to figure it out since this morning when I heard you say you were in costume".

This is why I've never done halloween for work before (witches hat and my "Italian Goddess" t-shirt doesn't count). Perhaps if I had been wearing the cloak and brandishing the wand..

Pumpkin Man Tri 2011

I know you guys have just been DYING to hear my race report. But right now, I'm just a little obsessed with Halloween. I've spent almost every waking hr (and some not so awake) unproductively working and spending money on something that comes once of year.

Yes, I'm that kind of lady.

So in order to get this up before the big Halloween ____ (I'm reserving judgement on how it's going to turn out), I'll put up some pictures and try and keep my comments brief.

Luckly, my wonderful parents (the best ones I've EVER had) came up to take pictures and be my chase team. Emily was very sad not to be able to come. Mom and Dad cheering together almost made up for her :-)

Of we go. Look at that tiny wave of competetors. Melissa's wave went 5 minutes before me (remember, I compete with the old and fat ladies) and her's was at least twice as big as mine.

Which means I had a hard time finding a rabbit to follow. Either they headed out way too fast or I'd find someone but would soon have to pass her. Plus I was still a little stuffy from my cold (although a swim does clean you out... just sayin').

Look at me coming in with those pink cap ladies! The pink caps were Melissa's wave. Made me feel fast... but really they were just slow.
Here I'm telling mom my throat hurt.
And off I go. I've never worried about transition times cuz I'm usually just glad I got to the next milestone but this one was pretty slow.
I had pushed it on the swim cuz that's the part I usually enjoy and then I was determined to push it on the bike. So here still feeling pretty good.
Here... not so much.
I don't know what I was thinking when prepping for this race. I only put one water bottle on my bike and so ran out coming up the last big hill. I had thought about putting a bottle here at T2 but thought... one hr bike ride, one water bottle. (K, guess I do know what I was thinking.)

Just forgot to factor in my water needs after the swim and before the run which would have been taken care of by another water bottle. I had to wait until the 1st mile on the run at the water station for a cup of water which made me feel so much better... for about 1 minute. Talk about a miserable run. Emily asked why I didn't just stay and tank up at the water station either coming or going but apparently I can't make good decisions when I'm dehydrated.

I'm not putting in any pictures of me "running" in. I look terrible. One lady who caught up to me with half a mile left asked me if I was OK or if I needed a gu. It wouldn't have helped with such a short time left so I declined. I must have looked pretty awful.

So lets just take show the end results. YA!! I finished! And I got 2 dumb little water bottles that I can down in all of 2 seconds!
But my wonderful cheering section was there and with a lot of water, food and rest, all was right in the world.
Wait.. was that my name they called during the awards ceremony? Yup... 3rd place in the fat ladies division.
The lady that placed second in the fat ladies devision passed me with only a mile to go on the run...

Sigh. Still, for having been ill the two weeks before and not preparing like I should have... I'm OK with my showing.

For a mildly driven athlete... I'd say it was alright.

PS. A big thank you to Melissa who fed my parents and let me come soak in her hot tub, Melissa's parents who praised the canned peaches I brought for desert, and Dan for making awesome breadsticks. And thanks again to Mom and Dad for driving 20hrs round trip just to spend 2 days with me! I love my family/friends.

Summerlin Art Festival (Chalk Art Festival)

I like to go to things that are free in Vegas... plus I love concrete and I love chalk.

Unfortunately, chalk art and rain don't mix. The poor artist, waiting for the rain and clouds to go away.
It had stopped raining by the time I got there, but everyone was cleaning up.

Even the ones under canopys had to wipe everything down.The two days it rains in Vegas of course have to happen during the chalk art festival. I was sad not to see the chalk art so I looked at some of the other booths.

Do you remember Mom's Halloween wicked witch she made with stuffed nylons? Was just as scary as these flat babies. At least these don't have warts.

What I was really looking for was pottery. Being from New Mexico, I like looking at beautiful pottery at a fair. Art and function.
That yellow pitcher in the middle. So pretty. Unfortunately there were only 2 potters in the whole place and the other one was just huge vases. Ugh. Gimmie some mugs any day.

I wandered around looking at ugly jewelry and even uglier paintings hoping the weather would clear.

Then the wind kicked up again so even though it dried out, the sidewalks remained covered.
Nice concrete though. You could kinda see the pictures underneath the plastic, but most of the other artists hadn't been able to finish before the rain came.
I took a picture of this artist with chalk all down his legs and his dirty hands.
Then I went home.

And that was my adventure for the weekend.

I had this ready to post three weeks ago but... well, my excuse is that I've been ill. So I thought I better post this before the triathlon this weekend. I'm sure u'll ALL want to hear about that :-)

Labor Day Adventures

I decided to just post these pictures or nobody will ever see them. And of course, everyone must see them. I took them after all.

Sept 3rd, Labor Day weekend:

Have you ever been to watch sheep dog trials? Oh my goodness, so fun!

Of course, this is us leaving. You never take pictures of the dogs and sheep at a sheep dog trial... didn't you know?

If you want to see it, they're going to make a movie of it here. (a better explanation video of the actual trial is here)

It was really fun and I plan on going next year and staying all day. Or at least buying the movie they're making.

This is why we brought Megan.
Do you see the bonnet on Hannah? I made a couple small ones out of the leftovers from my pioneer sewing projects for adults. Hannah and Natalie were so excited they wanted to wear them to watch the dogs. Makes an aunt happy.

Then Alec pumped up the raft...
And Jim pumped up the raft...
But Megan won.
Why didn't we bring an electric blower? Oh we did. It just wouldn't work.

Then we floated down the river.

Of course we didn't take our electronics so u'll just have to take my word for it. We got cold, ran up against some trees, over rocks, a weir, more trees, more rocks, and a bridge pier. Emily thought we were going to flip so she got ready to grab some kids. That's when Bethanie got scared.

I wasn't in the boat at the time. When the going gets rough, Melanie bails... tries to get back in the boat and therefore distracting Alec (the driver) concequently allowing the raft to run up against the pier. Those engineers... no faith.

Its Jim and Megan's fault we didn't flip. Jim asked Megan to pray before we got out on the water. Lots of faith in college freshman and business men.

The fact that the raft was semi flat from our hand pumps and the coldness of the water probably helped too. It just smooshed up against anything hard. Thank heavens.

After that, the kids wanted to turn around and go back. We told them they could row back, but the rest of us with the oars were heading downriver to the car. It was so late in the evening by then that we saw beavers and muskrats all along the banks. Then we hit another tree (which Alec smacked with his oar to show it who was boss), dragged the boat out, ran up the canyon to get the cars while half stayed back to deflate the raft and wrap crying kids in towels, pushed the raft into the back of the car, stopped panicking after Megan found my car key on the ground in the dark (the faith of those freshmen rears its head again), and went home.

Fairly eventful day.

So we rested from our labors on Sunday so we could can peaches Labor Day.
Labor on Labor Day. Tee Hee.

Emily and Bethanie showed me how to do it.
First they get blanched so they're easy to peel.
Then you use child labor to peel the peaches and fill the jars.
Then boil them for 30 minutes.

No, we don't have a picture of the final product. We forgot. Maybe I'll take a picture of the few cans I took home.

As proof I did help, those are my arms (Pictures courtesy of Jim).
I handled the knife since we all know how good I am with sharp instruments.

So what did I learn from canning peaches? I HATE earwigs. Amen.

Then I drove back to Vegas with a beautiful bunch of grapes from Emily's garden along with a cooler full of garden vegetables.
Only special people get grapes from Emily's garden. Just saying. (Apparently I had a lot to say along with these pictures... who would have guessed?)

Random July Pictures

So.. I figured I better put up one post in August. I've let a lot of things slide this summer but am starting to get back into being a productive person again. I still just want to spend all day at my house reading/listening to books or watching Movies/TV series rented from the library... but who wouldn't?

Here are my July pictures. I didn't take many so I'm lumping 'em all together.

First... 4th of July at NM -

Working in the garden waiting for the Parkinson's to get there.

Emily wanted me to take this picture of bums in the air.
As you can see, it had rained that day for which we were grateful as will be explained in the next picture.

Tom took this picture of the mountains behind my parents house on fire a couple nights later. Originally I thought the pictures I had seen like this on the web were staged, but then Aaron took us outside at night.

This is my picture of the smoke billowing during the day.
That picture was taken after Dad had picked me up on my bicycle. Apparently although they opened SR4 around to Bandelier National Monument, I couldn't get into Los Alamos just past the turn off to the Pajarito ski mountain because Lab land was still closed. I was supposed to meet everybody in LA but since Dad hadn't brought his badge to LA (they wouldn't have let me in without my own badge anyway) Dad had to drive all the way back down to White Rock and around to pick me up... and then back around the same way. Plus.. I was out of water by that time. I tried to make it back to Bandelier before he did but didn't quite do it.

And that's all the pictures I have until Saturday when it was concrete weekend. Here Dad and Tom are finishing off the second section.
And here's the rest of the crew.
OK.. so really everyone was such good help. Its amazing how quickly you can make a batch of concrete with so many helpers! All I ended up doing each time was my 3 cans of cement and one or 2 cans of rocks! I think we wore Dad out... but Mom got her sloping ramp. Makes it easier to get the trailer out of the back.

I didn't plan on writing so much about the 4th of July so I'll try to refrain from the next pictures.

I loved being home and miss my family. So I headed back up for the 24th of July to be with Emily. I spent the week before sewing up a storm so we both could have pioneer outfits.

Emily might have thought I was a little strange.

I sent her a picture of the bloomers I made for her. She was embarrassed. Here she is showing off her outfit (I didn't make the blouse) and holding the skirt I made her too.
Sunday she had showed me some material she had bought a long time ago to make a skirt like the one on the left.
I was in the sewing mood (plus I was feeling guilty for spending all of Friday and Saturday finishing the handwork on her pioneer skirt) so I made it for her. I set my first zipper ever. It zipped up... and then it zipped down. I was pretty proud.

Then, since we didn't have any fireworks on the 4th of July... we did fireworks on the 24th of July.

Cathy is wearing Emily's bonnet (I know these pictures are bad but I don't care... I'm posting them anyways). Sparklers and spinning flowers.
The law had recently changed in Utah allowing fireworks to shoot up in the sky. Emily bought one.
It kinda scared us when it went off... but was a fitting end. I was just glad I got to do SOME fireworks in July!

Emily took me to the Spanish Fork Fair Monday where we saw lots of quilts.
There.. that's July. August I'm working on being more productive and will post more often.

At least that's the plan :-).