Countdown to My Birthday

It's November 3 already.  My birthday is in only 15 more days.  I'll be 47.  Actually, I don't have big plans yet.  In fact, my birthday happens to fall on  the last day of my Japanese class, so I'm going to go to that... because, well, I paid for it, and just my luck, if I skipped, that'd be the day we learned to the one thing that would be key to understanding and pronouncing Japanese.

I should also probably post a couple more Halloween pictures.  If you remember Mason, this year, decided not to go trick-or-treating. He wanted to stay home and be spooky, so his costume was a featureless mask and black robes:




I kind of think Mason looks like Dr. Doom's son, but hey, it's all good.  And it worked exactly as he hoped.  Shawn and I sat inside and could hear people coming on to our porch and gasping and giggling.  So, yay for Mason!  It was just the experience he hoped for, and, as far as I know, he did not make any toddler's cry.

Here one more of the pumpkins.  People on FB told me they looked like the Grinch and Cindy Lu Who:



Mason carved all his own pumpkins this year, too.  I think maybe this is another sign of growing up that no one quite prepared me for.  I mean, I knew about the staying home from trick-or-treating because I liked to do that too, but the whole: "no, I got this," with the pumpkin carving... well, that was a shocker.  And his turned out really well, too!



This was one of his. The other one I didn't get a very good picture of, but it had three eyes and was VERY spooky.  

So it was a successful Halloween.  We never get a ton of visitors, but I heard the door open a number of times.  I think it helps that, every year, we go all out on the decorations.  (You can see the eyeball lights in the above picture.  We didn't plug them in this year because I found a cut wire, but normally they light up and blink!)  Our entire porch is decked out, and, this year, we put in a red porch light, so there was even MORE spookiness to be had.  I put up candy corn 'christmas' lights and there are Japanese-style paper lantern with spiderwebs on them, spiderwebs everywhere and ALL THE SCARY THINGS....

In fact, I spent several hours taking everything down today.  

*sigh*

Ah well, there will be Christmas porch decorations, too.  

We don't do much in terms of decorating for Thanksgiving, but this year due to our special guest from the UK, we're basically repainting everything.  Shawn has been wanting a change in the kitchen, so we're trying out a few new color ideas.  She knows she wants to go "retro" and has decided on a kind of candy green she saw on (of all things) a shoe advertisement.  Matching this color has been HARD.  But, we think we're getting close.  We tried out "minty green" but decided it was too pastel:




The color we think we like better is a touch more "blue" than this.  

But all the cabinets are going to be repainted, so that'll be "a job" as we say here in Minnesota.  What the heck, I have WEEKS.  No problem, right?

That's most of the news I have.  The only other thing is to let people know that if they want to hear me read, I'm going to be part of the 2014 Local Author Showcase this Sunday, November 9th from noon to 3 pm at Acadia Cafe in Minneapolis.  It should be a fun thing, since we're doing a rapid-fire reading thing, so you only have to sit through a little taste of a whole bunch of authors doing their thing.  I should probably skim through my stuff and decide what I want to read.  I'm thinking about reading some of School for Wayward Demons, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, hope you're all doing well!