Life in the Highlands

For Halloween, our family loves to decorate. Notice this frightening display on our front porch:

Scary. Doesn’t it give you chills? But wait. There’s more.

Okay. These are not Halloween decorations. These are plants I haven’t watered since early September. My bad.

Usually, though, by this time of the year, I’ve replaced the dead plants with pumpkins and Halloween decorations. My 9 year old keeps asking when we are going to put out all that stuff. I figure if I hold her off one more week, I won’t have to decorate at all. It’s a good plan.

As an added bonus, I hear that kids don’t trick or treat at houses lacking Halloween paraphernalia. I’d like to test out that rumor. Kind of like my own personal version of MythBusters.

I’ll let you know how that goes.

I’ve also told my daughter that I plan on sending her out trick or treating early in the afternoon on Halloween, and then filling our candy dish with the candy she brings back. So not decorating means less kids trick or treating at our house, which means more candy for her. She should thank me for my lack of Halloween spirit.

Even though I haven’t decorated for Halloween, I have just about finished sewing all my kids’ costumes.

Mostly because my 13 year old is wearing the same poodle skirt I made for a 50’s dance number she did in Elementary school two years ago.

And my 9 year old’s magician costume only required that I sew a cape (which took about an hour), because we already had the hat, wand, and rabbit.

Two costumes down, one more to go: I still have to sew a zigzag stripe on a yellow t-shirt for a Charlie Brown costume. Never let it be said that I don’t go the extra mile for Halloween.

I also have to sew my daughter’s skirt for her band concert next week. She needs a black, plain, longish skirt. We looked at stores all over but couldn’t find a skirt that met all the criteria.

Finally, I told her we could sew one for her.

“Skirts are easy to make,” I said.

Yes. That’s exactly what I said.

When I was in high school and college, I sewed tons of skirts. Well, maybe not tons, but probably three. Or maybe five.  So, I knew what I was talking about.

But the pattern my daughter chose has a zipper. When I said, “skirts are easy” I meant “skirts are easy, unless they have a zipper.”

Because sewing zippers are hard.

Not that I don’t know how to sew a zipper. I am perfectly capable of sewing zippers. My zippering abilities are excellent. It’s just zippers are time consuming and the exact opposite of easy.

But we’ll probably get the skirt cut out tonight. Or, we might just stare at this instead:

It’s my son’s abstract art exhibit for the art fair.

I’m kidding. It’s the clay my son brought home to re-make his abstract art exhibit for the art fair. He broke the original.

Personally, I’m just glad that I don’t have to make anything out of it.

Especially with a zipper.

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