Book character parade

Schools are not allowed to celebrate Halloween. However, every year in the week of Halloween the school organises a book character parade so the kids have a chance to dress up. A few rules: no scary characters and you have to bring the book.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we are really into Harry Potter at the moment so Floortje decided that she would be Hermione.

We ordered the tie and cloak and made the spell book and wand (the socks were borrowed from Thijs!)

Expelliarmus!

(A disarming charm for those not familiar with Harry Potter)

 

 

'Dummie de Mummie' pumpkin

Every year around Halloween the kids at Stanley elementary are invited to decorate a pumpkin as a character from a book. (No carving allowed as this 'makes for one smelly library').

We are into two book series at the moment. We're spending hours listening to all the Harry Potter audiobooks and before bed I am reading about the adventures of 'Dummie de Mummie'. We can't get enough of either.

So when we had to come up with a book character, Dummie was the one!

 

Scary bottles

It is impossible to forget that in a few days it will be Halloween. Yards are decorated, shops are full of candy and the girls can't stop talking about their costumes!

We have some decorations outside and a little inside too. A small project I started last year was to make some potions and other scary bottles. Last year I made a few with some bottles I had at the time. However over the last year I have kept a box in the garage in which I would put any empty bottle that had some potion potential. The labels are easily found on the internet and then printed on sticker paper. Next some creativity is required to make the labels look old: wet tea bags, ashes from Thijs' green egg, a light touch of fire, some food coloring and plastic bugs from the dollar store. Fun!

The result:

Some close ups

 

Thijs' famous ribs

I don't know how many times I have tried to 'document' the different steps of Thijs making his ribs. Every time I either forgot to take a picture of one of the steps or just didn't get around to posting about it.

However, today, Thijs will get the recognition he deserves for his famous ribs (although he has received this many times over at the dinner table)!

1. Baby back ribs from Wholefoods

2. Special mix of dried herbs and spices. Rub the ribs, wrap in cling film and let it marinate overnight.

3. 4-5 hours on the Big Green Egg at low temperature.

4. Enjoy! You only need to suck the meat of the bone!

 

Confederate Rose

Last year my friend Monique showed me a beautiful flowering tree she had in het back yard. After blooming season, she saved me some cuttings which lived in a spaghetti sauce jar in the corner of my kitchen all winter. Slowly but surely roots and leaves started growing. It took a while but finally (with the help of Google) we figured out that the tree was called 'confederate rose'. It is not actually a rose but a hibiscus (hibiscus mutabilis for those who are really interested). The nickname comes from the fact that it does so well in the southern United States.

So after the worst of the Texas winter cold (yes, it had been a pretty cold winter by Texas standards) had passed, I planted the twigs in the yard. The first two months not much happened but they didn't die either. Wait and see....

Imagine my surprise when we came back from our summer holidays and it had really started growing. Now we needed to wait for the flowers.

This week we were rewarded. The amazing thing about this tree is that the flowers change color. When they first come out of their buds the flowers are white and then they slowly (over the course of about a day) change to dark pink. Beautiful!

Here is what it looks like when one flower opens a bit earlier than the next.

Really pleased and amazed!