Southern Verisimilitude

The calendar pages are way to quickly flipping over and what used to be my favorite time of the year is just about here. Every September in days of ole, I frantically did my fall cleaning, all in anticipation (love that word!), anticipation of the holiday season. Around here, the holidays started off with my favorite, Halloween. I always decorated on October 1st and spent the month planning and making treats and happies for the kids' school parties and our party here at the house. Yep, any surprise that I was one of "those" moms? School parties called for spiders on a stick. The kids and I would make our trek to Metairie playground and gather pods from the gumball trees, come home to a table of balloon sticks and pipe cleaners and create what now would be a lawsuit waiting to happen but hey, back in the day, kids loved those darn things. I most loved our party at home though. I spent beaucoup time on the tablescape for the buffet and trying to find a new "freaky" food to delight my babies, can't tell you how many versions of graveyard cakes I did. And just for the record, so my children will bow down with appreciation when they read this...do ya'll remember your first "after party"? it was not easy to convince Daddy that renting the roller rink from 10 to midnight was a much needed expense, think I ended up lying and telling him Aunt Jane footed the entire bill, of course she told Michael Mayonaise that I covered it but whatever, if I have to say so myself, that was the most supreme, kickass Halloween celebration that any kid could ever want! Um, yes, even if I did fall and bruise my coccyx and had to sit on a pillow for the next 2 months. Anyhoot, excuse that tangent and back to my point...I am totally chomping at the bit to create in black, orange, purple and green. A trip to Michael's this week has created a mass of bags in the corner of my scraproom, all filled with the makings of holiday projects and new things I wanna try out. My intention is to be wildly productive and come back next week to share. Fingers crossed that my "experiments" go well cause I have promised a Christmas craft party and I have to have something really great to teach my little chicklets.

As for the past several months that I've been mia, as usual it's been a wild ride. I've stuck my toe back in the sewing arena, made several aprons for Mamp and Kylie, a twirly dress that has to be hidden from Kylie or she'd wear it everyday and even have a LSU smocked dress almost completed (just have to make sure she has her hair down when she wears it so nobody can see the flubs on the back).

The scrapy highlight was the escape Heather put together for us. A long weekend at a scrap house in Lake Charles with some dear friends that we've met on our travels and don't get to hang out with nearly enough. Throw in sisters of friends, daughters of friends and friends of friends and a perfect mix was made. Only problem was the long weekend wasn't nearly long enough, so we're thinking a week in the Houston area for our next escapade. And I have to admit, I left Lake Charles thinking it might not be so bad if Jim drug me to TX for a while, the time spent with HoHo just left me wishing that I could schedule a playdate with her once a week...think she's my new hero, she scraps like a dream, was a smocker for hire and of course she's funny as hell. Lucky for her that she's in Houston cause I'd so be beating on her front door with boudin in one hand and a margarita in the other. Both HoHo and Glo left me kicking myself that I didn't sign up for CE this year. Forgot the point of scrap travel isn't about the classes you take but about the time spent with farflung friends. Leaves me on the lookout for what events I want to attend next year.