Youth Battalion Free Printable

Here is the handout I created for my young women based on Pres. Nelson's talk Sunday evening. I shared already on Facebook, but I think you can get a slightly higher res version if you click on the link below and save the jpg from there!

https://whereisthelaughtrack.blogspot.com/2018/06/youth-battalion-jpg.html

Youth Battalion jpg

Tiny Torch - Not So Tiny in My Book

So I've been trying out Tiny Torch as a way to post for my Jamberry business and for running online parties. It's been extremely helpful! In my book, the whole point of running your own business like being a Jamberry Independent Consultant is to keep your schedule flexible and spend more family time. But the best times to post are always in the evenings when I should be with family.

Thanks to Tiny Torch, I can post at the "best" time to get seen, but still stay sitting at the dinner table with my family, or spend the evening on "Netflix and chill" with my hubby. It also helps me spread out my posts when I get a burst of posting ideas. I can create them all at once, but spread out when they actually post!

Other than one short time when there was an outage and my posts didn't show up for awhile, I've found Tiny Torch to be extremely reliable in the about 6 months I've been using it.
So I'm reviewing how helpful Tiny Torch has been in hopes of getting a free upgrade to Pro! I'd love to be able to post even more and to be able to post multiple pictures! *fingers crossed*

Expedition Log: AC Incident (Ongoing)

Day 1

I returned from a recreational excursion late last night to find out from the co-leader of this expedition that the upstairs air conditioner was no longer operational. The system was installed a mere 7 months ago, so I am unconcerned. The residual cool was sufficient to sleep in my bed and the AC repairman said he will call early tomorrow morning. The only negative impact was some difficulty preparing our party for worship services. Cosmetics are difficult to apply while sweating.

Day 2

It is now 10 in the morning and there has been no word from the AC repairman. We radioed a distress call to AC headquarters and have received word that help should arrive by 16:00 CDT. Last night the 3 natives in our party and myself abandoned base camp for an outpost downstairs. It is fortunate that the downstairs functions on a separate system. It is also fortunate that school is not in session for the natives, allowing them a more flexible schedule. It was possible to convince the natives that the temporary bedding and communal sleeping situation was a rare and desirable opportunity.

Day 3

At 30 minutes prior to the AC repairman deadline yesterday, we had still received no word of their impending arrival. Headquarters was contacted and it was announced that help had just departed with a trajectory straight towards us. Upon arrival, the repairman did a full diagnostic and discovered the source of the malfunction. Now they have mounted a search and rescue operation for the necessary part. Optimistic estimates put them finding the part by end of day today, but sometime tomorrow is more likely. Last night the natives and I again bunked down in the living room to avoid the heat. Rotation of air mattress types kept things fresh for the natives and I added reinforcements to the support level of the cushions on the couch. The upstairs has become a veritable no-mans-land.

Day 4

Received word that the part has been found, but before the system designer will allow it's use, an experimental new operation must be attempted. Attempt should be made sometime today. My colleague M has now abandoned base camp as well. My weathered joints struggled to accommodate the camping pad I was left to use last night. Many tasks need doing back at base camp, but return trips are becoming less and less frequent.

Day 5

It has been five days since I dared to venture upstairs for more than a few minutes at a time. Things are looking grim. The operation was only partially effective. No radio contact from HQ since. The natives are growing restless. Couch again tonight.

Do You Want to Build a Snowman?

It's been a long time since I guest authored here but, as the father of two daughters and a recruiter for a tech company, there's an important message I want to evangelize.  Now that most of the mass hysteria surrounding Disney's latest princess film has run it's course it's time to take a step back and address the social engineering baked into Frozen.

For the non-parents out there, let's quickly review the tidal wave from Arendelle that swept over the parents of the world in the last 12-15 months. I was planning to see Frozen when it hit the cheap theaters but didn't. Because it never got to the cheap theaters.  It stayed in the full price theaters morphing from regular showings into special sing along showings right through the DVD release ($1.2B global box office). In June, the Billboard Dance Club Songs list was topped by a Disney song (Let it Go), and for the better part of a year parents had to sell heirlooms to buy Frozen birthday party decor off eBay. A year after it released, we went to Disneyland where Kate expected to meet Elsa and Anna.  We got lucky. We had 3-day passes, so we got into the park an hour early one day.  That day, G speedwalked from the entrance to the "Meet Elsa and Anna" fastpass line (yes, Elsa and Anna have their own fast pass line), waited in line for 45 minutes to get fastpasses, and managed to get passes for 2:20 in the afternoon.  They ran out of passes before the park opened for general admission.  When we returned at 2:20 we waited in line again for over an hour to actually meet Elsa and Anna.  Apparently, before they implemented the fast pass system parents were waiting in line for over 5 hours to meet the princesses.  A YEAR after the movie released.

The fanatical devotion that surrounds this film left quite a few people scratching their heads about what caused such an uproar.  Certainly Tangled (Rapunzel), and the Frog Princess (Tianna) didn't produce anything like this. Why this one?  I thought it over for a while and ran some ideas past G.  It turned out we had independently come to basically the same conclusion. The way our kids put it was, "She's a princess, but with powers," which is a major departure from previous Disney princesses.

Not so sure?  Let's review some other Disney princesses:

• Snow White - Beautiful, kind, sickeningly optimistic and helpless before a simple disguise.  She ends up waiting, half dead, for her prince to save her.
• Aurora - Beautiful, loved by everyone, so trusting she dances with strange men who show up in the forest, but ultimately helpless before spinning needles.  She ends up stuck in an enchanted death sleep, waiting for her prince to save her.

Of course these are really old examples.  Maybe a more modern one will be better:

• Ariel - Beautiful, but rebellious, and honestly not so bright.  Helpless before a witch with a lousy sales pitch.  She loses the guy, and gets transformed back into a mermaid after getting her father turned into a worm.  She's stuck waiting for her prince to knock off the witch and then STILL needs her dad to save her from the disappointment of losing her first infatuation love. (Assuming that being transformed into an alien creature and separated from your family forever counts as being saved.)

Now let's talk about Elsa.  She makes awesome stuff with her mind and a gesture, and runs a kingdom (without a guy even!).  Halfway through the movie she "loses" her princess status and becomes Queen Elsa of Arrendelle. Most importantly, she does all this despite feeling unsure of herself.  When she can't keep her fears in check anymore, she gives up the act, exiles herself for everyone's safety, and finally gets to revel in her own power.  "Let it Go" captured the hearts of millions of girls.  They will have to grow up a little before they really understand why its working title was "Elsa's Bad*** Song".

Disney is sending girls a big message here.  You don't have to feel perfect. Hiding your abilities won't help in the long run.  You can make awesome things.  You can be powerful.  This movie is about getting girls into STEM. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math)

No, I'm not really kidding. Elsa describes her own soul as a spiral of frozen fractals. She likes to be alone, and her skin looks like she's never seen the sun.  She can make her own dress, bridge, castle, and probably whatever else she wants to.  And she's been doing it since she was little with no training.  She can't stop changing the world around her even when she tries.  Can you say "power geek" louder than this?

Someone at Disney really gets it.  They understand what's keeping girls out of STEM. That's not really a surprise since I'm pretty sure "they" is John Lasseter (current Chief Creative Officer at Disney and former Pixar exec) and his Pixar cronies.  Sound crazy?  Lets review the "Pixar princesses":  Merida (Brave), Ellie (Up), EVE (WALL-E), Sally (Cars), Mrs. Incredible.  This group and the old Disney princesses have never met and it's not hard for me to see where Elsa belongs (or Anna for that matter).  Since Elsa's real heritage is a computer animation studio it's not hard to convince me that the subliminal message coming from her is a whispered "grow up and work for us".

Admittedly what I'm about to say could be biased, because I have a small sample set to work with but here goes.  I haven't seen girls treated with discrimination in the engineering workplace since I started working full-time a decade ago.  At least not in the traditional "you wouldn't understand, why don't you go get us some coffee" way.  I can't imagine a team where people wouldn't listen to a woman's technical input just because she was female.   I'm sure it still happens in some places, but I really don't think fear of being treated like a secretary is the issue.

The issue is at the social level.  In a STEM workplace some girls will end up uncomfortable.  A girl who shows up with a Luis Vuitton handbag and a perpetual manicure because that's how she rolls will likely get professional respect for good work, but she won't be one of the gang unless she's willing to keep her Paladin Blood Elf leveled up to the max or brew her own beer or something equally off the beaten path.  But that's just work, not life.

The bigger problem is outside of work.  The social scene is pretty harsh on girls who get serious about technical stuff.  If a girl wants to go into biology that's OK. That's on the softer end of science. But as soon as a girl says words like "astrophysics" or "focused ion beam", the guys who were going to ask for her number disappear faster than doughnuts at a hack-a-thon.  Not only that, but the girls who were going to invite her along to the next Neiman Marcus shopping trip forget to call her and all her relatives stop buying her gift certificates to Ulta and start buying her pink screwdrivers.  Halfway through college G started telling people at parties she was an "EE" major because a lot of them would just assume that meant Elementary Education and then treat her like a regular girl.

In the long haul, treating girls like they changed just because they are going into a new professional area needs to change, but for now girls need Frozen.  They need Let it Go to sink in deep so they won't freak or feel guilty when someone is intimidated by them.  They need to know that even if you do technical things, and do them well, you can still be a normal person with normal relationships because their abilities don't define them. It will be a tough process but the more girls go into STEM, the more people will realize that being smart and competent in math and science doesn't magically transform a girl into an evil step-sister or a witch. Or a boy.

I really think that ~15 years from now we'll see a small uptick in girls entering the STEM workforce, just from this movie.  But to be honest, I have to find people to hire from now until then, and I don't care if they are male or female.  If you have a daughter, or sister, or friend who hides what she can really do, and isn't heading down the STEM road just because of social pressure, do me a favor: open a door, climb a mountain, build a snowman.  Only love can thaw a frozen heart.

Judge Me By My Name, Do You?

I got an unexpected phone call a couple days ago.

The phone rang and it was a local number, so even though I didn't recognize it, I went ahead and answered it.

G:  Hello?
Woman:  Hello, is G*** S*** there?
G: This is.
Woman:  Are you planning on voting come election day?
G: Probably.
Woman: Well, we'd just like to encourage you to get out and vote in this election because there are a lot of Asian-American issues on the ballot.
G: **stunned silence**
G [stalling while she puzzles this out]: Uuhhhh... what are the issues???
Woman: Asians are the fastest growing minority in the Austin area and they are under-represented in local government. Also, election materials are only available in English and Spanish. They are not being translated into Asian languages, so we are pushing to make these materials available in Asian languages so that more people can participate in elections. It's really important that we get out and vote on election day to support these issues.
G: Okay... Um, thank you.
Woman: Thank you. Bye.
G: Bye. [Hangs up phone]

G explodes into hysterical laughter.

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For the record, I am not Asian.  Not even a little bit.  I'm the whitest European mutt ever.

But it just so happens that when my dad was young, he served a mission for our church in Japan. He returned and studied Japanese in college. When he married my mom and I eventually came along, they gave me a Japanese middle name. And that middle name came in very handy when we ended up living in Japan for 3 years for my dad's work when I was a little girl. I went by my middle name then and I'm very attached to it.  So of course I kept it when I got married.

It was interesting to catch a glimpse of the assumptions that were made about names when compiling that call list of registered voters. I'm not Asian-American, but I didn't really feel the need to disabuse them of that notion. I went along with it in the hopes that maybe someday it will lead to some sort of hilarious situation. M and I entertained fantasies of me being invited to some event, only to show up in all my huge white-person-ness.

(Apparently we're a little desperate for entertainment these days...)

But it's a good reminder:

A lily by any other name would look as white.

Gray

I have gray hair.

There, I said it.

Not that I've been particularly secret about the fact that I dye my hair.  But still, I've been running away from my gray for a long time now.

I saw my first gray hairs start popping up at 16 or 17.  At first there were only a few and I told myself they were "white hairs." I told myself they were like blond hairs mixed in with my brown. I was already experimenting with hair color every now and then, so it wasn't a big deal.  Since there were only a couple, I sometimes just pulled them out if they were too obvious.

Another year or so and then there started to be more grays. I realized I couldn't keep pulling them out. But I was having fun with hair color still every now and then, so most of the time they didn't show.  I mostly had one streak of gray that was getting denser, but it only showed when I pulled all my hair back and when I had gone a long time without coloring. My blond best friend started saving her old dark brown mascaras for me so I could swipe a little on my streak when it started showing too much. Problem solved.

Then my senior project in college happened. It was a bit of a stressful semester. There were some all-nighters. I can't prove it, but it seems like I had quite a few more gray hairs when it was all said and done.  And I wasn't all that okay with that.

I mean, I wanted to be confident about my natural hair. Really I did. But I was 21 years old. I was single. I was already the 5'10" electrical engineering major who talked too loud. I already stuck out like a sore thumb. It was already hard enough feeling attractive and getting dates. I just wasn't ready to add "...with the premature gray hair" to the list. Sometimes I wished I could rock a "gray streak." But I wasn't sure if my gray streak (or my self-confidence) was strong enough to make the gray interesting instead of just vaguely "off" and dorky.

So I decided that I would just dye my hair a little more frequently, at least while I was still part of the singles/dating scene.

Fast forward a little and I was married and still in my early-to-mid 20's. M knew I dyed my hair and we chatted about it a bit and I decided that I still wasn't ready to stop dyeing my hair. Someday maybe... but not yet. I decided that I just didn't want to be in my 20's with gray hair, so I would keep dyeing it at least until I turned 30. Then I'd re-evaluate.

Fast forward some more and I was 30. I still didn't feel ready to be gray. Now the problem was that everyone already thought I was so much older than I was. Having gray hair would only make it worse! Plus the transition was going to be so hard!

But the more I chewed on the thought in the back of my mind, the more I knew the time was coming. Eventually I would stop dyeing my hair. I just had to figure out when. It was never going to be easy. There would always be an excuse not to. So I started focusing on the reasons to do it.

There are a lot of reasons I want to stop dyeing my gray:

#1 - This is the hair God gave me. I don't want to be fake. It was so freeing a few years ago when I finally accepted that my hair was wavy/curly. I stopped trying to pretend to have straight hair and I finally learned to love the hair texture I had. I want the same thing to happen with my hair color.

#2 - I'm tired of all the money I'm dumping into maintaining an illusion. It's one thing to spend money to do something "fun" with your hair, but spending money just to make your hair unremarkable is so lame.

#3 - Also, the time. I'm sick of the TIME I spend getting my hair dyed. I'd much rather spend it doing something worthwhile. Or even just sleeping.

#4 - I want variations in my color without having to highlight. I look at the amazing red highlights the sun gives my mother's natural hair color and the blonde highlights in my sister's natural hair color and I envy all that gorgeous variation. Maybe I would get highlights from the sun too if I wasn't so busy covering my gray?

#5 - I want to remember what the natural color and texture of my hair is when it hasn't been dyed. Because honestly I'm not sure.

#6 - I want to see what my gray looks like. Where are my "silver highlights"? Is it everywhere? Is it just framing my face? How uniform or how chunky is it? The suspense is killing me! It's not often to we get to surprise ourselves! ;)

#7 - I am blessed to not have to convince anyone that I'm young. I'm happily married and I'm not competing in the workplace. If I look older than I am, why would it really matter? (Still working on believing this one.)

#8 - I'm not a granola or something, but I kinda don't love the idea of pouring all those chemicals onto my head all the time.

#9 - I'm not ready to burn my bra or anything, but I do like the idea of taking a stand against the false standards of beauty and youth that our society is enslaved to. And one of those standards is hair color. What's wrong with gray hair?

#10 - The longer I wait, the harder it will be. The more gray I have, the more often I will have to get it dyed if I want to hide it. (More money, more time, more chemicals, etc.) And the more obvious it will be when I stop dyeing it.

#11 - There's no reason not to transition right now. I'm not interviewing for jobs. I'm not talking to teachers about my grades. There's no weddings on the horizon for me to worry about how I'll look in the family pictures. It's as good a time as any to have funny-looking transition hair. It will never be an EASY transition, but there could definitely be worse times to do this.

#12 - In the end, I've got a bit of rebel in me. Just a tiny little benign bit, but it's there. And having gray is a whole lot more rebel than buying into the "norm" of women hiding their gray.

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Today my youngest child entered full-day Kindergarten.

Today is my 34th birthday.

I have gray hair.

Am I young? Am I old?

Who cares!  I'm me.

Any Excuse for Snowflakes in May!!!

Like every other little girl on the planet lately, Kate is really into the movie Frozen. So when her preschool teacher said she could choose a day near the end of school to celebrate her summer birthday with her class, she of course, OF COURSE wanted to bring Frozen cupcakes.

Well, she lucks out that her mother is semi-obsessed with snowflakes, because I was eager to oblige.

She really wanted chocolate AND vanilla for the cake part, so we did half and half.

I sprinkled white sparkling sugar over blue frosting then added the snow flakes made of white chocolate. (Normally I consider white chocolate an abomination, but for snowflakes I'll make an exception!)

To make the snowflakes I melted white chocolate and put it in a little plastic sandwich bag with a corner snipped off. Then I piped it onto wax paper over a snowflake pattern. (I used a pattern for DIY window clings I found here, then printed it at about half size.)

This movie is a great chance to use snowflakes in some month other than December or maybe January. YAY!

The Grilled Cheese Tragedy

Kate usually really loves grilled cheese sandwiches. Most days she asks me to make her two for lunch and happily devours them both. So last night when we decided to have grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for dinner, I assumed she would want two sandwiches so I didn't even ask. She asked me what I was making her and I told her two grilled cheese sandwiches.

She burst into tears. I was surprised and confused but reassured her that it was okay, she didn't HAVE to have two. I said I would just make her one. But she kept crying saying she didn't want that. I was baffled. I told her I thought she loved grilled cheese sandwiches? I asked what was wrong - what did she want?

Through her sobs she explained, "I don't want two grilled cheese sandwiches, I want THREE!!!"

We Survived Our Road Trip

A few weeks ago M's sister got married in Washington D.C. The wedding was on a Thursday and the kids already had Monday off school. We only had to take the kids out of one extra day of school and then we had 9 days for trip. Because we had the extra time to work with, it was SO much more economical to drive instead of fly.

If you don't factor in your sanity.

Things We Hoped to Do on the Road Trip	Things We Expected to Really Do on the Road Trip	Things We ACTUALLY Did on the Road Trip
Get such an early start and make such great time and feel so alert that we just drive straight on through the whole 1500 miles.	Get tired slightly past half way and find a nice inexpensive hotel to stay in for the night.	Wander around Jackson Tennessee for 45 minutes trying to find a non-scary hotel room only to finally find out that all the hotels are booked up because Lane college is having their homecoming that weekend.
Set the cruise control and make great time.	Hit a little traffic here and there and get in later than hoped for.	Get detoured to small country roads in the middle of the night for 30 miles because the interstate was closed just outside Memphis TN  AND hit such bad traffic in Virginia that we actually put the car in park and  turned off the engine for 30 minutes.
Enter an address in the GPS and get accurate, concise directions for getting there.	Listen to the GPS say “Recalculating” every time we had to get off the freeway to pee.	Have the GPS lose satellite reception every time we looked at it wrong.  Have it choose yet another slightly different route for getting there every time we tried to drive to the same place.  Develop suspicion that the GPS is getting paid for every unique street it makes us drive on.  End up renaming the GPS “Willis” so that we can start saying, “What choo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?”
Only go to the bathroom at meal stops.	Make pit stops every 2 hours.	Pee early and pee often. Have the dedication to pee 3 times in an hour, whether we need to or not. Pee before the meal, after the meal, and again 20 minutes after we finally get back on the road.  ALL THE SAME KID.  Get our drink privileges taken away.
Sleep.	Stare out the window bored.	Pick up Kate’s princess dolls from the floor of the back seat while telling the kids to stop bugging each other.
Sing songs together.	Listen to music.	Have the kids yell at each other to stop every time one of them starts happily singing a song.
Have Claire and Scott do homework while Kate played happily with toys.	Let Kate listen to a movie with headphones on while the big kids did their homework.	Inform Scott that we were not going to play the Barbie Fairytopia movie over again so he could hear it this time because we didn’t want his testicles to shrivel up and fall off.
Read out loud as a family from the Little House on the Prairie book series.	Watch a few movies.	Try to ignore threats from Kate that she will “be bossy” if we didn’t let her watch the movie she wanted… again.
Discuss family goals and aspirations.	Tell the kids to stop bugging each other.	Insist that Kate ask politely before you pick up her princess dolls from the floor of the back seat... again.
Have a neat, organized car because we had thought of everything.	Need to wash and vacuum out the car when we got back.	Cleaned up spilled orange Powerade with a pillowcase.  Get our drink privileges taken away… again.
Have the children entertain themselves so that M and I can read and talk about grown up things.	Risk throwing out our backs passing out books and snacks.	Risk throwing out our backs picking up Kate’s princess dolls from the floor of the back seat… again.
Eat up leftover snack foods from around the house.	Let the kids pick out few new snack foods from the grocery store.	Wander around Wal-Mart for half an hour buying snack food only to have the children crumble the food up and leave it in Lake Powerade.
Attend a fabulous wedding where we get to spend time with family and friends and celebrate the marriage of a beloved sister and her new husband.	Be present at the wedding.	Attend a fabulous wedding where we get to spend time with family and friends and celebrate the marriage of a beloved sister and her new husband.

 

 

Pumpkins 2013

It was a bit of a tight squeeze to fit pumpkin carving into the schedule this year.  Like I said in my last post, my sister-in-law's wedding made my October a little crowded. Not that I'm complaining. I wouldn't have traded being a part of her beautiful wedding for the world. But it did mean our pumpkin carving was a little less elaborate this year.

In the past we've been able to get our pumpkins carved for the church party and still have them not entirely gross when Halloween night rolled around. But this year our party at church was almost a full week before the actual day of Halloween. Not gonna have carved pumpkins for both. Normally we would have chosen to have the pumpkins carved for our church party, but given our busy month, we ended up carving them for Halloween night.

We let each of the kids pick out a pumpkin and what they wanted carved on it.

Claire chose Angry Birds and did a lot of the carving herself:

Scott designed his own silly face and we helped him execute it.  The googly eyes were an extremely important design element for him:

And Kate really, really wanted a princess pumpkin. A Sleeping Beauty to be exact.  And because she has me wrapped around her little finger:

And then the next day I let her decorate a gold crown to put on Aurora:

M and I wanted so badly to do a design of our own choosing too, but we were running out of time.  In the end, we stayed up way too late rushing to carve one and I don't think really turned out.  Can you tell what we tried to carve?

Halloween 2013

Halloween didn't get the attention this year that it usually does around our house. M's sister got married (WOO HOO!) two weeks before Halloween, so we were pretty busy getting ready for that. Helping with wedding plans, planning and buying outfits for the family, making flower girls dresses and accessories, and planning a 9 day road trip to Washington D.C. meant that I didn't have the time I usually do to make my kids' costume dreams come true. (I'll be subjecting you to photos from the wedding soon too, trust me.)

Kate wanted to be Merida from Brave in the blue and gold dress. I looked into buying the costume, but everything was either too expensive, too lame, or both. Some of the costumes didn't even look like anything Merida wore in the movie. Pshaw!

So I was going to try to make Kate's costume, but it soon became clear I had bitten off more than I could chew. My wonderful mother came to the rescue. She took the pattern and fabric from me and made Kate's dress mostly while we were gone at the wedding. I think she did a pretty awesome job:

M made her a little bow to complete the look.  She LOVED it.

And before you ask, yes. That is Kate's real hair, not a wig:

I got the idea for Kate's hair from this site. But I wanted a wilder look than that, so I used smaller sections, tied them in tighter knots, left them in longer, and separated the finished curls more.

I curled Kate's hair the night before using drinking straws and some mousse. I used the straws like you would do rag curls - roll the hair around the straw and then tie the straw in a knot to hold it.  I went with a full square knot so they would hold up to a four year old level of abuse for almost 24 hours. And they did hold up really well. None fell out with her sleeping in them and then wearing them all day long (even at dance class!) until the party in the evening.

This is a photo from the first time we did it for a church party. We went with rainbow straws. For actual Halloween we went with all red and orange straws to slightly give the illusion of red hair when she wore her costume at preschool earlier in the day. The second time I did it, I think I sectioned her hair even smaller than pictured here and it was almost too much. But I did cut the ends of the straws shorter the second time, and they were less cumbersome for her to wear, so I recommend that.

We're not going to talk about how long this took me. Suffice it to say that Kate and I enjoyed a nice movie together while we did this.

Then I untied all the straws and was left with a Shirley Temple look. Adorable, but unfortunately not Merida-like. I combed through all the curls pretty thoroughly with my fingers until we had a nice wild mane of curls. Then I hairsprayed it all. Finally, we covered her body and face in an old towel and sprayed her hair with a combo of half red temporary spray color and half orange temporary spray color.

The look sagged a little by the end of the evening, but still looked pretty great! It was so sad to put her in the shower at the end of the night to wash it all out, but I wasn't letting that hair color get anywhere near her bedsheets!

Fortunately, Claire and Scott picked some pretty easy costumes this year. I bought some robes, threw together some of Scott's, Claire's, and my church clothes, and sanded down and painted some sticks. A little eyeliner scar and some old costume glasses we already had from M being Waldo for Scott.  A french braid that Claire slept in overnight (Yes, my fingers were cramping by the end of doing both Kate AND Claire's hair in one night, in case you were wondering) and... Voila! Harry Potter and Hermione Granger!

It doesn't really show in the bloggable photos, but they REALLY looked like Harry and Hermione, if I do say so myself. It struck me with Claire especially. That girl basically IS Hermione, brainy sassy attitude and all.

And at the last second, I threw together a costume for myself out of a few things around the house:

Can you tell what I was?  I'll give you a close-up detail for help:

It was a very polarizing costume at the party we went to.  It was immediately obvious who was familiar with the Fruit Ninja game, and who was not.

(Do most people have Japanese toe shoes, a toy samurai sword, kick-boxing pants, and a balaclava hanging around their house?)