I’m all Halloween’d out even before Halloween. This is what happens when Halloween lands on a Sunday. It’s non-stop Halloween and sugar and candy all weekend long. Saturday was back to back parties starting at 10:30 in the morning and going till 4:30 in the afternoon. That’s 6 HOURS of Halloween pumpkin painting, pizza eating, cookie decorating, ghost making, costume parading, and candy hoarding. And will you take a look at this cookie decorating party? My neighbor went all out. There were more kinds of frosting and sprinkles and candy here than I’ve ever seen on a single table. I think this is even out Martha-Stewarting Martha Stewart. Their whole house looked like Halloween. Aside from a few pumpkins here and there, we’ve got nothing at our house. It never really occurred to me to put up bats or pumpkin lights for the kids, duh. I mean look at those popcorn hands. Candy corn for the nails and popcorn stuffed into rubber latex gloves. Genius. Between this party and last week’s Alice’s tea party that the girls were invited to (which I will tell you all about later), the pressure is on for Claudine’s birthday week. I’m not usually one to fall for this kind of pressure, but damn. Suddenly I’m feeling a little bit inadequate.

People are serious about decorating for Halloween in our neighborhood. Starting at the beginning of the month, pumpkins and gourds will appear on stoops and windowsills. Around mid-October you’ll start seeing a few little handkerchief ghosts hanging from trees. You might also notice a severed hand on a wide stone railing of a stoop or a pair of veiny googly eyeballs looking back at you from an iron gate. A few ambitious neighbors will start pulling out the big tools and planks of plywood to start building temporary facades for their haunted houses (seriously, who are these people? How do they have time to build such elaborate sets in their front yards??). By Halloween week, huge spiders will start scaling up brownstone walls, skeletons and gruesome corpses will hang from tree top branches and random stuffed body parts will be strewn about yards.

I love walking a different route each day with the kids to school on the very last week of October. It’s like going on a treasure hunt or a discovery trail since you never know what you might see peeking from behind the hedges. It makes the long walk to school a lot of fun. And with this wildly warm 70 degree weather we’re having? Can’t think of any place I’d rather be for Halloween than our neighborhood in Brooklyn.

It’s been really warm, like freakishly warm, every Halloween for the past few years. We’re experiencing that warm weather right now – 70s for the past week (and humid, wth?!), but this year it’ll turn seasonably cool by Halloween weekend which means that we’ve had to rethink Halloween costumes for trick or treating. The previous mild weather was great for costumes since there was no need for a coat or a hat to cover all that creativity and Halloween goodness up, but by the time the sun goes down this year, it will be downright chilly.

Somehow we managed to convince Claudine that she should be Little Red Riding Hood. She wanted to be a fairy princess (meh), but we convinced her that her princess dress up gown would just get covered up by a coat (which it would. It wasn’t for purely selfish reasons that we talked her out of being a princess). She’s already got the perfect little red riding hood wool coat. She’s got a red dress. She’s got the black Mary Jane’s. I borrowed a wicker basket from a friend and I’ll make a quick makeshift apron. Perfect, right? Well, after searching for all kinds of images of Little Red Riding Hood on the interwebs and pointing out that SHE’S SO CUTE AND YOU’LL BE SO CUTE TOO, I think Claudine’s on board. Besides, that red coat won’t fit her next year. This is the year to be Little Red Riding Hood if we’re going to do it.

Mia waffled over a couple of options but settled on being a waitress, except we figured it’d be really hard to tell what she was going for after you threw a winter coat on over her. She briefly considered being a vampire, but I suspect that had more to do with feeling the peer pressure of wanting to fit in than really wanting to be a vampire (though I was surprised that she even knew what a vampire was). All of her neighbor friends are going as vampires this year.

But after a few wails of “I don’t know what I want to be!”, she suddenly brightened up, sat up straight and declared that she was going as a black cat this year.

Damn, I love that girl. She is never one to follow the crowd. She always does her own thing even if it doesn’t make her as “cool” as all the other vampire kids.

ps. which reminds me, after getting back these school pictures of Mia last year, we decided that this year we are totally going for the cheese. You know they’re going to be bad anyway…so cartoon rainbow background for the win!! She was so excited to have the rainbow background as it was her first choice. We kept it simple in the clothing department with a dark blue shirt, but if she had a t-shirt with a unicorn on it, or a rainbow, or even like, the Led Zeppelin blimp (I want that shirt, btw), I totally would have put it on her, are you kidding me?

When she got home, she told me that she was the only one in her class who chose the rainbow background, but she was also the only one in her class who got the background she wanted. I mean, c’mon, she might cringe when she finds the photo 15 years later, but what kid wouldn’t want a rainbow background as their class photo??

I finally made a visit last weekend to a friend’s restaurant. It’s in Bushwick, a neighborhood as close to the middle of nowhere as you’ll find in Brooklyn. They serve some delicious seasonally inspired food that definitely makes it worth the trip. One of the appetizers I tried was paired with a watermelon radish salad that inspired me to make a nice salad for dinner the next night. Too often salads in our house consist of merely lettuce, cherry tomatoes, dressing and croutons. Making a truly special salad requires a little more effort and adding these candied walnuts are always just the thing. The nuts are tossed in a hot sugar syrup infused with spices, then baked in the oven until crisp. While they’re baking I like to give them a stir or two, to encourage the sugar to form crystals which form an extra crisp coating. These went into a salad along with some thinly sliced tart apples, watermelon radish, golden beets, pomegranate seeds, and fresh lettuce with a sherry vinaigrette. Other nuts will work with this recipe, but walnuts and pecans seem to work best.

Candied Walnuts (makes about 2 cups)

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
2 cups walnut halves or pieces

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Bring the sugar, water and spice to a boil, then stir in the nuts. Stir them together for a few seconds, turn off the heat, and remove the nuts from the syrup directly onto a baking sheet lined with lightly oiled parchment paper. Bake in the preheated oven for about 12 minutes, or until they are crisp and any syrup on the pan is bubbling. Stir the nuts once or twice while baking if desired. The more you stir the nuts during baking, the thicker the sugar coating will be. Remove them from the oven, give them one last stir, then let them cool completely. They can be used in salads, desserts, or just for a snack. Different spices may be used as well – try cayenne or chipotle pepper for a spicy version.

Sherry Vinaigrette (makes about 1/2 cup)

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 Tablespoons sherry vinegar
1 small garlic clove, pressed or grated
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon Tabasco

Whisk all ingredients together. Dress the salad as needed and refrigerate any unused dressing.

…in which I didn’t do a lick of work. Somehow, all assignments and deadlines for the week got neatly wrapped up by Friday. Logo and homepages approved by 3 different clients. Can’t always say this about myself, but sometimes I totally rock. The weekend was therefore blissfully free. Mild weather. Laundry and cleaning. Haircuts for the girls. Hanging out with friends. A rowdy sushi dinner out with 4 little girls and 2 sets of parents. A birthday party.

I’ll be the first to admit to you that when I left the 20 wk ultrasound of my first pregnancy and found out that we were having a girl I was happy. Like so stupidly, gleefully happy that I wonder if I would have been disappointed if I found out I was having a boy. Which is ridiculous, of course, but if I was being truly honest, I’m glad that I didn’t find myself in the situation to see whether or not that would be true. When we found out that we were having another girl a few years later, I was almost as ecstatic as I was the first time around. I will even admit to you that we tried the shettles method for what it was worth to get that other girl. Sometimes I think back to the miscarriage in between the 2 pregnancies and wonder if that lost baby was a boy. Some things happen for a reason though. We were totally meant to have Claudine and I fear to think that if the cards were played out differently, she may not be here. Although we would have been happy with a boy, Mark admitted he wanted another girl too. Maybe it’s because I always wanted a sister. Maybe it’s because Mark didn’t have a male figure around for the later part of his life growing up and was more comfortable with girls. Seems funny to think that he’d feel more comfortable raising a girl than a boy, but it was true. It was probably true for me too. Or maybe it was because it just seemed easier to have another girl since we’d already been through it before and it was going to be more of the same. We knew what to expect.

So far, raising girls has been fairly “easy”. When they’re babies and toddlers it’s about cute dresses, pigtails, striped tights, patent leather mary jane shoes, maybe some dolls and maybe some dress up clothes. Mia was never particularly girly when she was little. She was more interested in puzzles, maps and letters than she was princesses, though she certainly got more into that sort of thing when she got older. I still pick out what she wears every morning and it’s usually met without protest. I wonder when she’ll start asserting her own opinions about the clothes I pick out for her. I wonder when she’ll want to go shopping with me and I wonder what she would choose if given the choice.

Now that she is in school, I see the influences of her peers around her. She wants to grow out her hair from the Louise Brooks bob that suit her so well so that she can wear barrettes and ponytails. She asks when she can get her ears pierced. She asks why she can’t wear makeup. She loves pretty dresses like any other girl, but so far, what she’s wearing to school doesn’t seem to matter to her too much. It’s really only a matter of time. She’s still not really a girly girl at age 6 in that regard, but she and Claudine do love putting on play makeup, lip gloss and painting their faces. I wonder where it comes from. I don’t wear much makeup so it doesn’t come from watching me. Is it just inherent in girls to like this stuff just like I hear from my friends who have boys that despite what they do or don’t do, most boys just flat out like trains and cars and shooting and swords? It’s so interesting, isn’t it?

The girls play this game sometimes that drive me a bit crazy. They’ll get dressed up and go all fancy and they’ll ask each other “do I look pretty?”. And the other will usually answer, “not so pretty” and they’ll go back and forth on this for a few rounds until one of us intervenes. They’ll also trade jabs at each other, sizing up the other and saying that she has a prettier dress on. I never had a sister so I don’t know if this is completely normal sisterly behavior. I suppose with girls so close in age it’s par for the course to have rivalry, competition and jealousy. Maybe it’s because Claudine has an older sister to look up to that Mia never had, but it worries me a little when she stares at the mirror at her reflection and whines that hair style is not “pretty enough”, that her fading, smeared face painting is “not pretty anymore”. It may be 3 year old talk, though Mia never went through this phase, but I see now how early the seeds are planted for body image and self esteem issues.

You want to know the best thing about living across the street from an urban park? You can literally roll out of bed and bounce to events like this annual fall festival that happens every year. No brainer for a way to spend a pretty sunday afternoon. Hit up the farmer’s market at the end of the block and you’ve taken care of groceries for that night’s dinner plus apples for a pie. Who needs a back yard?

Ok, before you all start thinking we’re living the perfect urban life, I should say that the pony ride was a measly 1 lap around the grassy square, that bringing farm animals in for a temporary petting zoo feels a bit depressing for the animals, and we dealt with 1 ridiculously grumpy child for half the activities. Plus the playground is going to be torn up soon and in construction for 12-18 MONTHS as the second phase of the block long park renovation. We’ll be living next to a construction site for awhile. So, um, yeah.

It’s been a long while since Mark had a full weekend off – probably since we came back from Seattle. He’d been doing fleas and festivals for 5 straight weekends. Although we’ve had some really excellent Saturdays with neighbors and friends in his absence, it was nice for all of us to have him home – and to wake up to freshly baked cranberry apple walnut muffins in the morning. (I know we haven’t posted any recipes in ages, but the muffin recipe is here in case you were wondering. He just added apples to this batch).

So what does Mark do on a rare weekend off from the business? He watches Mia play soccer for the first time. He plays with the girls. He cooks, he grocery shops. He cleans the bathrooms, mops the floor. Coaches Claudine on her scooter riding skills. Maybe not necessarily a weekend off (is it ever when you have kids?), but compared to baking or manning the Flea booths, a welcome change. I spent most of the weekend in bed trying to get some work done with a cold that seems to have developed into a sinus infection, so I squirreled the weekend away in my room from the rest of the family. Being sick in bed all day is a strange head space to be in. I am grateful for my new sheets so I at least had something new to look at. I woke up this morning expecting more of the same dizziness and sinus pain. Dare I say I feel a little bit better? Hard to tell before all the sleep cobwebs have cleared away.

I haven’t taken any photos or carried my camera anywhere lately which is a such a change from the summer when I took photos every single day. Like most things, I think oversaturation led me wanting to put the camera down. It’s almost like I was living and doing stuff just to get an interesting photo. I didn’t want to miss capturing anything. I think the worst moment was when I brought the wrong camera battery charger on our West Coast trip this summer and I had a mild panic attack when I found out that I didn’t bring the right charger. As it turns out Cannon has about a dozen different batteries and chargers so I just couldn’t borrow one from someone with a Cannon camera. I hunted a charger down the next morning, drove to Best Buy and paid a premium price for a new universal charger (so hey, if you’re traveling with me, you can leave yours at home ’cause I can charge just about anything now, even in the car).

It feels good to leave the house with a lighter load and not be in photo taking mode all the time. You know, just living life and letting things happen without viewing it from behind a lens.

If I’m not around this space as often in the next few weeks (months) it’s because I just got slammed with work. Like scary freak out amounts of work from 3 different clients. I realized that blogging is contributing to my general lack of sleep since I often won’t start writing till midnight. Some posts are quick, but others take hours to write. I really need to learn how to sleep more. That said, I think I might be ready to take some photos again.

‘Cause you keep coming back, summer weather, and the next thing I know I’m wearing sandals and got my sunglasses on. I mean we have pumpkins in the house now. We finally made it to a farm after our farm fail a few weekends ago, so what with the pot of yellow mums outside on the living room balcony, it looks all Fall-like in here and stuff. Also, I keep putting on boots to walk the kids to school in the morning because it’s kind of cool, but you’re fooling me by mid-day with all that brilliant sunshine, making me want to kick out of them as soon as I get home because you know I don’t like it when my feet get too hot.

And this sore throat, runny nose and eye-splitting headache? It blows. Especially when I have soooo much work to do. The little blue and red capsules of tylenol isn’t doing much. Maybe I should just go to bed.