Scary Journey's Halloween Pony Tail Craft with Brownie Troop

At our Brownie meeting, we celebrated Juliette Gordon Low's birthday.  We read the interactive poem about JGL (the girls love doing it).  Click here to get the poem.  We also decided to do the other poem out there (we cut it short and didn't have them sing the entire verse of "London Bridge, just the first line)  You can find that one here.  We even sang "Happy Birthday" to JGL and had cupcakes.

We decided to have the girls do a little craft at our meeting.  We picked something simple yet very useful (well, at least for our girls), a Halloween ribbon pony tail.

These are so easy to make.  I'm sorry I didn't take pictures of supplies or the process, but, I promise it's pretty easy.  I'm sure if you do a search, you can get pretty pictures.  If not, this is really easy

What you need: 
Pony tail (we chose black to go with Halloween colors)
ribbon (we used orange and black for Halloween)
scissors

Cut ribbon into 7 or 8" pieces.  We did this prior to the meeting and just handed out the supplies to the girls.   We gave each girl about eight ribbons of each color.  They might or might not use all of them.  My daughter used all of them (as you can see from the picture).  Some girls put on half of them and decided that was enough for them.

OK.  Once each child has their pony tail and ribbon it's time to get started.  Take one piece of ribbon, put one end in pony tail and make sure that the ends are equal and start to tie a knot (the first step in tying your shoe).  You can stop at that, or tie a second knot.  I think most girls tied a second knot. Next, take another ribbon and do the same thing, making sure that the knot is next to the first one (well, it can be anywhere on the pony, you don't want it on top of the first knot).  Most of the girls did a pattern with their ribbon (orange, black, orange, black).  We included one ribbon per girl that was black and had "Boo!" on it.

The ribbon colors can be adjusted and coordinated with any holiday.  Red/green for Christmas, red/white, red/pink, pink/purple for Valentines day, etc.  You can even use three colors.  Use your imagination.  :)

Pretty simple.  Once the girls completed the pony tail, they put it on.

Quick and easy (and useful)!

And then I find this note

it says, "I need to pull out teeth"

Not sure what this is supposed to mean.  Maybe it's from the Monster hiding in our basement?

Should I be scared?

The Monster hiding in our basement

This morning, I found a cereal bowl in the sink with dry cereal.  (no milk had touched it)  I figured Nick must have had cereal in the morning.  He isn't much of a breakfast person.  When he does have cereal, it's usually dry cereal.

Around dinner time, Alex comes up to me and says that we were out of milk this morning.

Me: We have 3 gallons in the refrigerator in the basement.  Why didn't you go and bring one up?

Alex:  Because of the monsters hiding in our basement.

Me:  There are no monsters in our basement.

Bella had to chime in and agree with Alex that yes we do have monsters living in our basement.

Alex:  I had to have dry cereal this morning because we didn't have milk.

And, here I thought maybe Nick had breakfast before going to school.  Instead, I find out that there are monsters living in our basement.  

Excuse # 53

"I didn't empty the dishwasher because I couldn't tell if the dishes were clean or dirty".

Um. Did you open the dishwasher and look inside?

Bella forgot her lunch. I had to drop it off at school for her.

RT forgot his pass for work. 

I forgot to put on deodorant before work. I drove back home to put it on. (Luckily I wasn't too far from home)

Looking like its going to be a great day. 

Do your laundry

The magic age is 14. That's the age that you learn how to do your own laundry (in our house). 

Once they know how to do it, I will do it for them. It's just that initial learning how to do it on your own. 

Well, that's all changed now. 

I'm tired of begging the boys to bring down their dirty clothes so I can wash them. They throw their clothes on the floor of their room instead of the hamper. I made it easy. Everyone has their own hamper in their room. How hard is it to throw your dirty clothes in when changing? 

Apparently, for my kids,  it's extremely difficult. 

So, I decided that the boys are just going to have to wash their own clothes. They're old enough. They know how to use the washer and dryer. Let them decide when they want clean clothes. 

Last night, Alex was telling me that he had to wash his clothes. 

Alex:  "How many of those tablets do I put in there?"

Me: What tablets?

Alex: The ones for the dishwasher? 

Me:  Why would you put dishwasher tablets in the washing machine?

Alex:  I don't know. They are right there in the laundry room. 

Me:  that's because the box was too big to fit under the sink. The extras are in the laundry room. 

This morning, while feeding the dogs, I looked at the washing machine and saw that the jar holding the dishwasher tablets was on top. The washer had a load inside that was probably started yesterday and smelled like wet dog. 

I decided to run the load through again. 

I went upstairs and told both boys that dishwasher tabs are for the dishwasher. 

Nick told me he put one in with the clothes. He said he couldn't find the laundry detergent. 

Oh.  No one brought the dishwasher tablets down to the basement. They got tired of hanging out under the kitchen sink and wanted to see how the rest of the world lives. Their first stop was the basement on top of the washing machine.

So, right before leaving for work, I wrote this:

Instructions on how to use the washing machine. (I didn't want to come home to a broken washing machine. 

I also labeled the laundry detergent

So much for fancy labels. I had to get to work and didn't have time to make a nice label. I will add that to my "To do" list. 

For now, lets just hope the washer and dryer (and I) survive.  

Cheerleading

Last game cheering for the Bills!

The Weird Neighbors

I think that could be said for all neighbors.  There's a book titled, "Everybody's normal till you get to know them."

It's true.  Think about it.

I don't really think any of my neighbors are weird.  Strange at times, maybe, but not all-out weird.

The title came from Nick.  He thinks one set of neighbors is weird.  I don't want to give an exact location in case any of my neighbors stumble upon my blog and find out that we think they are weird. (Do weird people know that they are weird?)

I don't agree with Nick.  These neighbors seem normal.  Of course, I only see them when they are outside.  Who knows what they do when I'm not around to supervise.  I mean, I can't be with them all of the time.  They can be doing weird things right now for all I know.

Hmm....

My neighbors are weird.

Sunflowers and Sunflower Seeds

We grew sunflowers in our garden this summer.

         I love sunflowers

I forgot how tall sunflowers get.  Taller than RT, if you can believe that...

The great thing about sunflowers is.....sunflower seeds!

I wasn't sure how to harvest them, so I checked out Wikihow and their step by step plan on how to harvest sunflower seeds.  

Once the flower starts to droop and the petals started to pull back from the flower, you know that they are ready to harvest.  You can harvest them on the stalks, just cover them so birds, squirrels and chipmunks don't get to them.  

We cut our flowers and let them dry in the kitchen hanging from some hooks.  (the chipmunks were feasting on them, so I decided they needed to come into the house)  I forgot to take a picture, so, you just have the one flower hanging. (you can see some of my peppers hanging in the picture, too)

When all the flowers were hanging, Nick said, "Why are those weeds in the house?"  Yea.  He thought they were weeds that we were growing and that we decided to just bring them in the house.  We're weird like that, I guess.  Oh, and we did tell them that they were sunflowers.  

Once the flowers are completely dry, it's time to harvest the seeds!  They should come right out of the flower easily.  It can be quite messy, so, put down a towel or maybe think about doing this step outside.  

The seeds come out pretty easily

Once picked, you can soak them in salt water or just bake them.  I soaked them in salted water and wish that I skipped that step.  They still turned out, but, I don't think it was necessary.   

Bake them for about 40 minutes at 300 degrees and they are ready to eat!

We have a large bowl full of sunflower seeds.   I think we are set for awhile in the sunflower seed department.