Cinderella and Gus-Gus

The inspiration....



... the finished product...






They are a squirrely duo so it's hard to get a picture with both of them in focus. Mister e likes the mouse suit just fine and would have preferred to spend the rest of the day in it... but he was turning red.

Happy Halloween!

It is very cold here, so I had to create a last minute layering system for Cinderella that gives the appearance of bare skin. I think we have a good solution... I'll post pictures of the kids later.
We had some excellent pumpkin carving yesterday....



The zig zag mouths are Miss E's trademark. We just let her draw whatever she wanted on the pumpkins, and then I did my best to cut it out...



They are a motley crew...



The spouse's is the one with the bulging eye gourd and the square mouth.... sort of like a Borg.

Halloween is a comin'

Cinderella is in the DVD player and there is blue satin everywhere.... Halloween costumes are in progress.

Cider Making

We traveled to the farm last week for some cider making.





These are just some of the apples.



And the cider press... which I had the unfortunate experience of running my finger through when I was 4.



The apples are washed before being thrown in the grinding mechanism.





The cranking is the hard part. Usually the newest people "get" to do most of the cranking because they don't know what they are getting into and haven't "enjoyed" all the aches and pains the day after cider making.




And then the cider comes out...



bugs, debris, and other mystery items are filtered out as it is poured into jugs...



We made a total of 30 gallons.