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Saturday was Halloween and we went to the festival at Owl’s Head Park. It started at 2 so we opted not to give Sienna her nap. Of course she fell asleep right when we got there! She woke up when we tried to put her in her stroller and looked around and realized where she was and voila! She was awake!

I wanna ride dat!

The Maze ride

The short bouncy ride

Sliding down the maze ride

Got a ‘babboon’

I’m ambivalent about how the day went. Nobody’s fault but my own. I had delusions of grandeur. Last year she was sick so this was really her first Halloween (plus I think she would have been too young to really get it last year anyway). I was picturing her getting so into it. There were bouncy rides at the park and she went thru one and actually liked it! It was a maze and at the end you go down the slide. I was amazed because the last time a bouncy ride was involved was at Sesame Place and that didn’t go well. Ha, well I spoke too soon. She wanted to go on a jump up and down bouncy ride next and that didn’t last. At least she didn’t cry. Then there was the slide one that you could go on 2 times. She didn’t want to do the 2nd turn even though she said she liked it. It was really kind of an up and down day for me. I guess me and Sienna were both overwhelmed. We decided to enter the Fairytale Forest and encountered hunchback Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Fooh and “Kookie” Monster. LOL. I think you’ll know what I mean when you see the photos below. She really liked that and it made no difference to her that these fellows were a little ‘off.’ HA! Plus ske kept asking where Mickey was!

We ran into Geneva and Layne with Phoenix dressed up as a zombie bride and Starr with Nico as a firefighter and Sylvie as a little ladybug. Earlier we saw Liz with her dinosaurs Henry and Nora. Kerry was also therewith Rory as Spiderman. I’m sure there were lots of other people I knew there that we probably passed without noticing. We opted not to do trick or treating since I wasn’t sure how Sienna was going to hold up without her nap. We ended up having an early outside dinner at Yellow Hook Grille and I’m glad we did because it started to rain near the end of our dinner.

Sienna woke up crying for me at about ??? I don’t remember now. Oh,maybe 1:30 in the morning. I wasn’t surprised because of no nap and the excitement of the afternoon. (Although she did do this Thursday night but that night her nose was bleeding, a lot!) I tried to calm her and she tried to get me to sleep on the floor in her room (also a repeat of Thursday night). Another repeat is that she wanted to get up and out of bed. She eventually woke up around 6 and Yves got up. Later that day, she had a fever of 100.3. She seemed better after tylenol but then it went back up later that day and we ended up putting her to bed at 6:30 (which is technically 7:30 for her since we had daylight savings.)

She’s better today (cross fingers!) and she slept through the whole night last night (cross fingers again!)

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Time for some Halloween fun! First and foremost, I want to note that I indeed finish the skeleton stuffie I started at Etsy Labs earlier this month!

I opted to do the face features with fabric paint instead of black felt. I like him!
These are the handmade items I made for the Harajuku Girls Group Halloween Swap on swap-bot. I included other Halloween related items but didn’t take photos of those. The black cat and pumpkin keychain are made of felt and I got the pattern from a Japanese craft book I recently purchases. The black and orange towels were blank from Kohl’s and I embroidered matching cute skulls, an image I got from a Stampin’ Up catalog! I used Saral transfer paper for this, which worked out really well although I initially bought it to transfer images onto felt, which does not work so well!

Then last week Geneva and Phoenix came over to help carve the pumpkin we got from Lawrence Farms. I never carved a pumpkin before! Geneva was kind enough to do the initial cutting and gutting. She let me and Sienna carve out the face. We even roasted the seeds, also something I’ve never done before!

The Jack O’Lantern barely lasted a week (we kept it indoors). I read that if you put cinnamon powder inside and the cut rim, it would last longer. I don’t know if this is true but it gave the pumpkin a dark and dull look. It started rotting about 5 days after. I was going to put it outside on the patio but wanted to wait until closer to Halloween. Oh well. At least I know how to do it for next year!

I am also proud of myself for making part of Sienna’s Halloween costume and the accompanying piece for Yves to wear.  You’ll understand what I mean when you see it. I’ll post it after Halloween so I don’t ruin the surprise.

Yesterday I made chocolate covered peeps and chocolate covered pretzel rods with sprinkles. I’m not really a peeps person but I saw this idea at Jacques Torres being sold for $1.25! (I thought I saw it for $1.25 but then saw on someone’s blog that it was $2.25) So since someone sent me peeps in a swap, I wanted to try it out. Of course the ones from Jacques Torres probably tastes better because of the quality of chocolate (it better for that price!). I still haven’t tried it yet.  I’ll probably give it away at the Halloween festival tomorrow.

The ones at JT had eyes on them. I was going to put them on but realized I had the gel frosting so it would probably get all gooey in the bag.

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On the 10th we headed up north to Lawrence Farms to do some pumpkin picking upping and meet up with Tammy, Mark and Zack. It was a real nice farm with apple picking and lots of other veggies to pick. They even had a play village, fresh apple cider donuts and some goats, sheep and peacock. A pumpkin was picked and a few apples too. I didn’t pay attention to the pumpkin picking thinking that it was just going to rot like last year’s pumpkin. Now I wish I did as Geneva and Phoenix are coming over to help carve the pumpkin! Oh well. I wish we could have stayed longer at the farm but it was a bit windy and we didn’t dress appropriately (mind you, we did know it was going to be colder and brought sweaters but that wasn’t enough!). Afterwards we headed over to Tammy’s house for some delicious chili and Sienna played next to a bunch of other kids. It was a nice day.

Yves’ got 2 real cute videos on his post!

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So yes, Yves posted about going to this already on October 4 so here are some more photos. We’ve gone every year for the past 3 years, since Sienna has been born so it has become a sort of tradition. Unfortunately, we did not get to dance like we did last year but it was still fun.

Me and Sienna crafted a tissue paper flower at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum booth.

Sienna loves lollipops and one booth was giving out these DumDum lollipops (the same ones she gets at the doctor’s office) She cried until she was able to go ask for one.

Looking on the old buses was fun.

Back of the bus. I imagine it can get quite crowded back here.

Sienna eating her Mozzarepa like she did last year. Me and Yves found the empanadas we liked from when we tried them the year before last. (I thought it was funny to see how busy those cops in the back were!)

We ended up going to Barnes and Noble so I could use the bathroom and we bought 2 new Dr. Suess books for Sienna. She really likes (most of) them. We hopped back on the train afterwards. The time seemed so short but she ended up taking a nap when we got home. She was tired from all the excitement I guess. I’m kind of looking forward to when her naps end so we can spend longer amounts of time at places. I know I’m going to regret saying that though!

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I just wanted to show a photo of Sienna with this “headband” on. It’s actually the cuff of one of the t-shirt sleeves I cut up for the Generation T Etsy Labs I went to in August. She took it upon herself to put it on her head a la Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical.” Or just a general 80’s look. I thought it was funny.

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If you keep up with Yves’ blog, you already know we went to the Staten Island Children’s Museum in September. Here are a couple of more photos. We were underwhelmed when we first got there but then realized that there were lots of rooms with different things in them so it was fun. Afterwards, we went to lunch down the road (the name  of the restaurant escapes me) and ate outside. The food wasn’t the greatest but it was nice to be able to eat outside. Yves was nice enough to let me go to Joann’s craft store about a 5 minute drive away after lunch.

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It’s been awhile since we met up with friends for dim sum. We finally went on the 19th and went to our usual place, Golden Unicorn. In attendance, besides me, Yves and Sienna, were Pete, Joy, Aaron, JW and his new girl Kate. Everything was yummy and of course, there is always something that comes after we are stuffed and pay the check. This time it was peking duck! Darn it! (Side note, Aaron’s wife Drena is expecting their first baby, a boy in January! Woohoo!!) There was a newbie to dim sum, JW’s girlfriend Kate and she was willing to try everything and anything. Of course, we got chicken feet and she said she liked it (although she only ate one! LOL)
Sienna was pretty good the whole time. Yves went into work afterwards and I took the train home with Joy. We decided to drive to the Avenue U N line stop since they were doing all kinds of construction on the Q line and thought it would be easier to just avoid that whole line. After Joy got off at her stop, I was trying to concentrate on getting off the right stop since my mind can wander and I wasn’t familiar with that particular line. Well, we were at one station with the doors open when all of a sudden the conductor was sort of yelling over the loudspeaker. Something about an emergency and if there was one, please say so. I thought oh great, what is going on? It turns out that my mischievous Sienna was pushing the button that allows you to talk to the conductor in case of an emergency. Oops! That’s what I get for not paying attention! HA!

Waiting for the train

Where’s my plate?

One of Sienna’s faves, sticky rice in a bamboo leaf

Chicken feet!

who needs chopsticks?

Checking out Aaron’s G10

Kate, JW, Yves and Sienna!

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On the 12th we had another Toddler Take Over BBQ, this one to celebrate Sylvie’s 1st birthday. The weather didn’t turn out so well with overcast and some drizzling but that didn’t stop the party goers! It wasn’t pouring, at least, so we just stayed in the garage and under the umbrella when it was drizzling. The kids did not seem to mind. I did not take as many photos as I would have liked. Sometimes you just forget when you are hosting. Everyone had a great time! We had lots of food leftover (although none of the Turkish sausage Jane and Akon brought over to grill-it was DELICIOUS!), yummy cupcakes that Starr baked (vanilla cake with butterscotch glaze and frosting), my version of thin mint cookies, Turkish baklavah (which is better than the Greek version!) and pinata fun! The pinata was from Nico’s birthday party that never got used because it rained that day too!

Sylvie likes Sienna’s cup!

They are happy eating chips!

People always end up standing!

Yves and Brian manning the grill

Alesandro and Phoenix at the sandbox

Starr, Geneva and Sui

Playing with a little puddle

We sang Happy Birthday and the kids just want their cupcakes!

Sylvie did a pretty good job!

Here is a funny coincidence! I had given Starr a bunch of Sienna’s old clothes for Sylvie. Sienna wore the same dress for her 1st birthday party as Sylvie! It wasn’t planned at all. Here is a comparison photo:

There were also a couple of kids that I did not get good photos of so just to document their presence, there was also 3 year old Gaby (Alesandro’s sister) and 3 year old Izgi ( daughter to Jane and Akon, who brought that delicious sausage). And Kerri came later with Rory and new baby Tyge. I don’t have any photos from the pinata. All the kids got a chance to hit at it (unsuccesfully) and even some adults. We ended up basically ripping it open.

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Yesterday was Yves’ birthday. Poor guy is busy at work and Sienna was being so naughty yesterday! She opened all the drawers to our dresser in the bedroom and thus it fell over. What a mess! And the little glass that was in my jewelry box got all broken. At least take out Japanese was good (we tried a new place). It’s a good thing we celebrated his birthday on Sunday. After grilling some lunch outside, we had cake inside. My parents always buy the birthday cake and Yves wanted carrot cake again! They tried a different bakery than last time, Leskes. The cake was moist but the addition of pineapples in it did not appeal to Yves (I didn’t mind that much.) We are now going to make it a mission to find some good carrot cake! (We know of a great carrot cupcake! Robicelli’s!)

Sienna sings Happy Birthday!

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I don’t know if I mentioned it before but Sienna is totally obsessed with Clifford ever since I took her to the movie in August. She always wants to read the books and she always wants to watch the cartoon. I thought I would surprise her and make her a Clifford pillow from embroidery. I opted to do it on red felt and now I wish I did it on the better wool felt than on the cheaper acrylic felt. Oh well. I still need practice on my stitching. It was a lot of fun to make for her. I actually finished the stitching last week or so but only got around to sewing up the pillow last night. She loves it!

It was hard to take a photo of it after I gave it to her because she couldn’t keep her hands off so I took some of her showing it off!

And then she couldn’t stop posing with it and kept saying Mommy, take my picture!

So I told her to hug her pillow!

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