This is Halloween

OFF TO GET THE CANDY:  Today was The Day. CJ has been counting down to This Day for about three weeks now, reminding me that I only had X amount of time to finish his costume.

Last night I was thinking I was in great shape, with only an hour or so to go to be done.

I'm not sure why I thought that. I was terribly, terribly wrong.

We were set to start our first trick-or-treating adventure at 4 p.m. today, and at 3:35, I was still rigging up a monkey's tail, having just finished the piping on his hat and his vest. Egad.

One of the things that I failed to budget enough time for was CJ's face painting and Annabelle's ringlet making.  Here, the poor monkey tries to help expedite the drying of his face paint.

In the end, it all worked out, because it had to. I kept reminding myself, "They're just costumes," and that they only had to last through a few hours' of use. Mercifully, they did just that.

Our first stop was what has become a tradition since moving to Seattle - trick or treating the business district in Magnolia.

We like to go early, at 4 p.m., when the event starts, because by 5 p.m. it becomes sooo crowded to the point of being uncomfortable.  Especially if you're wearing a hoop skirt, as Glinda would tell you. ;)  The photo above was early on, before the mosh pit.

We worked the Village for about an hour, and then had a nice dinner with Rick and Kennedy at Nickerson Street Saloon (it's a restaurant, too). Afterward, Christian and Rick took the kids out to trick or treat the neighborhood.

While they were out doing that, I cleaned up the disaster that was our house. I managed to get rid of all traces of the sewing that had taken place over the past few days, and I removed all of the Halloween decorations. On to Thanksgiving!!

The best part of the day? Throwing the *%&$^$ Simplicity 4136 pattern into recycling!

WITCHY WOMAN: One of the images NASA deposited in my inbox today was this view from their Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The infrared portrait shows the Witch Head nebula, which was named after its resemblance to the profile of a wicked witch. Cool!

Per NASA, "The Witch Head nebula is estimated to be hundreds of light-years away in the Orion constellation, just off the famous hunter's knee."

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech