Super Cool Pumpkins Pt 1

It totally hit me yesterday that Halloween is next week.

I stayed up late placing orders online for the last few things we

need for the kid's costumes this year.

My oldest daughter is going to be a peacock, my son wants to be a zombie ninja turtle, 

and the littlest daughter is going to be Agnes from Despicable Me.

Needless to say, these will all have to be thrown together by yours truly.

I also started thinking about pumpkins. We don't have pumpkins yet.

And what will we do with these pumpkins?

At Easter I posted a bunch of creatively decorated Easter eggs.

So I decided to look around online and see what the crafty people of the world

have decided to do to pumpkins over the years.

Here are a few of my favorites that I found.

 I see what you did there.

You painted lots of bats on lots of pumpkins and added a moon to the one in the back.

I wouldn't have thought of this myself.

Kudos.

Ok this one is just way too cool. These pumpkins are made out of pages from

an old book. It looks all vintage and creepy like these would be sitting outside

of a haunted house. Well, only if the creatures that haunted the house decorated

for Halloween of course.

I am very fond of the idea of going against the grain and breaking out the

bright colors this season. Everything is so....brown...and orange.

Lets paint some hot pink pumpkins and call it a day!

 Glitter is amazing because it just makes everything happier.

My friends and I refer to glitter as herpes, but now that I think about it, its more like

Herpes was the evil twin and Glitter is his sister.

They both spread all over the place, are hard to get rid of, and sneak up on you when you 

least expect it. But one makes you happy and the other just makes you really uncomfortable.

I don't even know if my references to Herpes are accurate but here are some glitter pumpkins...

 

 Ohhhhh aren't these last pumpkins fabulous?! By far my most favorite.

This is totally my kind of style. I just love how eloquent and delicate they look.

I might just have to attempt this...next year.

The Skinny About Skinny

Hopefully this post doesn't turn controversial 

 but something is really bothering me!

A mommy page that I am a fan of on Facebook posted this picture the other day...

I was a little offended at first and then brushed it off. 

Now I've given it a few days and its still bothering me!

I'm not one to be easily offended but here's the thing,

if that cartoon was making fun of bigger girls, would that page have posted it?

Probably not.

But since its making fun of skinny girls its ok.

I have been thin my entire life. I have never had a problem with weight. I've always

stayed between the sizes of 0 and 3, even while I was pregnant.

In fact, I had to work really hard to gain weight during my pregnancies to make

sure that my babies would be born a healthy size. (See, its not all fun and games!)

Now, I'm not trying to turn the tables and make people feel bad for me that

I'm small, but my whole point of this post is that we should be able to respect each

other as women no matter what size we are!!!

 

I think it was totally wrong for a page that is geared towards women and moms to

be posting a picture like this.

I shouldn't have to feel guilty that I am naturally skinny.

 

Women's body image is such a sensitive subject these days.

I wish we could all just support one another and respect each other for what we are.

Can we do that?

Can we all just focus on being healthy and fit and happy?

All of us, no matter what size, could work towards those goals, right?

 

 I hope you see my point here.

And for the record, I do eat!!!!!!!

We're Official!!!!!

I'm all giddy with excitement because I just submitted

our first ever private school affidavit!

This doesn't really mean much, other than we are offically

a homeschool in the state of California.

I was really intimidated by this task and kept putting it off.

(Deadline is October 15)

Official forms and documents always scare me because I have this

irrational fear that if I do it wrong, I'll have a warrant out for my arrest

and I'll never see my family again. Like I don't know how to answer

questions about myself or something.

Thankfully, another homeschooling friend of mine sent me this link

to HSLDA's website that has step-by-step instructions on how to do it!

http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/ca/affidavit/AffidavitInstructions.asp

Super helpful!!!

I started to fill this all out yesterday.

I read question 1 and was immediately stumped.

"Name of School"

ummmmmmmmm I don't know!!!!!!!!!!

Apparently we have to NAME our homeschool.

Nobody prepared me for this. Oh no, what do I do?!

 So I went to Google-land with a mission to find a name for our school.

I found quite a few homeschooling forums where other people listed the name

of their own schools and why they chose it.

It sounds like this would be an easy task....but its not.

Initially I'm like "Oh, I'll just put (Our last name) Homeschool"

No....that's not good enough.

Other people were so creative and thoughtful! I don't want a boring name,

I want to be cool too!

I noticed a lot of people had the word "Academy" in their name.

Ok, I could go that direction.

It literally took me almost 24 hours to come up with a name I think I could live with...

I chose this name because I felt it was unique and it encompasses what I want

our homeschool to be for our family.

The definition of Liberty is "The state of being free within society from oppressive 

 restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views."

Yea, that's one reason we homeschool.

We have the freedom to choose our own curriculum and teach our children the

way we feel is best for them without having to answer to anybody.

 Another reason we homeschool is because I want to encourage my children's

curiosity in learning new things. I don't want them to feel that knowledge is a chore.

I want them to understand that learning is everywhere in our every day life, not just

at a desk in a classroom. That is why I chose the words "Creative Learning" in our name.

We keep it fun, relaxed, interactive and entertaining so they actually enjoy it.

After I picked a name, we decided we needed a mascot.

Introducing, Liberty the Lemur!

 

Kayden and I have talked about it and are going to work on raising money 

to adopt a lemur from WWF!

We had fun with this and now that this process is over we can continue on

with our year as official homeschoolers, woo hoo!

The Shutdown From My POV

I've been married to my husband for almost 8 years and we have gotten

the "no paycheck" threat before. It always got figured out before payday

though and didn't really affect us. I just figured the same thing would

happen this time so I wasn't phased much when I heard about it.

Payday came, and we got paid. I paid the bills. We were good.

But then there was more. Closing the commissary? No more FRO?

Even the possibility of our hospital cutting hours? What is going on!

Surely that won't actually happen. But it did.

Word started to spread that our commissary was going to be open Tuesday,

October 1st, to sell perishables and then it would be closing its doors until

the government figures itself out. I immediately knew that I had to face the
madness at the commissary Tuesday morning if I wanted to feed my family.
I knew it was going to be bad. I had NO idea it was going to be this bad.

Soooo here's the real point of me posting this.
We know a lot of people are suffering in different ways because of this.
Some people are completely without pay and still have to work every day.
Yes, there is always someone worse off than you, but I still think you have the
right to voice your frustrations if it is affecting you. Heck, even if it isn't affecting
you and you are frustrated for those who are. I saw a lot of negativity on Facebook
yesterday about people "freaking out" and "you don't have it that bad." No, maybe
we don't have it as bad as others, but we are hurting too.

I am still bothered by those comments today.
Yes, our commissary closed and I was one of those who stocked up with $400 worth
of groceries in my cart. No, I don't think its the end of the world. But I do find it a lot
more affordable to buy groceries for my family of 5 with commissary prices than shopping
at Staters out in town. So my freezer and fridge is packed with enough food to last us
a while. Even though I saved money by doing this at the comm, I still tipped my bagger $20,
not because I can really afford it, but because I know that we'll continue getting a paycheck
while she is at home waiting for the government to make a decision and because I know
others are more greatly affected than I am.

I guess what I'm getting at is, don't bring more negativity into this situation than there
already is. People are scared and emotional and just trying to take care of their families.
Our government just threw a huge wrench into a lot of people's routine lives and its not
exactly easy. Support each other, listen to each other, help each other, just don't be rude.
Don't argue politics, don't make people feel bad or stupid for feeling the way they do, don't
try to one-up anybody else on how much this shutdown hurts you.
It's unnecessary and not going to help anything.

Oh and read this article, its spot on:
 http://www.militaryspouse.com/articles/shutting-up-while-we-shutdown/

I really hope this is all over with soon!!!!!!!!