This Autumn Witch was illustrated by my fabulous husband and all rights go to him.
Anyway- I would have usually began designing and sewing costumes for Halloween June or July-ish. I would have been making Halloween paintings or some Halloween craft beginning in August because I would be just too excited and have the house decorated by the beginning of September. This year we have been living out of suitcases since May. My husband had a contract job at Blue Sky Studios in New York/Connecticut area animating on the movie "Rio" that comes out this next year and my girls and I joined him for a lot of it.
It was quite the experience seeing as how up to this point I had never been more east than Denver, CO. I didn't even know how to imagine so many trees. I absolutely loved it! We were crammed in a one bedroom apartment just outside of New York City in a sky-rise corporate temp housing. The girls and I spent quite a bit of time in upstate New York with family in Palmyra visiting many wonderful/historical/church sites. I took them to New York City many times on fun outings as well as Boston (several times), Concord, Salem, Sleepy Hollow (a couple of times), Niagara Falls, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Virginia while living on the east coast. We went to the beach every week as well. They got very use to car rides and traveling. We stopped at many wonderful places along the way out east and back again to the west hitting all the historical church sites we could possibly fit in. In all I have driven almost 11,000 miles in the last 6 months and most of that was all by myself with my girls with no dvd player, cd player, or game devices for the majority of that. We talked about life, my girls wrote stories, made up songs, and talked about beautiful trees and rock formations. For the first few trips I thought we'd all want to hang ourselves with how boring and hard it was to get use to driving, but by the end we absolutely loved our time in the car. We'd be settled somewhere for a week or two and then I'd say, "How about a road trip?" Within 30 minutes my girls would have packed their suitcases and be ready to bring it all out to the car. hahaha. We felt like little pioneer/vagabond/gypsies- free to go where the wind blew us.
Needless to say our stuff has been inaccessible and for the most part my life has been too crazy to do my normal Halloween celebratory traditions and activities. I wouldn't trade the last 6 months for anything though. My husband's next contract job is in Albuquerque, NM working on the movie "Green Lantern" which he started almost a month ago. A few days ago we joined him. What a beautiful drive through southern Utah. It was breathtaking. It was an 11 hour day in the car and even my almost 2 year old did fine. She began crying the last 20 minutes- thankfully we were close. Our pod was delivered a few days before I arrived and Seth (along with the help from many man from our church out here got all the boxes and furniture in the house and garage) I'm trying to unpack things as quickly as possible so we can get to some of our Halloween decorations. I didn't get to sew any costumes this year- almost unforgivable for my children. I had to buy them- gasp! :)haha We do have our little Halloween advent calendar out that I made last year and we started to sew some Halloween trick-or-treat bags in Palmyra at Grandma's house before we left. We will have to finish those up this week. I'll post pictures as soon as they are done in the next day or two. I keep receiving emails asking if I am selling those calendars again this year or a pattern. I'm afraid not- we'll see about next year though.
We loved our time living on bare minimum and having nothing but each other's nutty company- but it's nice to get settled into somewhere, have our internet up and running again (as of last night), have more space, be reunited with my art supplies, sleep on our own beds, and enjoy our possessions again. (My girls are so excited to have their toys back) :)
I thought I'd share this little note I made this morning to put on my new neighborhood doors in case any of you would like to use it. Our family goes to church on Sunday and tries to keep it as a day of rest. We don't go to parties or go shopping. We don't participate entertainment like going to movies/amusement parks, or exuberant outdoor activities like swimming etc. We try to really focus on the Savior and our family and have fun things we do together at home on Sundays or invite others to dinner. My girls are really bummed about Halloween being on Sunday this year so I've created these little notes that we are giving to our neighbors to let them know that we will be trick-or-treating a day early on Saturday. If they are home and have candy and would like visitors they will flip the note over to show the drawing of the monster and put it on their door to let us know we can come for a candy visit. As a side note my husband made the pumpkins and monster illustrations on the notes- I just grabbed them from the computer and created the notes in Photoshop. You are more than welcome to use them- just not for sell in anyway. If for some reason these don't work let me know at my email kiazi44(at)hotmail(dot)com and I will email you the pdf.
(Front View)
(Back View)
Happy Halloween! Happy Halloween! Happy Halloween!
3 comments:
nan's ward made a map of all members who would be doing trick or treating on saturday, and there were a lot! it was perfect for them!
What an adventure you've had! I'm so glad you have such fabulous memories from it all. Plus - your sign is a really cool idea! I'd love to hear how your Halloween went - I hope you have cool and friendly neighbors! LOVE YOU!
The Autumn Witch is great! We expect no less than that from your crew:-). In your other neighborhood, Saturday Trick-or-treating wasn't a question. It was pretty much expected and even announced on the radio "expect rain tomorrow night (Saturday) as your little ones are trick-or-treating." I hear the same was done in many places in the state north of us, too. We're in our own little culture here. Miss you! Glad you can settle in a bit. I hope you have pictures and writings about your East adventures! What a time:-)! -M
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