Aren't these two the cutest girls ever?! And both were happy with their costumes and now I have one already done for next year!
Allie really had the ballerina pose down!
Yes, I suppose the red yarn wig got slightly out of hand. It ended up being bigger than I had imagined. I was trying to be sure that you couldn't see the white hat underneath it.
A tired Raggedy Anne taking a break during the mall trick or treating.
Yeah for candy!
We are proud to announce the arrival of "Triton"(named by Sadie) the butterfly today. Weighing in at 1 ounce and 2 inches long, he is a fighter. He arrived, much to our surprise, 7 months early. What does this mean for Triton? Well, his chances are not looking good even if we allow him to live in our house and grow our own parsley indoors during the winter months until spring comes, (which is NOT going to happen). We even made up a batch of sugar water and Todd used a pin to extend it's siphon mouth thing so it could eat (don't worry...I did some research and this is how to hand feed a butterfly). Triton didn't like that very much. Our plan is to wait for the rain to stop tomorrow and let him go into the wild and hope that he survives. I told Todd that I feel like I have interferred with nature. This will be the 3rd of 3 butterflies that have died while in my care. All they do is eat leaves and poop! Where did I go wrong? Sometimes I wonder why I have been entrusted with kids. Sadie has now decided that she doesn't like butterflies (up close and flying around the house), she only likes catterpillers. 
I know this isn't the greatest picture but it really shows the pretty color of the underside of his wings.
He really liked the tulle I was using to make Allie's 2nd costume (trust me, that's a whole other post!)
So I bought Sadie a Halloween costume at the end of last season. So all I needed to do was get a costume for Allie. I shopped around to find the cheapest cute costume and the ones at Walmart were 19.95 so I totaled up how much it would cost and it was going to be about even to make one or buy one and mine would be better quality. So I set off to make Allie a Belle costume. I have literally spent the entire day sewing this costume. I carefully altered it so that it would fit allie. When I was finally done and ready to do the hem I tried to get Allie to try on the dress. She screamed and screamed. Yeah, it's still too big. I am going to have to take at least 5 inches off the bottom. So Sadie tried the dress on and of course it fits her great! So I am thinking of just leaving this costume and have Sadie wear it next year. So now I am back to the beginning: Allie doesn't have a costume. I don't want to cut off the hem for Allie and then not be able to get her to wear it on Halloween. What would you do?
A few weeks ago I was out trimming my basil plants and I saw a bunch of these eating my parsley plants
So I decided to put two of them in a jar and watch them grow inside. After some research we discovered these are black swallowtail caterpillars. Sadly, one died after a week of my care. However, the other one spun it's chrysalis
So I turn to Todd when we discovered the transformation and asked how long it takes until he's a butterfly. I'm thinking maybe a week or two. OOH NO! I was VERY wrong. When a caterpillar spins a chrysalis in August it goes into a sort of hybernation. Yep this caterpillar won't be a butterfly for 8.5 months! So we are storing him outside in our garage until May. Todd said to think of it like a baby which takes 9 months in the womb. That should take care of my wanting another baby right now since almost every sister and sister-in-law on both sides are all currently pregnant and due in the spring! So hopefully by mid May this will be what my baby will look like:
