Halloween.

Hope everybody had a fun Halloween! We sat on our front porch and handed out candy for a couple of hours to the usual assortment of princesses, ninjas, aliens, superheroes, and a whole class of wizards from Hogwarts School. And the most adorable, tiniest Yoda I have ever seen--I wanted to put her in my pocket and keep her forever! (She's our neighbor's daughter from across the street, and she's somewhere between 18 months and two years old; I can't exactly remember how long ago she was born. Unbelievably precious.)

I carved two jack o'lanterns on Saturday and was happy with how they came out. It's been so long since I've done anything like that, I forgot that you have to make a silhouette and you can't draw lines across anything that you're going to keep, so my first jack ended up toothless because I'd drawn lines across all his teeth!

I saved all the pumpkin seeds and fully intended to roast them, but after rinsing and rinsing and rinsing them, and finally finding one stuck to my right boob, I decided to chuck them and make Chex Mix instead. I hate food you have to work for, like pomegranates and lobster, and apparently, pumpkin seeds also fall into this group.

I have these enormous white mums growing right by the front porch steps, and last year a few kids commented on them. This year they're bigger than ever, and I also have some purple and yellow potted mums on the steps themselves. I was tickled by how many of the kids complimented me on my flowers--and how many of them were boys! One little boy was petting the flowers on one of the giant white mums like it was a dog. Kids are so funny.