Show and Tell

I've been wanting to participate in Mel's Show & Tell for a while now, and today seems like the perfect opportunity.

As I've mentioned before, I just love when the mail comes each day. This is a direct result of the kindness of our families (especially my mom) to send us care packages and my penchant for ordering stuff from Amazon.com. This has been an extra special week of fun mail-time goodies, one of them being the "Baby's First" Halloween quilted fabric that arrived from DH's grandma:

I have had an on-again-off-again relationship with Halloween, which I suppose is normal as we pass through different stages of life. As a child, I would spend the month of October anticipating the arrival of the crisp Midwestern evening when I could giddily run through the neighborhood with my friends and spend the following week gorging myself on sugary snacks. Then it became one of my least favorite holidays, perhaps because I had enough change in my pocket to buy myself a Kit Kat bar when the mood struck without having to make myself look ridiculous and knock on the neighbor's door. My love of Halloween returned when DH and I bought our first house in 2003. Maybe it was the Jack O'Melon adorning our front step or watching the little ones toddle to our house and shyly hold up their baskets for candy, but I was once again in love with the holiday.

As we still have a loft and garage full of boxes, I was unable to pull out our decorations to prepare the house for Bean's first Halloween. It's a bummer, but we have a gigantic to-do list, so I try not to put too much pressure on myself. That's why I was thrilled to open this package from DH's grandma -- not only does it fill an empty wall that has been begging for attention, but it (coupled with the Febreze pumpkin spice candle I bought) provides some much needed holiday spirit to the house.

Sewing is a craft that completely eludes me. This is too bad, because I have a great vintage sewing machine from my grandma and a host of projects that could use a handy needle. Fortunately, our families are filled with creative talent, so I can enjoy the fruits of their labor even if my greatest skill is... well, probably ordering from Amazon.com. Now that I've been talking about it, I'm feeling inspired to attack the boxes in the garage to find the ceramic haunted house that my grandma painted decades ago. The glow of its colored lights is my favorite reminder all those happy childhood Halloweens.