Haircuts, Produce, and October Crafts

or, yet another get-caught-up post in pictures! Fall is such a wonderful time for getting out and doing fun things that it doesn't leave much time for blogging about all our adventures!

Bug has been in increasingly desperate need of a hair cut for the last month or so, but every time we tried to cut it, he announced that he didn't want a haircut, he would get one in four days. I'm not sure what the significance of "four days" was, but he was extremely consistent in his response. He finally gave in last weekend. Probably because he was starting to bump into walls because he couldn't see ;o). Here's the "before" picture:

and the "after" picture:

He wasn't doing that great of a job sitting still, so it's not too even, but at least it is out of his eyes.

We continue to take advantage of fresh veggies from farmers market. Week before last, we got the fixings for gazpacho:

Yummm! It's one of those seasonal things that a little goes a long way, and I tend to get tired of it after one batch, but man does that one batch taste good. I also don't have the patience to peel tomatoes for more than one batch! Though the smooshing of those tomatoes can be very therapeutic!

A couple of days after making the gazpacho, we got a newsletter from our HMO that had an article saying that they would be offering a "healthy living" rebate that includes CSA memberships for 2008. They currently offer this for working out at a health club (if you work out a certain number of times between Jan 1 and Jun 30 or Jul 1 to Dec 31). For 2008, they will still have the work out one, but they are expanding the program to include CSA membership or membership in Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. I think it is very cool that health care is finally getting the idea of preventive measures! Especially since we went back and forth last spring trying to decide whether we wanted to join a CSA.

We also made a second trip to the apple orchard last weekend for another huge bag of apples and a gallon of apple cider. We made a wonderful caramel apple cake and a batch of apple sauce right away:

Then, this past weekend, we made a crockpot full of apple butter. I got the recipe from another local blogging mama and it turned out wonderfully! We also did another batch of applesauce.

Finally, our other favorite past-time this time of year is getting ready for Bug's mostest, bestest, favoritest holiday: Halloween. In addition to a grand tour of the "spookables aisle" every time we go to Target, we have started getting our house into the mood, too. Our first project was Bug's current favorite animal, bats, on the sliding glass door:

This is the one that Bug cut out himself. He also drew in fangs:

Bean just drew on black paper with a white colored pencil and snipped fringes on her paper, so it didn't make the exhibit, but she had a blast doing it and was just as proud of her finished product (which managed to escape picture taking). Today, we made paper plate masks. We saw this in one of the Halloween books we have out from the library, so had to try for ourselves. Here, Bug models his masterpiece:

and Bean models hers:

and BB tries out Bug's mask:

Talk about a little bobble head!

We have a couple of other Halloween decorating projects in mind before Grandma and Grandpa come to visit and will post pictures when we do them!

Knitting continues, but I seem to be in a black hole phase with everything right now! I had one of the mystery socks done except for the cuff ribbing, but after turning the heel on the second sock, I discovered that adding two rows to the foot made the self-striping yarn behave much better, so I frogged the first one back to just before the heel, added two rows and redid the heel. So now, both socks are just past the heel turning, but I'm pretty sure that I have done more than two socks worth of knitting by now. On my lace shawl, I only have about ten rounds and the border left, but the rounds have gotten stinkin' huge (the last round before the border is the 194th round and it has a paltry 1035 stitches!!! Thank goodness the first round only had eight!). Plus, the last chart (16 rounds) is a lot more repetitive than the rest of the shawl, so it just isn't holding my interested as well. Also, this past weekend was near 90°F...I'm sure I will be more motivated to have a beautiful shawl to wrap up in when the weather returns to something more seasonal!