Halloween Countdown!

It's beginning to look a lot like the Nightmare Before Christmas!  I love this time of year when the smell of pumpkin spice lattes wake me in the morning.  Yeah, it doesn't take much more than a strong cup of coffee to get me excited, however, there is a certain thrill to this time of year.  Halloween is the kickoff holiday for end of the year festivities. 

What makes it more exciting than the candy, the decorations, the trick-or-treating and parties?! Why, the COSTUMES of course!  I'm a sucker for an original costume idea and for three years in a row in some form of social media I have posted a list.  This year I am going to do things a little differently.  Instead of posting the 20+ costume ideas I am going to add a new idea each day to count down to Halloween.  Since today is already October 2nd here are the first two:

1. English Muffin: Wear a size too small jeans so you have a muffin top, get a plain t-shirt and use a paint pen to color a British flag on it, and talk with a British accent.
2. Afro-American:  A classic (and once worn by moi), wear an Indian outfit with an afro. 

This will be a good for all of my readers to share this post and have everyone send costume ideas that I will add each day.  Sadly, no costume will ever beat THE MAGIC 8 BALL:

Just sayin...

Things My Toddler Teaches Me: Pumpkin Wax and Wood Floors

To know me is to know my life never slows down, my house never goes completely quiet, and my boys NEVER stop teaching me how to raise them. 

The latest lesson begins with a pumpkin spice candle and my wood floors.  In the spirit of fall and the fast approaching festivities of the holidays I grabbed some yummy smelling candles for the house.  My favorite being pumpkin spice, there were two large glass jar candles and three mini ones.  They were burning for a good half hour to an hour so the top layer of wax had liquefied. 

I soon discovered just how tall our three-year-old had gotten.  The candles were sitting on the kitchen bar which is over 4 feet tall.  His lanky arm reached up and grabbed one of the mini glass jars then dropped it onto the wood floor in the living room when he realized it was HOT. 

In true Bam fashion he bolted from the scene of the crime screaming "Sorry!"  Hubs tried to wipe it up, but as most of us know hot wax and paper towels are not a good combination.  It splattered all over the walls too. 

Let it cool.  I let it sit overnight, driving Hubs' OCD into overdrive.  After I dropped Bam off at daycare,  where he could do the least damage, I swung by my favorite coffee shop for a Pumpkin Spice Latte.  Sipping on the yummy goodness, I grabbed a spoon, a broom, and the dust pan. 

Thirty minutes of scraping and sweeping got the majority of the wax off of the wood floor, but there was still a waxy film.  What to do, what to use?  Magic Eraser. 

Now there's the problem of scraping the wax off of the semi-gloss painted walls.  The spoon was too harsh, leaving silver scrape marks, the magic eraser wasn't able to penetrate the wax nor get rid of the spoon marks.  My only alternative (or just an excuse), PAINT.

Guess what color I picked?  NOT PUMPKIN ORANGE!