Seasonal Celebrations

Can you believe it,I started this post at the beginning of Spring (ie.September)…and here we are already hurtling our way onto Xmas! Ok,ok,ok, we’re not quite there yet,we still have Halloween and a certain four year old’s birthday to pop the confetti for,but you know what I mean. In fact, blink your eyes now and you’ll wake up with last minute gift shopping, Xmas carols out the ears, too many mince pies gobbled up, and a partridge in a pear tree! Not that I’m complaining… This last quarter of the year is certainly one of my favourites -there’s just so much “happy” happening. And thus, in my mind-brain, these last few months are definitely a season of celebration!

What makes this last quarter a little sweeter for me this year is the fact that I am at home with my children -thank you, maternity leave. No longer do I only just have the midnight oil hours to prep for birthdays,in between reviewing and finalizing Strat documents and technical roadmaps, and then hoping and praying I can pull off a decent party or gift wrapping all together on time. Nope,this time I get chill out a bit with them,do more seasonal themed crafts with them – cause that makes my heart sing – and I get to think about the party planning in the middle of the day in a typical work week.

However, (reality check time), let’s reiterate this: I am on maternity leave!!! Meaning, my sleep count is in the negatives, meaning my patience has become questionable at (most) times, my creativity is a bit fizzled out,with only occasional spikes and, more importantly,my time is not as abundant nor available as someone on normal vacation leave. Because,flip, we all know that maternity leave ain’t no vacation, it’s more like a Lord of the Rings journey to find yourself. An arduous but necessary journey of motherhood, so that you can return trimphant as a better mother, albeit limping back from your stroll down to Mordor! (Yes,Mordor, because as charming and precious as that fourth trimester can be with your cherub, let’s not fool ourselves: it can get pretty dark and demanding.)

But that’s whole different tale to tell,right now I’m too much in the mode of fluffy cloud nines of the final quarter of the year’s celebrations. So what have the Porters been up to?

Well, with Spring’s return we decided to forego the flower crowns picnic (our annual ritual that acts as a nod to the later setting sun, fresh flower strewn fields and early chirping birds). Instead we went with birdfeeders to welcome back said chirpy birds to our garden with a bit of party of their own.

Of course even in this we paid homage to the upcoming Halloween – because really September flies so fast. 😉

(DIY coming soon!)

The girls loved this, although our home is not setup with windows to actually catch these birdies feasting, so it required daily visits to check up on them. Clearly they enjoyed it.

Our home has been under slow transformation into the festive Halloweeny space we make each year. (Come to think of it, last year was also slow – it seems to be a habit for life to throw big things at us come october)
But its so much fun, and gives me soul satisfaction to have such creative releases. Releases that my children certainly benefit from and enjoy. Not to mention provide fertile grounds for sweet family memories to be made.

oznor

In fact, even though I dont always go balls to the wall with the decor, Im really loving the way our home is looking right now.

Deck the halls with bones and spiderwebs: Also, I finally (just before Yuriko-Mae’s birth) got my server after all these years, to store my table linen and dinnerware in.

Also the kids are getting a bit older now, so I can start pulling out the creepier stuff. ALthough I always vett with them. Like creepy portraits.

When I discovered the picmonkey tutorial back in 2014, I couldnt wait to use it for when our girls were older. But then I tried it last year, and truth be told, call me silly if you want, but I was a little too freaked out by the results.

Maybe I was too good at making us look like witches. So I decided against putting this pic up. THIS year however, I decided to retry the edit, and I think it came out better.

I still vetted it with the girls, and Im happy to report that they were cool with it. They wanted to know how I did it, and Morgy even wanted to know if she could do it herself next time. So for now, this pic has found it’s home on our mantle piece, and has certainly gotten alot of attention from those who pop over to our home.

We’ve also in the true spirit of Halloween had a family halloween movie marathon week for the first week of school holidays. This year, after much contemplation, I finally introduced the girls to Harry Potter.
The fact is that I was once more (the third year in a row) thinking of having a Potter theme for our Annual Halloween Party – now in it’s 10th year!(can you believe it?!) But always thought the girls might be too young for it, so I parked the idea fora time when they would truly appreciate why we would have floating candles and a sorting hat and chocolate frogs. But we did decide to still introduce them to Harry this year!

Everyone got a chance to be Harry: Potter? Or Benny Bookwurm? 🙂

mde

To say it was a success would be an understatement. But more on that in another post.

mde

In the mean time, to show you that these girls were all in, here’s the butter beer Ive been making every night by request. I made this until we ran out of all the ingredients. Screw postpartum weight, I think I gained at least 2kgs in pure butterbeer from that Potter week!

oznor

cof

cof

With Potter also came obligatory wand crafts…

mde

But we’ve basically been so utterly busy with halloweeny type crafts this whole time, that we will totally be sharing it with you soon.

In fact, slime (our perineal favourite) was also on major production line. As it is every Halloween. This year, fluffy slime was their favourite. So much so, the girls have actually put out their very own YouTube DIY video for it. Its very sweet actually. It’s totally unscripted – that was all Morgan-Lee being her natural self. So please go check it out over here! (WHile youre ther, be kind and leave a comment!) 😉

Then there’s the spell book I created for props for our upcoming Kiddies Halloween party, which I actually kinda love and will totally share the DIY with you soon.

In fact there’s just so many crafts, like the fridge magnets and the pendants that you can make just using shrink plastic found in your own kitchen…

fridge magnets &pendants

Not to mention all the othr crafts we have planned still. (Think Halloween hair accessories) Hopefully I’ll get to all of it before Halloween. Although with baby, I think Im being overly optimistic about my time.

To help the girls keep track, and keep this mama on track with everything, the girls are faithfully using the countdown calendar.

But more importantly, we’ve also been costume shopping.

mde

And whilst we’ve had back and forths about our costume this year, we’re finally on it! We were going to go with Despicable Me, but have agreed to wait till Koko is a little older to really embody Agnus. 🙂 And yes, we’re gonna milk the family themes till the girls think we’re no longer cool.

And who are we going as this year? (I’ve been asked by at least six different people now) Well, you’ll just have to wait to find out! 😉

Now, go get into the spirit of things! Dress silly, eat the candy and spread some cobwebs and love…only a few days left! X