A cute photo from a Halloween past

Recently on a forum, I read how two brothers dressed for Halloween this year as Batman and Robin. The post reminded me of this photo (taken 1966/67 ish?) I found in Kevin's stuff when we moved in together. How cute are Kevin and his older brother? Their grandmother made them these adorable costumes. What I wouldn't give to get my hands on these!

Dear Wasteful, Moronic Idiots of City of Mesa's Waste Management:

Dear City of Mesa, AZ: What the hell are you thinking? We are neck deep in a seemingly unending recession right now and you have sent our city employees out in the night or the early morning (between 10:00 p.m. - 6:00 a.m.) to walk door to door to monitor garbage cans placed out for pickup?

ARE YOU INSANE???

Someone within our city government clearly has some judgement issues.

Our libraries in the City of Mesa cannot stay open for a full week because of "budget issues". Our museums in the Cityof Mesa cannot stay open a full week because of "budget issues". Our freaking CITY HALL in the City of Mesa cannot stay open a full week because of budget issues. But someone made the call to have employees out before working hours (I suppose they got paid overtime for this special job too!) so they could tape a notice on the top of our garbage can (AND EVERY OTHER CAN FOR MILES) letting us know that we should place our can in the street so that foot traffic (yeah, we live on a cul-du-sac and there is NO foot traffic) can pass by?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Moron is not a strong enough word for the genius that thought of this plan. So there were city employees travelling thru Mesa in the dead of night armed with little signs and rolls of masking tape, moving garbage cans and taping signs on the lids. And they did this to every. single. can. whether it was already placed in the street or not.

Oh and it gets better. Not only were they moving and taping, they were CHECKING EACH CAN TO SEE WHAT WAS INSIDE! How do I know this? Because the helpful employees on our street took one of our cans and moved it from the curb to the front yard so that the contents could NOT BE PICKED UP THIS MORNING. Why would someone do this? Because we had some DIRT in our can. They lifted up the top bag and saw dirt from another bag which had ripped as it was tossed in the can. So since we had loose dirt we got yet another notice taped to the top of our 2nd can (which we pay extra for) letting us know that construction debris is not allowed.

IDIOTS!!!!!

New Paper & Embellishments to a Good Home

In an effort to get some crafty things done, I first had to clean up my act. I have hoarded, I mean carefully and lovingly saved several hundred items that I just do not have time to use in the near future. I'm sure I could do this exact same exercise in purging several times and come up with the same result.

I have over 175 sheets of patterned paper and cardstock (that's just where I stopped counting) which I will carefully pack into a USPS Priority Flat Rate box for some who would enjoy getting a great deal on it! In addition to the patterned paper and cardstock, I'll also include rubber stamp sets, letter stickers and tag sheets. Many of the patterned paper is also double sided and much of it is also cardstock weight.

The paper is all brand new and includes brands such as Basic Grey, Pink Paislee, October Afternoon, Cosmo Cricket, Scenic Route, Teresa Collins, 7gypsies, SCI, Chatterbox, Making Memories, Urban Lily, Cherry Arte and many more!

The contents sell for well over $100.00. I'd like to offer it here for $25.00 (which includes the $10.00 shipping!). You can pay via Paypal. I'll sell it to the first person interested who emails me at Tracy@ScrapCandy.com.

Happy Halloween! And yes, there's even Halloween themed paper in there!!!

Etsy vs. my productivity

Etsy wins! I have been wanting some cute return address labels for quite a while now - since I moved to this house with Kevin in April of 2007 to be exact. I have been putting it off because I still had my old last name. Now that I'm married to the greatest guy in the world (we got engaged on Monday and married on Tuesday at the house of mouse during our recent Disney World trip a few weeks ago!!) I love that I get a new last name!! So I was searching the virtual aisles of Etsy looking for just the right about of cuteness/whimsy/vintagey goodness and the next thing I know, poof! there goes an hour and I'm no longer even in the return address label department!

So Etsy won that round, but I think I can still win the next round if I ever find myself wearing something as cute as one of these!

Vintage Map Custom Sterling Pendant

Aren't they delish?

Happy Birthday Dana

She's the oldest villager and she just turned 18! All she wanted (ok, she has a never ending list of wants, but what she wanted the most) was a pink laptop with enough power and memory to run Photoshop 4, save lots of photos and run the graphics heavy, memory eating Sims. So she finally got her wish. Oh, and she also wished for Sims 3, so she got that too! Here she is after the never-ending, freezing cold, nighttime carnival at the preschool she works at. She sewed her own costume (and she has zero sewing experience) and went as a very Pink Tink!!

Oh Anthro!

Have you seen the new adorable cuteness at Anthropologie? Lot of new ornaments coming to an Anthro store near you!

If you're gonna play in Texas...

You gotta have a fiddle in the band....

Nope not going to TX and I don't play a fiddle. Just what was on the radio as I started typing. Hey - it's a good song!

Just popping in for a quick second to my poor neglected blog. I have another blog too - but unfortunately, that one is also a ghost town lately. I've just been working too much (but for me work=fun so it's all good) lately to remember to blog. I think of fun, blog-worthy stuff while I'm hard at work, but my brain is like the size of a walnut so I promptly forget everything. Hey- I'm going to Disney World soon, so I totally have a good excuse for not remembering anything. If it ain't Disney related it can't be too important, can it?

Some moms make that extra effort in the mornings. I am not one of those. I teach them early on to get their own breakfast and for the most part they can do everything they need to do on their own before school. I do not "cook" a breakfast. On the rare occassions when I bust out the bacon, eggs, toast and sausage, I wait for a day when they're not home! I'm not joking either. I love, love, love a nice big breakfast. I just don't like the thought of being a kitchen slave and greasing up the place for 4 other people. Kevin is sweet and good and helps me clean up, so he gets to share in my (very) seldom tasty breakfast. So every now and then the little people like to break up their normal cereal routine and have some waffles (again, there is no waffle iron in sight - these are frozen waffles that cook in the toaster!). And even this task sometimes puts me out in the morning. I do have to pop the suckers in the toaster for the little people! So here is my "we're going to Disney World soon" effort. No homemade Mickey head shaped pancakes for these kids, but I did artfully arrange the waffles in the toaster oven!! And they were pretty excited about it too! I like to keep the standards and expectations pretty low - makes my job a lot easier!

Not too much going on. Again, that could be Disney. I can't really get too excited about too much else right now! :) A one track mind would be a serious understatement.

We (and by we I mean Kevin did the cutting while I tried to distract the screaming, flailing boy and I'm pretty sure my job was much harder!) finally gave the tiny villager a haircut. About 2 pounds of thick curls later, he is very handsome and we can actually see his cute face again. He needs to be looking his cutest for his first photos with Mickey and the gang!

Here was shaggy before his haircut!

You can't really tell from his face in this photo, but these two really dig each other. Of course he loves anyone who will play with him, but this sister plays rough and wild and throws him around and chases him and scares him when he comes around the corner, so he really loves to play with her!

Oh, look - another haircut! With all these little kids I never know when I'll get back to Disney, so we're all gonna look good, dammit!

And last, but not least, the small girl villager who has learned her lesson about letting her older sister cut her hair. It's all good when the same older sister is in a good mood and will take the time to style the hair to go with the image she had in her head when she took scissors to your head. But most of the time older sister is not in this good mood and refuses to help this girl with her hair so she usually ends up looking slightly like an escaped mental patient.

What's new in your world?