October Secret Subject Swap

Welcome to October’s Secret Subject Swap. Again 14 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts.

Sit back, grab a cup - don't be afraid, it's not spooked - and check them all out:

Boooooooo!

Baking In A Tornado
The Momisodes
Spatulas on Parade
Stacy Sews and Schools
The Bergham’s Life Chronicles
Evil Joys Speaks
Dinosaur Superhero Mommy
Silence of the Mom
Climaxed
Sparkly Poetic Weirdo
Someone else's Genius
Crumpets and Bollocks
Smalltalk Mama
Confessions Of A Part-Time Working Mom

My subject is

Everyone has fall traditions...

What are your least and most favorite

things to do in the fall?

It was submitted by Dinosaur Superhero Mommy - thanks, Karen!

That's exactly what I'm going to do!

Over two years ago Colin started showing interest in letters, and we spent some time looking for things starting with an A, a B, and so on. I ended up throwing together a slide show of those pictures and called it Colin's Summer ABC.

In fall we did the same thing:

This pretty much sums it up. However, since this isn't a vlog, I'm actually going to write down some of my thoughts.

Many people just love summer and are sad when it ends. I am not one of them. Humidity, summer sun and I aren't very good friends. I don't tan well, I have moles - one of which turned out to be a melanoma and needed to be removed last year - I hate to sweat like a pig, I don't feel all too comfortable in a tank top, shorts and flip-flops, let alone in a bikini (because: muffin top), my eyes can't take the bright light, and I can't sleep when it's 80°F in our bedroom. No A/C at residential houses and many office buildings either. Don't get me started on mosquitos.

Clearly my life improves as soon as temps drop below 70°F at night.

Baking doesn't transform my kitchen into a steamy sauna anymore.

You'll get the most gorgeous blue skies.

Not long thill the leaves turn colorful

Two years ago make a difference in a boy, don't they?

Sooner or later you'll start thinking about a trip to the pumpkin farm. This year I went to check out an affiliate of the most popular one, and it was a bit smaller, but just as charming!

Let's be honest, once you'll start thinking pumpkin, Halloween inevitably follows.

And I'm not the only one! Look what Colin made just the other day:

Beware of ghosts and Happy Halloween
Free Candy

This summer C decided he is done with sleeping in pull-ups. I usually need lots of laundry detergent. Since then I need more. Last year's quest for milk jug substitutes taught me to purchase large containers!

As I am writing this, I'm having a meltdown. I can't find last years ghost lights anymore!! I have a large plastic container full of skeletons, pumpkin candles, large furry spiders, a pumpkin shaped cake pan, but no ghost lights. If I remember correctly I had at least four or five, and they are too spacious to fit into that box, so I must have placed them elsewhere. But where?

I was at the attic, I was in the basement, both places are already decorated for Halloween, btw, complete with cobwebs and general spookiness. I went through piles of stuff that still needs to be, you know, purged (will it ever end?) like the fluffiest light blue baby blanked I couldn't get myself to give it away. I felt that this stuff was actually laughing at me. "Hahahaha, now that you need something you care to pay us a visit when all year long you tend to neglect us? Hahahaha!"

Oh, and yes, I am 100% sure I did not throw them away. Why would I, I put so much effort into making them last year! It wasn't just detergent bottles, I distinctly remember having purchased ridiculous amounts of distilled water and having bottled that distilled water into regular water bottles so I could make ghost lights out of the distilled water bottles!

I'm considering looking up a hypnotist. They may bring my memory up to speed by taking me back to the day I cleaned up the Halloween stuff last year. They can do that, right?

On the other hand, stuff can't just disappear. I even found my displaced passport. It was of course after I had filed for it to be missing and got my new one.

You know what? I'll just move on and hope that by the time that post is due I'll be able to let you know that they've mysteriously showed up!

There is something I wanted to show you. A friend's 3 year old daughter painted this, I think it's fabulous:

Fall is also about food. As much as I like pumpkin as a symbol and because it looks pretty, I don't want to eat pumpkin anything every day. I like mushroom better. Pasta sauce, pizza topping, risotto ingredient, you name it!