And the Golden Glue Gun goes to...

My plethora of glue guns sit in a drawer all year long until Halloween.  There is not a single cutesie craft that will lure them out before then.  I'm allergic to cutesie crafts.  They make me itchy and squish my face up in contempt.

But a week before Halloween, the glue guns resurface and Mark goes into hyper-drive.  He's trained our kids to be repulsed by all those off-the-hanger costumes and go for something more original.  But original to me means scalding hot glue burns.  My fingers clench just thinking about it.  Thankfully Mark's largely the costume builder and I just do the finish work like painting them or sewing stuff.  I leave the injury provoking work to him.

That's all well and good except for the fact that this year Mark had business meetings in Texas.  That left me home alone with my scorned collection of glue guns and Halloween looming just days away.  No thanks to Pinterest, Chloe and her cousins had already made grandiose costume plans and were alarmed when they heard that Dad/Uncle Mark would be out of town.  What's a craft-repulsed mother to do?  My first thought was to ban them from surfing Pinterst.  My second thought...

I decided to show Mark that I could get "Project Runway" on without him and summon my inner costume curator...

 Chloe, Janelle, & Madi

turned into a bunch of suds-ur-duds...

And for baby Kendra,

I dusted off my sewing machine

and turned her into Boo...

 

Without his dad around, even Connor fended for himself 

and made his own glue-gun creation... 

 I caught him peeking out of his ginormous box mask.

But just when I thought I was doing pretty good fending for myself I catch sight of this little beauty at our church Halloween carnival...

 

This is my friend Angela's MASTERPIECE.  This year the costume craze caught hold of her and she said she decided to give the Skillman's a run for their money. So she turned her daughter into a freaking Christmas Tree!  There are even wrapped gifts under the tree!!  How Spectacular is that?!  Angela spanked us at our own game of Project Runway!  There's no question Angela definitely wins the golden glue gun award for that trick-or-treating treasure!

Luckily my kids are growing and soon they'll be tired of costumes (they will won't they??) and we won't have to do many more of these costume contraptions anymore.  But until then, I'm gonna make sure Mark isn't scheduled to leave town around Halloween anymore--My fingers would rather take their chances carving pumpkins with a sharp knife than risk 1st degree hot glue gun burns any Halloween.

Only One Likes it Hot

I'm a big fan of spicy and hot.  Trouble is, no one else in the house seems to have my peculiar penchant for the pungent.  And since I'm the one who also does all the cooking around here, I seem to cook to my taste.  I just can't stand bland food.  But for years now my family keeps telling me to kick it DOWN a notch.

We have some friends who sometimes invite us over for a taco fest.  I love taco fest at their place for two reasons:  One, my friend makes a mean taco-- but two, and even more important, is that her husband is somewhat of a hot sauce aficionado.  He's got an uncountable collection of bottles of the hard stuff.  And for a gal like me that feels like her kitchen has become somewhat of a hostage situation, taco fest delivers me from the doldrums.

I grew up on hot sauce, liberal amounts of the stuff--which may explain a lot of things--now that I think about it.  I like it to be hot enough to make the back of your neck sweat but not so much that your eyes involuntary shut and refuse to reopen, though I eat that stuff too.  But no matter how hot the sauce is, its gotta have a really good taste that lingers on your tongue--should there be anything left of your tongue after the scalding heat dissipates.

After an extensive taste test of all my friend's hot sauces I found one that was better than all the others.  I had tasted them all without looking at the labels and to my horror I realized my newly prized hot sauce was called...

How horrifying is that?  How do you go to your local grocer, and with a strait face, inquire as to whether they carry "Sphincter Shrinker"?  Even the sauce named "Colon Cleaner" sounds a bit more up market.  So scouring the town looking for this new favorite sauce puts one in a bit of a pickle.  I've settled for just using it at my friend's house at taco fest rather than enduring the untold mockery and humiliation that would come from having to inquire the whereabouts of the sauce.

Back in my own kitchen, sans the 'Shrinker Sauce' that I was too embarrassed to ask around for, I had a craving for my dad's enchiladas.  My dad was a great cook and made an awesome stacked enchilada--as opposed to the rolled and baked kind.
He always used a canned sauce that was really good and kinda spicy.  Whenever I make them I always make sure to go and buy the sauce in its wimpier milder version so as not to kill my off my little clan of cowards.

These stacked enchiladas are made one by one so as I served them up, one at a time my kids started saying how spicy they were.  I just shook my head at my puny progeny and told them they were all weak. But they kept insisting it was REALLY SPICY.  This is when I explained to them the difference between spicy and hot.  But still they kept belly aching.

I picked up the can of hot sauce and showed it to them to prove that it was honesty and truly mild and that they were being cowards.

 

After I finished my discourse on spice vs. heat I went to put the can back down and discovered something odd about the second can right behind it...

 

Yep, apparently I'd assumed all the cans I grabbed were mild.

Oops!

I hate having to apologize.  Absolutely hate it.

I didn't feel too bad though.  As my family all ran for ice water, I sat down at the empty table and enjoyed an amazing stacked enchilada that would have made my father proud.

And as for "Sphincter Shrinker", If anyone out there is brave enough to seek out and find me a bottle of this hot mess, send me some please. I'm too embarrassed to look for some myself.