All Treats, No Tricks

No one ever comes to our house to trick-or-treat. I think it's mostly because I live in a small condo community with retirees. The last couple of years I have been able to go to Trunk n Treat with Sabra and her kids, but this year I'm staying in Phoenix to watch the dogs while my mom goes to California for Maggie's 2nd birthday. Anyway, to get to the point, I wanted to do something fun that involved candy and I came across a really cute blog in which Hershey's bars were used as the "body" of a bat and a mummy. I quickly found some black card stock, googly eyes, and white crepe paper. I figured I would make them for my employees. They have been doing such a great job lately. I try very hard to make sure they know this and even though it's not a lot, I hope they enjoy!







BTW, I thought tracing and cutting out all of the bats was a pain, but in fact, wrapping the mummies was more tedious. Mostly I did this over a couple of weeks while watching tv. I think they turned out super cute.

My two funny finds

So I found the first one while hanging out in Barnes and Noble looking for something to page through while I had my Starbucks "nectar". It's actually pretty creepy! The vampire stalks the kids and hides under their beds and follows them around and finally they include him in their games and the mom befriends him too and they all sew capes to wear and it's really bizarre. The next time you're in a bookstore, look for it and just peruse the pictures. It's really worth it.

Secondly, this little gem of a "book" was shown to me by Robert while we were checking out a new bookstore in our area. I immediately took a picture of it with my phone and forwarded it to my book dept. supervisor and my sister. This is wrong on so many levels, it exhausts me just thinking about it. Why are we teaching The Notebook in school? I mean, that's the only reason to have a Cliffs Notes guide for it, correct? Disturbing! Plus, I'm just loving the pic of Nicky Sparks on the cover. What marketing genius came up with that one? As my sister, Sabra said, wow...on so many levels, wow!

Yeah, that about sums it up.

A "Snow" day in Phoenix!

The overcast skies were a welcome relief on Tuesday morning. With temperatures still over 100 degrees most of this past week, I started wondering when the Arizona summer would start winding down. For the past couple of weeks, I'd been hearing fantastical stories from friends and family in other parts of the country about the leaves changing colors and sweaters coming out at night. Not here in Phoenix. The A/C was still on high with no relief in sight.
But the little bit of rain on Monday turned into the great storm of Tuesday. It started with a bit of sprinkling. Nothing much to speak of. Then the wind started. And the rain fell harder. At work, we have a number of skylights throughout the sales floor and back room. Within a minute, the sound of hail pellets drowned out the overhead music and the storm was in full effect.
Customers and employees alike gathered at the front of the store to watch nickel sized hail blowing in and covering everything in sight. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. This Phoenix "snow" piled up on windshields, the sidewalk, and all along our storefront. We even had to shovel "snow" away from the back doors in order to open them. The second wave came a few hours later, with more hail and eventually a beautiful double rainbow.
With the parking lot, streets, and freeway flooded, the commute home begged to be horrible, so I turned off the radio, rolled down the window, and drove home with the excitement of autumn just around the corner.