One of my favorite events of late is the discovery of the two tiny owls who live in the maple tree in our front yard. Our next-door neighbor first noticed them and now we pay Pigwidgeon and Archimedes daily visits. These photos are deceiving; the owls are so small—my guess is probably about six inches or so in height!
Look at those green eyes!! I love how perfectly these little owls blend into their surroundings of lichen-strewn maple. They sit so quietly and their eyes are so big and captivating. Most times, we stare at each other, and they bob their heads, or follow my motions peering out between leaves (
an explanation on head bobbing and a
video of head bobbing). We love them so much.
We had the cutest groups of trick-or-treaters come to our door! I kept laughing because I realized the candy I bought had a strange proportion of Whoppers and the older kids would cherry pick the Reese's and KitKats, so soon Whoppers were all that was left (and a few Tootsie pops). Haaa. Malted milk balls, anyone?
When I cut my hair and dyed it strawberry blonde in August, I realized I essentially had Nancy Drew's hair, minus the 60s styling. I read so very many Nancy Drew books growing up and always loved mysteries so I dressed up as River Heights' favorite sleuth.
One of our friends, Tom, dressed up as Christopher Robin—one of my favorite costumes of the night. As we were both literary characters, we needed a photo in tandem.
Age and her new bf. Adrienne dressed up as
Ira Glass. She nailed it and her accompanying voice recording ("Stay with us!") was excellent.
investigative & documentary reporting at its finest...
And because Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, I wanted to share other favorite costumes:
Two of the servers at
Communal dressed up as Frida Kahlo & Andy Warhol, which I LOVED. I sent this photo to my family and then found out
my sister went as Frida for her art history Halloween party!
Emily &
Lauren as Moaning Myrtle & Dolores Umbridge for a Harry Potter Halloween party! SO great.
I hope your Halloween was happy!
Back in the day, Adrienne and I had grandiose plans for our bomb shelter—we thought it would make a perfect Chamber of Secrets for a Halloween party. As Halloween was approaching, the party-throwing mood did not strike, and we realized that the bomb shelter is actually kind of scary (i.e., things probably live there) so we wouldn't actually want to spend more than a few seconds in it. The Harry Potter theme, however, was on our minds and what is better than Christmas at Hogwarts? (Nothing.)
We hung up more twinkle lights and bulbs above the kitchen table (the Great Hall!). And actually, sitting there and eating breakfast the following morning, it did feel magical and very much like I would imagine the Great Hall to feel (minus the vaulted ceiling and visible sky; we have a normal Muggle ceiling).
We also had a visit from a special guest, Cedric Diggory. Thank you, Lauren, for your brilliant addition of a wand. HILARIOUS.
Adrienne began the party with a christening of her brand spanking new set of HP books, sporting new cover illustrations and back-cover quotations. I was on the fence before, but now have wholeheartedly joined you on the other side. I will always love Marie GrandPré's illustrations as the classics of my childhood and adolescence, but I now love the new ones too.
We also had HP Christmas trivia!!! How many of these do you know?
At photo club last week, Adrienne and I talked about
this idea after she shared some party-photo-taking tips and we put a camera out at the party with a list of photos for our guests to take. It was funny looking through the photos after the party; most were over-exposed and there were some scary ones (i.e., photos of the hostesses unaware) but my favorite is the one below–an outtake of Quinton making the Y in the word "Merry."
cute girls in hats
my sisters :)
Our honorary sister Caroline, who is coming to visit us in NJ in a week! Also Caroline's family has a Gryffindor Common room in their attic. It is worth mentioning because A. how cool is that? and B. it seemed relevant what with our HP party theme.
Our photography club theme for this week was a dual one: "outside of your comfort zone" and party-time. Adrienne and I both felt that we always have a hard time taking photos during parties. I tried to make more of a concerted effort to have my camera with me and get over my slight aversion to camera-toting at a social gathering. And party lighting is always tricky, but practice and being intentional has proved helpful as I had fewer blurry dark photos!
I forgot to mention that at this party we also had Butterbeer (NA butterbeer, non-alcoholic in restaurant-speak) and Harry Potter UNO. Happy Christmas, Harry.
...that as children, my sisters, cousins, and I played Harry Potter games. In the past, we've come across scrolls for Potions homework and notes between Harry and Ron, etc. Today, however, I discovered this most fabulous letter written by my sister Lauren during one such game.
translation of
Lauren's childhood writing:
:) Dear Hermione,
Miss you. How's Hogwarts? [something unintelligible] I have about thirteen patients so now I have to go.
Bye,
Mum
It was in this envelope... please note the hole poked in the corner. We owned a toy stuffed white owl (Hedwig!) that I received from school in fourth grade, as my elementary school mascot was an owl. So it's very likely that we somehow attached this to note Hedwig's leg and threw the owl across the room to the recipient playing Hermione.
Oh how children make me laugh. I love that my childhood is partially immortalized in such silly mementos as this letter.
a lovely message written on the wall outside the movie theater
Yesterday (two full days before the US!) we saw the final installment of the Harry Potter series: Harry Potter e i doni della morte [2˚ parte]. I loved it and I loved it even more, if that's possible, because it was dubbed in Italian. Severus Snape's voice was spot on and the others were all very close, so it wasn't strange to hear it in a different language.
a somewhat typical Italian line formation (the grocery store and post office are orderly, it would seem that it's just bus stops and movie theaters that are madness)
Italian movie theaters often insert an intermission...which is less than ideal when you've reached a suspenseful point of the movie, but did give us a chance to gush over our excitement before the movie was even finished.
This was easily my favorite Harry Potter movie of them all, and coupled with another thing that I love (Italian), it was most excellent.
[thank you Alexa for photos #2 & #3 and Layne for #5]
