It's one of my favorite times of year.  The trees turn all colours of fire and ochre, the sun is still glowing and warm, a chill settles into the night, the mornings are cloaked in a wispy blanket of fog and the non stop onslaught of over the top Christmas marketing has yet to crash it's consumerism down our throats.  I love October.  The kids have been back at school long enough that routines are established for all involved and we have yet to enter the long, seemingly endless, dreary, grey days that are our famously wet winters.  I am always the mom that shows up at school on Halloween in full costume, the ONLY mom to do so EVERY year as I was reminded by a very sullen 9 year old last year.  On the plus side of that, I now have leverage forever.  If he thinks it's embarrassing on Halloween, imagine how bad it would be if it happened on random other days, as "incentive".
This year, I've had the opportunity to share my love of this season with some truly remarkable people.  After someone let my preschooler play a zombie video game, he was plagued by nightmares for weeks.  I exhausted several more traditional methods for dealing with them with no success.  As a last ditch effort to get a full nights sleep, I decided to take him down to Victoria's annual Zombie Walk and introduce him to some "real zombies".  After a quick explanation from mom, everyone we met was super helpful in showing him that zombies were friendly and nothing to worry about.  He happily did sommersaults with a bunch of zombie kids and posed for pictures with assorted walking dead.  It worked like a charm.  I think he might have even had a bit of a crush on one cute little zombie princess!

I got to dust off some long unused skills and do both the make up for and appear in some fantastic photo shoots with local photographer, Darren Labiuk, of VL Photography.  I've made some amazing new friends from it and had an amazing time.  We did a highly demanded series of sugar skull style pin up editorials spanning an entire month of weekend to fit everyone in and I haven't run out of ideas for the make up yet.  It's a good thing there's still one shoot left.  I'm pondering a bit of a departure from my usual glam-centered, glitter and rhinestone encrusted, frosted, sugar faces and delving into a darker side of the season by trying out some of the zombie stuff myself.  But not too far.  I'm still going to wear all the glitz, just adding some of the gore to see how it goes.  Feel free check out the truly amazing work of one of this city's hidden treasures on his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/VLphotography0202?ref=stream&viewer_id=100003596165309, but I do have to warn you if you're squeamish, you might want to wait until the Christmas season is in full swing and you can see how gifted a photographer he really is.  For the heartier souls out there, keep your eyes peeled for the calendar coming soon.

Fall Family Fun Fair, 2013

     We are finally settled into a new school year, past the first round of sick bugs and Thanksgiving is just around the corner.  The days are getting shorter as the clock winds us ever closer to the holiday hub bub.  This year, we got to kick off fall with a bang by hosting the first ever annual Fall Family Fun Fair at our church.  What a great time we had planning, organizing and pulling off what turned out to be a truly successful event.  In my old life, BC, (Before Children), I was promoter and event planner, so this was an opportunity to dust off my old skill set and use them on something other than an insanely elaborate, themed birthday party for my kiddies.
As an added bonus, I got to utilize Pinetrest.  I have a love/hate relationship with the site.  As anyone who knows me can attest, I have a multitude of boards covering every conceivable topic and am constantly looking for great ideas to add to them.  It used to be that I was the one that threw the best parties because I was the one with the best ideas and I guarded them jealously.  The recipes, the decorating, the projects, the themes.  They were mine and if you wanted access to them it cost you.       Thanks to Pinterest, all that is over.  Anyone can plan a great event, with a minimum amount of time.  It's not all bad though.  I have a great new career in real estate and I can use my old skills for charitable events and fun, with much less stress.  I'm a little new to working cooperatively, when you're working with friends and volunteers, it's very important to be inclusive and polite, I've learned.  No paycheck means people are less likely to tolerate even a benevolent dictatorship.
Our lovely group of volunteers from Providence Community Church put together an amazing list of super fun activities for the families in Oak Bay to participate in.  We had pumpkin bowling, ring toss, an obstacle course, mask making, beading, face painting, clay creations.  Our big crowd pleasers were the Imagination Station, I was completely stunned and amazed by what the kids built out of blocks of wood, buttons, string, feathers, marbles and glue guns, The "Make Your Own Caramel Apple Bar", where kids got to dip a granny smith apples in a home made caramel dip and cover them in their choice of toppings, raging from mini marshmallows to gummy bears and everything in between.  Outside we had a "Haystack Candy scramble for kids to dig through for prizes, under a huge tent of course because this is Victoria.  Add to all that hot dogs and tons of baked goodies all donated to help raise money to send kids to school in Uganda.
    

Local Oak Bay businesses also donated a great array of prizes to be won by attendees.  It was a great way to introduce our selves to our neighbours, and in turn introduce them to a wonderful cause worth supporting in one of the most needed areas of our world.  Next year, hopefully, we'll get a little more cooperation from the Big Guy, and not have to implement a rain plan, but even if the weather is worse next year, we'll still have the inside of the Monterey Center, just in case.
Providence Community Church meets every Sunday at 1442 Monterey ave, Oak Bay, Victoria, at 10 am.  Everyone is welcome and we have a coffee meet and greet afterwards.  There are also lots of special events all year long.  For more information check out the website:   www.providencecommunitychurch.com