As I clean my home, vacuuming up the bits of werewolf fur scattered about and the bits of white fleece and the packaging from the 20 plus glow sticks needed to bring my 4 year olds dream of a glow in the dark ghost costume.  My little guy has had a tumultuous and stressful couple of years adjusting to having his world turned upside down.  He's always been somewhat scared of the dark but last year, in the midst of the worst of the chaos, he absolutely refused to go trick or treating in the dark.  Things are calmer now, he'll stay in his own bed most nights and the stories of the loot his brother has gotten from his Halloween adventures inspired him to strike a deal with me.  He was willing to go trick or treating in the dark as long as he had a costume that lit up.  We settled on a ghost.  I ended up deciding to glue a bunch of flexible glow sticks to his baseball helmet and then covering it with white fleece to give him a classic cartoon ghost shape. 
His big brother's requests always seem to involve a lot more work.  He wanted to be a werewolf.  Specifically one with long sharp claws.  I covered a black stretchy hoody with long black fur and attached a nose and an impressive row of teeth to frame his face.  After a couple of false starts, I sculpted Fimo claws and sewed them to gloves using the button holes I poked through the base of them.  Both boys loved their costumes.  Unfortunately, the magical powers of the lighting up ghost did nothing to protect my little one from the terror his big brother instilled in him by growling at him while practicing his "werewolf-ness".  I found the little guy sobbing in a closet at one point.  We got through the bumpy start and I even managed to carve out a little time for me.  My self and a friend got ourselves all fancied up and went to see "The Rocky Horror Show" at the Royal Mcpherson Playhouse, put on by The Kaleidoscope Theater Production Society;  www.kaleidoscope.bc.ca .  It was hands down the most fun I've had since I moved to Victoria.  The cast did an amazing job.  We sang along, did the Time Warp, offered my ex husband to the drag queen mc'ing the costume contest, (no luck there, she didn't want him) and ate lots of cake with the cast afterwards.  I was mistaken for the lead more than once and I've decided it's because my butt looks like a 26 year old male dancer's, not just because of my height. 

I finally feel like I have carved out an identity for myself in Victoria, separate from my role as wife and mother and it feels fantastic.  I get to be me first, a mom next and a Realtor and artist too.  It's been an extremely difficult journey over the last couple of years, but every excruciating step has been worth it.  I can't wait for what life will bring me next.  I've taken down the last of the decorations and cleaned up the mess from all the empty candy wrappers and chunks of fur flying around and the only thing left to do is figure out exactly how much of the kid's candy I can eat before they notice.  I call it "candy tax".  It's payment for all the work I put into their costumes every year.  Now I get to take a little break before I start digging out the Christmas decorations.  :) 

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.

Getting healthy food into everyday life.

As a working, single mom, I am always asked where all my energy comes from and how I manage to accomplish everything that I get done.  A friend of mine has recently been diagnosed with a cancer and her interest in super foods has prompted me to look at how I feed myself and my family.  Most people fixate on my weight and want to know how I have stayed basically the same weight since my teen years.  They always seem to be asking for a secret that I can pass on, a magic pill of some sort that will allow them to maintain their current life style and be a size 4.  I don't have a secret, of course.  A lot of it is just plain genetics but I also eat very little processed foods.  I make most of mine and my kids food from scratch.  Every day, every meal.  I like to cook, I like to bake and on top of that, I'm extremely frugal.  I don't understand things like pancake mix.  From scratch it's: flour, baking powder salt, sugar, egg, oil, milk.  From a mix it's: mix, egg, oil, milk.  You are paying for some one to mix 3 ingredients for you.   And add a ton of chemicals.  I just don't get it.  Making it yourself, you get to control the salt and sugar levels and I keep a cooked container of quinoa in my fridge and add a couple of table spoons to the batter, sometimes extra wheat bran and on special occasions I add cocoa powder.  It's so much healthier and tastier than the store bought mixes and can be used for waffles as well.  My 9 year old just found out I have been putting quinoa in his waffles his whole life and was deeply disturbed to find out I have been making them healthy and that he never even noticed.   When I feel especially creative I experiment with gluten free flours, just for the challenge.  My ever present quinoa, I've discovered, can be run through the food processor once it is cold until it resembles the texture of cornmeal and be substituted into pretty much any baking for up to about half of the called for flour. The results are a little heavier, meatier, but always delicious.  I remember being absolutely heartbroken when my boy came home from a friend's house and informed me he had eaten the best food ever and asked if I knew you could get macaroni and cheese in a blue box.  I've gotten a little less fanatical as the boys have gotten older as I've realized I can't control everything they consume and concentrate on keeping our home as healthy as possible while still allowing them to experience the joys of a Happy Meal occasionally.  I keep our fridge stocked with Greek yogurt and accept that they will just go ask the neighbour's mom for the highly sugared,artificially coloured, individually packaged yoghurt facsimiles once in a while.  As a general rule we don't eat candy, fast food, potato chips, fried foods and to be honest we rarely even drink juice.  We drink iced tea made from no caffeine fruit teas with little to no added sugar.  We don't buy boxed cereal except as a treat.  Most mornings, I make oatmeal for us and stir in some of the pre cooked quinoa and mix it with unsweetened apple sauce and Greek yoghurt.  Some times we add nuts and seeds.  We make our own jams and preserves and we even make our own nut and seed butters from scratch.  It's a super fun and easy project with limitless flavour possibilities and nut combinations and a much cheaper option than store bought.  As for my seemingly boundless energy, it comes from a couple of sources, one, I love coffee, and secondly, I start every single day with my favorite smoothie.  It's packed full of great foods and is like eating ice cream for breakfast.  I blend ice, one banana, half an avocado, pure cocoa powder, peanut butter, Greek yoghurt, (I prefer vanilla) and milk.  Some times I throw in quinoa, strawberries, blueberries, or, next week, local blackberries we will be picking ourselves, pretty much anything else you could think of but most days I stick with the basics and race out the door with one in my hand as I rush of to school, pre school, work, daycare, church,volunteering .....It's my favorite way to start my day, right after my coffee.  So I guess what I'm saying is, I don't need to count calories, I know exactly what's in my food, because I put it there and whenever possible, I grow it too.  I don't mean to imply that I'm perfect, I've been known to eat an entire cheesecake for dinner.  I just don't do it more than once a year and I make sure it's at least a pumpkin one so it counts as a balanced meal.  Pumpkin=veggies, cheese=dairy and protein, crust=fiber and bonus points if you can sneak some quinoa into it.  My son and I just finished a batch of granola/quinoa/rice bars made with a touch of local honey.  Such a delicious treat, gluten free and for this batch anyways, nut free.  The next time we make them I think we'll add some dried local fruit, just don't forget to cook and cool the quinoa first, before you start substituting it into your favourite recipes, especially if you're putting it into your food processor or blender!  Trust me, once it glues itself into a ball, it's pretty much useless for food purposes.  It makes a decent, albeit pricey, play-dough substitute.