Of Martha Stewart, Supermoms, and Just Plain Ole Me

Girl and Ghost at Dusk

I've been gearing up for Halloween round these parts, feeling like, between work and writing and sleep and cooking and caring for kids, I am not stepping up to the kind of Halloween I feel I should be doing.

I know it's silly and perfectionist and SuperMom (in a bad way) but I still feel guilty for not doing the Halloween party and not hand making the vampire cape (or not even hemming it, when I cut the adult one down to size) or not doing the jack'o'lantern early. But there it is. We don't need a handmade vampire cape. The squirrels would eat the jack'o'lantern, were I to carve it, and to be honest, I just don't have it in me to host a kids party.

So. I shall focus on the things I have been able to do.

Like the ghost flying on the porch. With the girl (demon-child) dancing along. (Easy DIY-- Two lengths of tulle, wrapped around some scrunched up bubble wrap for a head, tied with a strip of tulle and thumbtacked to the porch, allowed to blow in the breeze.)

Or like the spider ring. Plain, 20 cent plastic spider rings, but with some gel medium and a dusting of glitter, something that a princess might wear. I also did a black one dusted in red glitter, especially for a little vampire that I know. But he's taken it off to his kindergarten Halloween party, and I am too slow to photoshoot.
Or this... My silhouettes of crows. I will show you at a later date what I did with these guys.

So what if I have done all my Halloween preparations in the last couple of days. When did we start doing holidays a month before the date, anyway.

Hey, I'm not Martha Stewart. I'm not even the bootleg Martha Stewart. I'm too busy with other stuff. And that's okay.

We don't have to live up to the perfectionist standards of those who make a living off of their housewifery. And we don't have to pretend we are super beings able to leap tall to do lists in one bound.

We are just people. And we have goals and yearnings and struggles and talents and imperfections and exhaustions and realities to live. We are just who we are, what we are, when we are.

And that is just fine.

Happy Halloween, at any level of celebration.