Dinovember also is a thing!

Eleanor saw some Christmas decorations up on somebody's house and she was like, Well maybe they don't celebrate Dinovember.

We celebrate Dinovember! November is long, and full of terrors. And RAIN. The rain is draining my will to live; it is either raining or has just stopped raining and may start again. OK BUT ANYWAY so thank goodness for deconstructable dinosaurs.

I found this stencil book at the thrift store. Eleanor has been making dinosaur cards for everyone she knows.

Made herself a sweet wall hanging, too! (Those mushrooms are volcanoes.)

Geneva, reading a dinosaur book to a dino. 'It's you, stegosaurus, it's YOU!'

We grew some dino sponges from pills.

We made salt dough

and then stamped the feeties in the salt dough and then matched the resultant feety coins to the dinosaurs.

We done some coloring.

We made volcanoes (Geneva kept referring to the lava as 'candelabra' and I never corrected her).

We painted dinos

and other dinos.

The dinos have been in the playdough.

And we have done several kinds of excavating. 'So much of Dinovember is excavating!' says Eleanor, delightedly.

Fancy nancies

Let's talk about the dress-up bin, how about.

Eleanor spent all of September asking me when I was going to bring out the dress-up bin, even though she knew the answer was October 1st.

That was a pretty great day.

So great!

Wookit dis widdle dragon.

And then they were just in dress-up things basically always. Wanna eat some cheese? Dress up like a rat.

Wanna read a book? Needs a tutu.

Fireman hat + fancy dress, this is fine.

I went to the thrift store and picked up a few new things for our collection.

Eleanor insists she's going to wear this polka-dotted thing for her birthday.

For a while, they put on endless 'shows' on the 'stage,' all of which were some variation on some one/thing eating a strawberry, and the strawberry running away shrieking.

Then, for a few days, they would play 'birdwatchers.'

Eleanor would sing her sailing song, and then say, Oh look, a bird! Let's fly after it! And they would flap around the room and climb along the wall of couches and into the dress-up bin, where they would 'nap,' before doing it all over again.

Have I mentioned the endless 'face painting'?

Endless.

Oh hello, you.

After Halloween, I guess I waited too long before heading out for discount costumes (I waited like two days, you guys), so all that was left was off-brand princess stuff and like emoticon costumes, but I did find this Wonder Woman suit for $5.

It came with a headband that we immediately lost, so now Eleanor wears the belt as a headband. (That's our Christmas plant, which is a thing I started doing in Saskatoon to bring me HOPE AND GREENERY in the winter.)

Where you going with that cutlass, little fancy?

Regular programming to resume shortly.

Having some election-based feelings over here, too angry for levity or really anything besides starting fights with people on the internet, and then just like hopeless weeping.

I don't want this to be a place to put my impotent rage, I have outlets for that, so I'm just going to step back a minute until I can gather myself.

Octoberecap

Let's talk about Halloween one more time real quick before we sink too far into Dinovember. Not a lot of new decors to report. I found these comically oversized googley eyes at the dollar store and the lady was like, Ooooh, what are you going to use THESE for? I was like, I DUNNO BUT I NEED THEM.

Bone Dog, of course. Much beloved.

Skeletons just everywhere.

Oh and now I have a MANTEL. I had been looking for a mirror to go over it, and we have this 24-hour bidding fb page in town and LOOK AT THE MIRROR I GOT FOR $2! It is like a surfboard and I love it.

Eleanor really got into the decorating groove this year. My sister brought out this spider-making activity kit one day, and Eleanor put those spiders all over the place.

Literally everything that could have a decorative bat on it had a decorative bat on it. I will say, her bat-coloring skills have come a ways.

I had to make her a little gallery in her room so she had somewhere to put her Halloween-based drawings. I especially love the Frankenstein's monster in the top right.

I let her take Sam Skellington into her room 'for decoration' and every time I came in there, he was up to some hijinx.

What you doin, Sam.

We made some spooky pretzel skulls!

We made an eyeball wreath.

LOOK AT HIM LOOKING AT YOU.

We made this Halloween Branch. Baby's first glue gun burn!

We made this haunted house out of a kit from the dollar store that advertised requiring 'no glue!' which was lies and also damn lies, because like are those tree branches just supposed to float beside the trunk or what. It took us AN HOUR but Eleanor's favorite activities are the ones where she and I sit at the table for an hour, doing A Thing together.

Geneva did some stuff, too! Little functional human person. We painted some skulls.

She was so adorable about. 'Hold soooo stillll,' like she's face-painting him.

And both girls spent tens of minutes re-arranging the Halloween village, or dividing its contents up between them and then 'selling' the pieces to each other.

A friend of mine sent me some black cocoa so I could make black waffles! So deliciously spooky!

Eleanor's gymnastics class had Superhero Day, so Eleanor dressed up as Nung Nung Super Rat (she let Geneva pick the name). Rat suit, not-a-tutu-just-a-regular-skirt-mom, and Zorro cape. Have at you.

There is an entire other post about the dress-up bin but HA HA I am not appending it to this one. Daylight Savings have me like