silvermari & the stick

I paid $16 for the privilege of walking into a convention center to shop for cute, expensive gifts. Many were handmade and worth the price. Others seemed less reasonable. The ticket price was $11, but I also had to pay $5 for parking. Kind of ridiculous all around.

It's "for a good cause," whatever that cause is. The Junior League does outreach in the community, so spending money to go isn't something I feel bad about (although the parking fee just goes to that garage).

I carried Jane around on my back in the Ergo, since strollers were not allowed. (And a good thing too. It was crowded enough without the addition of strollers.) We made a loop, methodically, around the outside and then zigzagging in and out of the shorter aisles and middle aisle. There wasn't a clear flow to the aisles, so there were always people going both ways and clumps of people stopping to chat "Oh hi, I haven't seen you in forever."

(No surprise: I didn't see ANYONE I knew…

We went to the Denham Springs Fall Festival yesterday, and it was a very good time. There were arts and crafts, kiddie rides and loads of antique stores.

Jane's favorite thing was the face painting. In that same Daniel Tiger episode some real life kids got their faces painted to look like the DT characters. When I saw that they had a face painting booth I didn't hesitate, because Jane had been asking to have her face painted since we watched the show.

Putting toxic chemicals on her skin is never a good idea (I didn't even ask what the paint was made of), but I really did a bad thing because there was GLITTER in the paint (either that or the lady added the glitter afterward). Jane became the cutest tiger ever (chosen by the face painting lady because Jane was wearing her tiger crochet hat), and the paint itself came off easily when we got home (I was smart enough to not let her lay in her bed with a full face of paint). But even after a shower we still have glitter on her …

On an episode of Daniel Tiger that Jane and I watched (on Amazon Prime) today the characters all dressed up and had a parade. They knocked on people's doors to show off their costumes, and instead of candy they got stickers for their sticker books. What a wonderful idea -- I'd love for that to be the m.o. for our church's trunk-or-treat. I'm not sure how I'm going to keep Jane from eating the crap she'll collect.

I'm trying to decide what we'll hand out from our "trunk." Last year I bought a bunch of things that were non-candy -- vampire teeth, some bracelets, bouncy balls, etc. I've got a cart ready for checkout at Oriental Trading just ready to hit "purchase."

But there's part of me -- the CHEAP part off me -- that realizes how much less expensive it would be to pick up a couple bags of value candy at Walmart or Winn Dixie and call it a night. (My shipping alone is $10. GAH.) I wouldn't let Jane eat any of it, but other…