Consider yourself warned!

I have repeatedly stumbled into a mommy-trap over the last 10 years. The trap is called a "tradition". It is a very, VERY easy trap to fall into so I feel it is only fair to give warning to other new moms so that they might realize what they are getting into while there is still time for them to save themselves.

Here's how the trap is set... New mom has first child and is excited to experience life through the eyes of a child. She does things like bake elaborate birthday cakes. Or Plan elaborate scavenger hunts through the neighborhood. Or make an all-pink dinner on Valentine's Day. The list of elaborate concoctions grows longer every year, and the mommy is happy. After all this is fun, right?

I turned a cake into a throne for a princess Groovy Girl

A&E were obsessed with Dinosaurs and The Land Before Time

Then the mommy has more babies. The mommy gets very busy and very tired. Suddenly, the prospect of turning a cake into a work of art doesn't seem like fun anymore and, SNAP! The trap is set. Because now, after all the years of crazy ideas, your concoctions have become traditions.

And once you've started a tradition it's yours forever.

I am currently face to face with one of these traditions. Many years ago I started making a special Halloween dinner of monster eyeballs (meatballs with provolone melted on top to make them white and a sliced green olive to serve as the pupil -- these come out really well, but there are some tricks to making them look really authentic. Let me know if you want the tips!), roasted ghosts (garlic mashed potatoes that are placed in a ziploc bag and piped into an upright ghost shape -- very easy), worm sauce (applesauce with a drop of blue food coloring to make it green-ish and then gummy worms stirred in), and skeleton punch (sparkling cider with an ice "hand" floating in it -- this is tricky but I can talk you through it).

I used to prepare this dinner before trick-or-treating, but in NC we have been trick-or-treating with another family in a different neighborhood. Their neighborhood has a big block party with pizza and games and a camp fire, so there is no opportunity for my dinner.

So here I am today. Halloween has passed and, frankly, I'm over it. I have zero interest in turning potatoes into ghosts. The kids on the other hand are not over it. And so it is that I am stuck in my trap.

But how can you complain when it is a trap that you have set for yourself?

Yes it's an old picture. And it's from Mother's Day. But I like it. And it's MY blog :)