Spider Costume

My little black widow is ready for Halloween! 

My Grandson wanted to be a spider for Halloween this year. After looking at some ready made costumes, and a few videos online, I had a general plan as to how I wanted to make the costume. Off to Walmart I went to buy all the supplies. This was for my 3 year old Grandson so I went straight to the toddler clothes section first.  I found a pair of 5T black sweat pants, and a 5T long sleeved t-shirt. I found a package of Hanes women's knee high socks that were a soft knit that came in a 2 pk that were perfect for my spider legs. Next in the Men's department I found a fleece ski mask for the spider head. In the Craft Department I found large white buttons and some black plastic gem centers for the eyes. Next, it was off to the fishing section for fishing line, 6lb weight. I had 4 black buttons at home for the sleeves, poly fiber filling, a pair of black gloves, and some red felt for the hour glass. I am now ready to get started.

All the items I was able to purchase at Walmart!

I snipped the pink threads and pulled them

 out of the sock.

First I took the socks and removed the pink Hanes writing on the toe. I just turned them inside out, cut the end of the pink stitching and pulled the strands out.

I stuffed the socks with poly fiber fill, so they were about 5 or 6 inches longer than the sleeve of the T-shirt. After stuffing the 4 legs, I took a strand of fishing line and tied the legs into 3 sections. I took the end of the line, wrapped it around the leg, tied it in a knot, wrapped it again and tied it in several knots. I did that for all 4 legs.

Stuffed stockings.

I sectioned off the stuffed stockings using fishing line.

Next I cut open the side seams of the T-shirt in two section on each side. I laid the t-shirt out on the table, laid the legs next to the shirt to see where I wanted them attached, and then marked the shirt as to where I would open the seams. I tried to make the arms of the shirt and the 2 spider sock legs evenly spaced on the side of the shirt. After marking the shirt, I opened the seam wide enough to fit the sock legs through. I pinned the legs in place and then sewed  the seam closed with the the legs in place using my sewing machine.

I opened up the side seams of the shirt in two evenly spaced section on both sides.

Using the sewing machine I sewed the legs into the side of the shirt. 

All legs are sewn into place.

Now that the sock legs were sewn in place I wanted to connect the legs together with the fishing line. I took a long piece of line and threaded it into a large eyed needle. I knotted one end of the line and pushed the needle up through one of the tied sections of the bottom leg. When it was through the tied section I put a knot in the line to hold it in place. Then I pushed the needle into the knotted section of the middle leg leaving enough line between the two so that the leg would hang evenly. Once the needle was through the middle leg, and the distance was correct, I took the needle around to the bottom of the middle tied section again and brought it back up through the section again to make it stay in place. Then I tied a knot to hold it in place.

A needle is threaded with the fishing line with a large knot in the end. The needle is pushed through the tied section of the bottom leg.

I am pulling the thread out of the top of the leg section. Then I tied a knot and pushed it through the same section in the middle leg. Then I took the needle around the tied section and put the needle back up through the middle leg section again to keep it in place and tied a knot. I pulled the line out of the needle and left the extra line attached to the middle leg. 

With the remaining line I measured the distance from the middle leg to the underside of the t-shirt arm. Making sure this was the same distance from the middle leg, as the distance was between the middle and bottom leg. Then I tied a small loop at the end of line for each section at the measured length. I sewed a black button on the bottom seam of the t-shirt arm in the middle of the arm and at the wrist, on both sides. Then I connected the loops of the fishing line from the middle legs to the buttons of the shirt. I now have movable spider legs.

I sewed buttons onto the under side of the arms of the t-shirt.

I measured the length and tied a loop in the remaining line attached to the sections of the middle legs and hooked them on the buttons of the t-shirt.

For the spider head and eyes, I sewed the white buttons onto the ski mask in a random pattern. Then I sewed the black gems onto the center of the buttons.

The centers had holes in them on the sides so I could sew them on like a button on a button.

For the last step, I used a large coffee cup to make my hour glass. I folded the felt in two, put the cup at the folded end, used a pen to mark the circle with a small stem at the fold for the middle of the hour glass, and then I cut it out. Before I opened it, I cut a sliver off the top of the circle to flatten it out a bit. Next, I  pinned it to the front of the shirt and sewed it on by hand.

Once the hour glass was in place I pinned it to the shirt and sewed it on.

It took longer to explain the process than it actually took to make it, lol

The picture was unfortunately taken at a weird angle and it looks like one side is longer than the other. It is not.

Finished and it fit perfectly!

Friday Night Lights in Allen

I have heard about the craziness around High School Football in Texas, but I really had no idea how big it was until we moved to Texas. A friend of my husbands gave us tickets to see the Allen Eagles play and I was blown away. Allen High School is the 4th largest high school in the state. They have 4855 students in grades 10-12 and 1605 students in the Freshmen Center.

An aerial photo of the Allen High School Stadium. Look at the parking lot, the 5035 spots fill up fast, and then you have the school's student parking lot, and from there you need to be creative. 

First let's talk about the stadium. The stadium was built in 2012 with a price tag of $60 million and seats 18,000 people. It is the largest stadium that serves a single school. This stadium is nicer than some college stadiums I have been to in the Midwest. It has a 75 x 45 foot scoreboard with a 38 x 23 foot high definition video board. The home side seats 9000, the visitors side has 5000 seats, and the student section seats 4000. It has 6 concession stands, lots of restrooms and information stands throughout.  The facility also holds locker rooms for the Golf team and a place to hold wresting meets. This stadium is beautiful and is full most every Friday night.

Pre-game view from the visitors side of the stadium. Our seats were in the upper deck on the other side, 4th row from the top at about the 50 yard line.

Scoreboard during the first quarter. The final score was 45 to 7, Eagles with a decisive win.

Just one of the concession stands in the stadium, This place is unbelievable for a High School Stadium.

The Football team is amazing to watch and is ranked 4th in the nation this year. They have won several state championship the last few years and a National Championship in 2014. Then there are the fans, Parents, Alumni, Parents of Alumni, Students and Community Members. These fans come every week and fill the stadium to watch high school football. Season ticket holders have to wait years and go through a lottery to get tickets. This is Texas High School Football!

What a way to enter the field. The cheerleaders are dressed in Halloween costumes.

The Eagles take the field! There is a group of guys that carry flags that run on to the field and circle at the 50 yard line after every Allen score.

Now let's talk about the Allen Eagles Marching Band. Our daughter was in the marching band in Fort Wayne, Indiana for R. Nelson Snyder High School. There were about 150 kids in the band from a school of about 1800 students. They would compete against schools that had a 300 member marching band and struggle because smaller bands have a hard time covering the whole field and it is easier to see any mistakes. The Allen Eagles have a band of over 800 members, the largest high school band in the nation. They cover the entire field and play beautifully. The night we went to the football game they were playing Guyer High school that has a band of about 150 students. Allen's band was over 5 times the size of Guyer's band, not a fair competition. This night Guyer did their competition show and were very good. Allen had a special night for the band and all the kids were dressed in Halloween costumes, so it was hard to compare shows. As far as sound is concerned there was no comparison, Allen rocked the field! They were really very good musically and it was hilarious watching some of the kids do their formations in their costumes.

The Guyer High School Marching Band.

The Allen Eagles Marching Band!

The Eagles fill the entire field, 800 strong!

The dinosaur in the picture was hilarious to watch do all the formations. He/she did not miss a step, played his/her instrument and we were totally entertained watching, listening and laughing. 

We had a great time at our first Texas High School Football game. The fans arrive early, tailgate and try to get a parking space close enough so they don't have a hike to the stadium. I was apprehensive about going to this game, after all it was a high school I have no connection with. My husband said we needed to check out the whole "Friday Night Lights" thing at least once. I am sure glad we did, because everyone that loves football should have this experience at least once. 

Go Eagles!!!!!   

The Nicest Rest Area

My husband and I were traveling to Austin one weekend and on the way home we stopped at a new Safety Rest Area in Bell County, Texas, on I35 between Austin and Waco. This rest area was beautiful.

The outdoor space was beautifully landscaped, it has a very large picnic area, a playground for kids, a place to walk your dog and let them do their business, and plenty of parking.

As we walked up to the buildings I saw a sign that I have never seen before at a rest area. The sign said Restrooms, and had an arrow directing you, and then it said Storm Shelter with another arrow directing you. That's right there were 2 storm shelters built into the rest area. One was in a smaller building, to the right of the main building, and one was in the larger main building. The shelter had a very heavy door that lead into a cinder block room with benches on each side. This room was in the middle of the building between the Men's and Women's restrooms. There was also a shelter between the restrooms in the large main building. That's right there were 2 sets of restrooms too, Awesome!

The main building had an interpretive display that made the building look like a museum. There was an old grist mill in the lobby area that had information plaques in front of it.  The Rest Area's design was inspired by the grist mill. There is a creek nearby called the Salado Creek and it was home to many grist mills. The grist mill was powered by the creek and would grind grain into flour.

The restrooms were very nice with tile and even separated urinals for the men. My husband took those pictures, obviously.

The Truck parking was in the back of the buildings and the the cars parked in the front. As you were driving out there was a long drive to exit and still more picnic areas on the exit side of the building.

I am not a person who uses rest areas because they usually gross me out. Not this one, I would, and now have, use this rest area anytime!

I Have Acclimated!

I had lived for over 50 years of my life in the Midwest climate that I had a love/hate relationship with. When you are a child the change of seasons were wonderful. I would play outside in the cold and snow until I could not feel my fingers and toes. I remember coming into the house, taking off all of my snow gear (which included socks under my mittens), and stood on the registers in the floor of our living room until I could feel my fingers and toes again. This hopefully was on a day that we had off of school because of the weather.

As I got older there was no fun in the brutal cold weather and the mounds of snow. The skies were gray at least half of the year, you hated to drive in the snow and ice, the bitter cold made you want to hibernate, the Spring offered storms and tornadoes, and the Summer was humid. In the Spring when temperatures hit the high 60s we were ready for shorts. The mid 70s to low 80s and it was swimming weather. We felt like the 90s were so unbearably hot and humid that we stayed indoors and would seek out air conditioning.

Now, after two years in Texas, the temperature has to be in the ninety's before we feel warm enough to swim. The water has to feel like bath water and that happens when the air temp is close to 100 degrees. The sun is shining all the time and the sky is blue all year round.

I do not regret for one minute moving to Texas. I will take 3 months of 100 degrees and the boiling sun, over the bitter bone chilling cold. I will take the few days a year of the ice storms that melts in a few days, over the 12 inches of snow that you have to shovel, drudge through, drive in, and that doesn't melt until April. We still have the storms and tornadoes (without the basements and with the added hail), but I still will take that over the Midwest winters.

What surprised me the most was that when the temperature hit 74 degrees I was "cold".   I started wearing long jeans and a sweater. The outside temp was in the high 80s and I still felt a chill. This is in no way a complaint, I love the "cooler" temps, but I have to remind myself that this is still Summer temperatures in the Midwest.

Boy have I acclimated!

The Birds?

There are a few movies I have seen in my life that still affect me adversely. One is the Alfred Hitchcock movie, "The Birds". It was about one month past my 8th Birthday and the movie was on television for the first time, so I ended up watching it with my older sister. Needless to say it scared the crap out of me, and I have hated birds ever-sense . At least all "flying" birds. Everyone would say, "You know they really don't attack people". Well, tell that to my Son who walked out on our porch when he was a teenager and had a bird fly right into the side of his head, lol.

When we moved to Texas a few years ago I noticed that in the months of September through November there seemed to be swarms of large black birds called Grackles migrating south. These birds are scary, loud, and they congregate in large numbers. On nights during this time when I would drive through one particular intersection just before dusk the grackles and various black birds would be everywhere. They were lined up on the power lines, traffic light posts, street lights, trees, grass, in the parking lots, and on all the buildings. There were thousands of them.

Birds starting to gather at the corner of McDermott and I75.

The same corner as the picture above and they are gathering on the buildings.

One early evening my daughter and I went to a Target store near that particular intersection and when we walked out to go to the car the parking lot was full of grackles. They were on the cement, in the grass in the medians, in the trees and on the building. They were everywhere and I was scared to go to my car. We ended up running and yelling to scare them away. It looked like a scene from the movie.

A few blocks down the road and they are starting to gather on this corner.

I went to pick up my car up from a Car Dealer's service garage in October of last year. When my husband dropped me off, and I was walking towards the garage area that was lined with trees, I heard the birds. They were filling the trees and so very loud. There was an older couple standing just inside the garage looking like they were afraid to come out. I ran into the garage and asked them if the birds had been there very long? They said, "No, and that it reminded them of the movie "The Birds". I agreed.

In this video at the car dealer, if you look close, you can see the trees are full of Grackles.

The grackles from the north, and several other types of black bird's migration goes on for several months in the fall when they travel south. Then it starts back up again in April and May when they head back north. For these months we get to see thousands upon thousands of these scary loud poop factories congregate all over the Dallas area until they fly south. I am not sure how far south they migrate, but it does not seem to be too much farther than southern Texas, or just into Mexico. I am sure many just decide to stay here and bother us for the winter.

We were just driving down the service road and they were all along the road side.

The best quotes from the movie "The Birds" was from Annie Hayworth when she says, "Don't they ever stop migrating?" But, I side with the Traveling Salesman in the diner that says, "Gulls are scavengers, anyway.  Most birds are. Get yourselves guns and wipe them off the face of the earth." He must have been a Texan!