Day 13 – Get Pumped for Fall at Pumpkintown USA

October 13, 2014October 13, 2014 / DeeDeeFilly / Leave a comment

I finally broke down.

After over a decade of living in New England, this Carolina girl bought her first Yankee Magazine subscription. It was time to come to terms with our new Northern normal.

When that first issue arrived — the one devoted to all things leaf-peepish — I found a blurb on a Connecticut whimsy mecca I’d never heard of before: Pumpkintown USA.

Y’all. (I still say that, Yankee subscription or no Yankee subscription…)

It is just the CUTEST thing.

And it’s Day 13 in my 31 Days of Fun/Funny Stuff for Families (or at least families who live in these parts). Pumpkintown is just adorable, and it’s open every day through Halloween.

As part of a family-run greenhouse in East Hampton, CT (near Colchester – for the uninitiated), Pumpkintown is all about the gourds – each one painted and posed like really smiley humans throughout a makeshift village of barber shops and wedding chapels and county jails.

I dig the groom’s ‘fro mullet.

From your seat on the family hayride, you can spot more of these goofy gourds scattered through the woods — skiing, chilling in a deer stand, splitting logs, (and my personal favorite) manning a moonshine still.

Here’s one caught reading his paper in the outhouse.

This Southern girl felt right at home.

There are, of course, cider donuts and actual cider and kettle korn — all for pretty cheap.

Plus, kids can run amuck in a little hay maze and bounce their brains out in a big inflatable pumpkin and in a garden of bouncy tires.

There’s about a million places to make your kids stick their heads in and pose. Here’s a sampling:

We went home with many gourds.

Although not quite THIS many…

And I went home with that warm-fuzzy Mom feeling.

The family unit experienced someplace new, we soaked in some fall colors, and MAN, did we ever get our fall New England whimsy on. I loved it.

So I’m just gonna put it all out there and say…(wait for it)…

Pumpkintown USA. You’d be out of your gourd not to go.

Day 12 – Sunday is for Slothing

October 12, 2014 / DeeDeeFilly / Leave a comment

I’ve been blogging for 12 straight days, and I’m wore out.

And of course, this is Sunday — the Day of Rest.

So might I suggest on Day 12 of my 31-day blogging challenge (for 31 Days of Fun/Funny/Funtastic Stuff for Families) to do something really radical?

Me (at about 5) and my dad “reading” the paper together. If you look carefully, you’ll see mine is more of the “funny paper” variety. Whatevs.

REST.

Go to church.

Read the paper.

Take a nap.

Have breakfast food for dinner.

Watch a movie.

Be a waste of space for a day.

That’s what a Sunday is for.

Besides, there’s a bonus holiday tomorrow for most of us – so store up those energy bunnies for tomorrow’s fanciful action-packed pumpkin-picking, hay-riding and leaf-peeping.

Sunday is for slothing.

I give you permission. And I’m gonna go out on a limb here…so does God.

Happy Sunday. Happy slothing.

Day 11 – Get Your Faerie On

October 11, 2014October 11, 2014 / DeeDeeFilly / Leave a comment

The Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, CT is, to coin a phrase, awesome-sauce.

(As FGM’s grants writer, they do pay me to say that – albeit with somewhat fancier words like “educationally innovative,” “inspiring and imaginative,” “committed to excellence.”)

No joke, FGM is all those things every day, but nowhere is that imaginative spirit in fuller bloom than during its annual Wee Faerie Village installation, up now through Nov. 2.

For my local-yokel peeps along the Connecticut Shoreline and in New England, this is my Day 11 of Fun Stuff for Families (in this interminable 31-Day blogging challenge): Go see Florence’s faerie houses.

This year’s theme of 26 faerie houses (crafted by lots of cool local creative types) is inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the oh-so au courant Steampunk Movement (calling upon the cool metal stuff of the Industrial Revolution — from clock gears to oil cans — to create these wildly fanciful versions of Wonderland.)

There are keyholes to peek through and tiny little worlds to investigate and kids love it. Almost as much as you will.

Wee Faerie Village is sort of like a Pixar movie – kid-captivating, adult-clever. Everybody wins.

Plus, there are bonus prizes with a riverfront campus that is just crazy with color this time of year. (Note to kids: feel free to run wildly about in its glory.)

And try on funny SteamPunk’d hats.

If you’re sadly a thousand miles away from swinging by for the afternoon, you can always get all inspired and craftsy and make faerie houses at home (although that would require a glue gun…). Here’s some inspiration:

But if you’re not a thousand miles away, go.

Wee Faerie Village in a Steampunk’d Wonderland is pure-T whimsy at its fall finest.

It’ll make you wanna jump for joy.

(Or at least wanna photo-bomb your sister and her friends.)

Day 10 – Introduce your Kids to Jan Hooks

October 10, 2014October 10, 2014 / DeeDeeFilly / 2 Comments

It’s weird. And sad.

Today was the day I’d planned to pitch my favorite kid-friendly SNL skits – sort of as a safe, early introduction into the non-Nick Jr. comedy realms.

Then I heard Jan Hooks had died, who’s like my favorite crazy aunt.

This is NBC’s photo from the Saturday Night Live archives. (Don’t sue me for this stuff.)

So today, I will be showing my kids the Sweeney Sisters “Bells” medley skit. I just watched it again, and as many times as I’ve seen it, I was still this close to wetting my pants. (That’s good, by the way.)

Jan Hooks squeezes laughs out of every single solitary moment her face is on screen. Full on. ALL THE TIME. So this is mandatory viewing today. You will be graded.

(I got this off Pinterest, and it said “via The Lusty Literate.” Again, please don’t sue me.)

(Oh, and disregard the fact that this crappy version of the Sweeney Sisters is from someone’s crusty VHS tape; just have a bonus laugh at the 80s-era cereal commercial.)

May I also recommend a lesser-known gem from Jan Hooks’ immense body of work — one that I still quote to this day.

“Musicians for Free-Range Chickens.”

Jan Hooks plays Diana Ross, just behind Victoria Jackson’s screechy Cyndi Lauper. (I got this sketchy image off http://snltranscripts.jt.org. Don’t sue me)

Your children will totally NOT get the joke. They will have no idea who any of these people are or why they’re all singing badly together. But consider this send-up of We are the World a helpful crash course in ’80s pop culture – a vital teaching tool about Axl Rose and Bob Dylan and Wilson Phillips (sorry about the bra).

Your kids may not get WHY this is funny, but they’ll look over at you snorting and pounding the desk, and they’ll laugh because you’re laughing.

This is, by the way, how we begin to impart to future generations what’s funny. They see us NOT laughing at, say, something terrible on the Disney Channel and they understand: NOT FUNNY. They see us laughing at Jan Hooks swaying dramatically in a voluminous wig, and they understand: Ah, FUNNY.

And you can’t not laugh at this.

Let me add: if it’s possible for Jan Hooks to steal the show right out from underneath the entire cast in one fell swoop, her Diana Ross character does that with these eloquent words:

“Tell the children…to tell the world…to tell the chickens we’re ON OUR WAY!”

That’s one of my favorite lines ever anywhere. EVER.

(I say it to our Purdue boneless breasts quite often while standing over them at the stovetop.)

Those skits are just the kid-proofed ones. There are, of course, scads of others that don’t quite pass that test, but deserve a fond look back.

Check out the immortal “pie” sketch with Alec Baldwin, the Church Chat episodes – once as Tammy Faye Bakker, another time as Jessica Hahn, the Sinatra Group as Sinead/Sinbad/Uncle Fester O’Connor.

From NBC’s SNL archives

Maybe we can talk about other fun-for-family SNL skits on another day in this 31 Day blogging challenge (I’ve still got 20 days left in my 31 Days of Fun/Funny/Funtastic Stuff for Families series). But today is Jan’s day.

Jan Hooks was just a complete and total riot. Fall down on the floor funny. The crazy aunt who shakes up Thanksgiving.

So I will show my kids these skits today and belt out “Clang clang clang went the trolley” and talk about doing what you love with joy and abandon.

That’s what Jan Hooks did so well.

She makes me wanna be a better goofball.

Day 9 – Pack a Shoebox…or 12

October 9, 2014October 9, 2014 / DeeDeeFilly / Leave a comment

Before I even get out of the gate, understand me very clearly:

I’m not some big fancy do-gooder.

I do not donate our used towels to animal shelters.

I do not visit the elderly or clean their gutters.

Not only do I never give to PBS fund drives, I groan and flip the channel as soon as they start in about it.

I do have high-minded intentions occasionally, and I do think sweet charitable thoughts every now and then. But in practice, eh. I’m not so hot at it.

But here’s the one thing I get ROWDY about: I PACK SHOEBOXES. It is my one burst of awesome do-gooding for the year, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT.

This is one of my favorite pictures – my kiddos with the 222 shoeboxes collected from our church last year.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s the quick 411.

Samaritan’s Purse (the ministry run by Franklin Graham) is absolutely everywhere doing amazing things for people all over the world – be they victims of disaster or dread disease. They also run a project called Operation Christmas Child – which sends jillions of shoeboxes packed with toys, toiletries, and candy to kids in desperate situations all over the world every year. They take these boxes by camel and canoe and yak into some pretty far-flung places. I mean, they go everywhere.

And here’s the gyst of what happens. These children end up with a shoebox gift in their hands, mysteriously given to them from someone halfway around the world, someone who doesn’t know them or speak their language. But that someone loves them and is praying for them.

Lucy is writing notes to the kid who gets our box.

Many of these children have never gotten a gift. Like, ever. But when they do, many of them are so blown away by it that they keep coming back to the kind people at the church where they got their gift. And they discover what it is to be loved. And what it means to have hope. And their lives are changed. Eternally.

Sure, it’s just random stuff in a box that means zip to us – a toothbrush, a notebook, a bar of soap, some pencils, a Beanie Baby.

But I can’t count the number of times I’ve read that a child had prayed specifically for a doll with black hair or a pair of shoes so they could walk to school, and that was exactly what they found when they opened the lid. As if it weren’t an accident. As if Someone knew every one of their deepest hearts’ desires.

This project is so easy. It’s so fun to do as a family. But it’s so much more than that.

It’s amazing to me that such a little easy fun thing is capable of such great big transformative things.

So that’s Day 9 of my 31 Days of Fun Stuff for Families: Pack a shoebox. Or a dozen shoeboxes. (Here’s the link that tells you exactly what to do.)

The kids really get into it, picking out the perfect things, packing it all up just so. And we all know our kids could use more do-unto-others moments in their all-about-me lives.

Trust me, you’ll get major warm fuzzies doing it. And you’ll get major do-gooding points.

And oh yeah, there’s a little life out there that you could touch with love and hope and promise for the future. WITH A BEANIE BABY IN A BOX.

I mean, how could you not?

THIS is a little girl in Zambia holding a box we sent. CAN YOU STAND IT?! (A volunteer with Operation Christmas Child saw our address on the card and mailed us this picture. Her name is Mercy. LOVE.)

P.S. National Collection Week is November 17- 24 (check here for your nearest drop-off site and the times they’re open). For my CT local yokels — oh man, it can’t get any easier! Christ Lutheran Church in Niantic is a drop-off site! WOO!

Day 8 – Really “Bad” Cross-stitch

October 8, 2014 / DeeDeeFilly / 2 Comments

Needlework is becoming a lost art, right? Hardly anyone makes Ziggy cross-stitch samplers anymore.

So on Day 8 of my 31 Days of Fun/Funny/Funktastic stuff for Families, how ’bout turning off the screen, blowing the dust off your old cross-stitch hoop (c. 1982), and teaching your kids a crafty new skill?

Maybe you can whip up something cute for the kitchen?

P.S. Heisenberg is the new Ziggy. You can buy this kit on Etsy at the Steotch shop – and it won’t cost you mad stacks.

Day 7 – Undead Family Photos

October 7, 2014October 7, 2014 / DeeDeeFilly / Leave a comment

There is no end – and I mean, NOOO END – to all the goofiness you can get involved in on the Interweb.

But here’s my favorite today:

Photoshopping your kids into vampires.

I use PicMonkey to help create all the photographic wonders you see on this über-fancy blog on a daily basis. (Even techno-illiterate dorks like me can use it without torment, so when I say it’s easy, it’s easy.)

Now PicMonkey has these new Halloween and Christmas themes, wherein you can turn your family into the cast of Twilight or — for the jollier of spirit — a pack of marauding North Pole elves.

This is Day 7 of the 31-day blogging challenge (#write31Days) in which I committed to pummel you with fun/funny stuff for families all month long.

So for the colossally bored out there (which is exactly NO ONE), how bout a little Vampire or Magic Elf photo editing?

Just upload a picture onto PicMonkey, click the little Jack-o-lantern in the photo editor, and choose whether you want to transform your little darlings into witches or the undead.

Grey out that summer tan, add in a couple of fangs, and voila. You’ve just had yourself a laugh. And every time you look at this picture, you will laugh again. So…multiple laughs. Totally worth it.

(And did I mention, it’s all free? Score.)

Now if the spooky stuff isn’t your bag, head on down to the SantaLand theme — a jollier, less dead place to hang.

(I think I just blew the secret on the Filly Family Christmas card this year, yo.)

If you actually do this ridiculous nonsense, PLEASE please please share with me your thematic family photos — either here or on my Tales From the Crib blog Facebook page.

I assure you, I will laugh multiple times. So will you.

Day 6 – Motherly “Hair-oics”

October 6, 2014October 6, 2014 / DeeDeeFilly / 2 Comments

Nothing cements a mother-daughter relationship like jerking your kid’s hair out by the roots.

In all those pictures you see of a mother gently brushing her daughter’s silky locks, they seem so serene…so lost in the closeness of this tender nightly ritual. They look like they could be humming folk songs or maybe sharing little secrets together.

They leave out the screeching parts.

My girl’s got large hair. It’s thick and wavy and reflexively shrinks into a knot if it so much as meets a stiff breeze or looks sideways at a body of water.

I can’t tell you how many countless hours of my life have been spent whittling away at hair knots ’til my gnarled arthritic hands are lunging for the nearest scissors.

Nobody knows the trouble her hair has seen.

There has been much growling and muttering from me, occasional tears from her, and little to no tenderness or song-singing.

If this sounds like your house, Day 6 of my 31-day blogging challenge (#write31Days) is for you. I’m posting 31 days of fun/funny stuff for families, and here’s something that’s really fun: brushing your kid’s hair without drama.

So put this on your shopping list: the “Wet” Brush.

My friend whose daughter has butt-length Crystal Gayle hair turned me to this one.

And y’all. This thang works.

I have no idea how. It looks just like any ordinary old brush. But it’s got voodoo detangling powers infused in its bristles.

You can get it at Target for like, $8, or something.

One reviewer on Amazon wrote that this magical brush “glides through the nappiest of birds’ nests with ease.”

That’s what I was gonna say.

Ta da.

It still takes a while to work through this hot mess, but we all live to tell the story. And there is even occasional humming.

A fun thing for families? NOT crying.

So that’s my Day 6.

You’re welcome.

P.S. I stole the word “Hairoics” from my ALL-TIME FAVORITE puntastic hair salon name. (Hairoics is in Nags Head, NC if you’re ever vacationing and need to get your roots done. Or maybe buy a Wet Brush.)

Day 5 – WIGS.

October 5, 2014October 5, 2014 / DeeDeeFilly / Leave a comment

Wig. It’s a short word. It requires no explanation. A big goofy wig is inherently FUNNY.

(As is a Kristen Wiig, but I’ll save that for another day.)

Trying on wigs (if you can get past concerns about cooties) is one of life’s great hilarities.

Target has this new line of wigs for Halloween – all huge and 3-D and not at all hairy –that BEG to be tried on and Instagrammed.

Here’s Lucy doing exactly that – channeling her inner Kate Moss.

FIERCE.

So if you’re out cruising the aisles this afternoon, take a break from hissing at your children hanging out of the cart like chattering monkeys, their wee spaghetti arms grabbing every Halo mini-figure set and box of Cocoa Puffs in sight.

On Day 5 of my 31 day blogging challenge (#write31Days), here’s my genius fun/funny/funktastic idea for your family:

Take yourself a breather in the Halloween aisle.

Go try on those big stupid wigs. Take dorky pictures. Laugh like snorting mules.

You might just all make it out of the store alive.

Day 4 – Saturday is for DONUTS

October 4, 2014 / DeeDeeFilly / 3 Comments

This box is either half empty – or half full – depending on how you look at it.

This used to hold many donuts. (We’ve been busy this Saturday morning.)

As part of the 31 day writing challenge I’ve undertaken (#write31Days), I’m sharing 31 days of my funnest/funniest stuff for families. So far, it’s involved taxidermy and books that say “BooBoo Butt,” so yeah, it’s been pretty high-brow.

That trend continues.

Allow me to impart a little parenting wisdom from my vast repertoire of wisdom.

Donuts are the way to a child’s heart.

Especially the ones in the yellow box that we have around here.

For local yokels, run – don’t walk – as fast as your chubby little donut-lovin’ legs can carry you to Flanders Donuts in Niantic, CT. I all but licked this plate, so you’ll just have to trust me. It was gooood.

I suggest you go get yourself a box of donuts this weekend. Somewhere. Anywhere. (Preferably in the yellow box or where there’s a neon “Hot Doughnuts Now” sign — if such fine dining options are available to you.)

These sugar bombs of glazed goodness may not pass the Michelle Obama test, but trust me, you will be BELOVED for it.

And your wee ones will be QUIET for a few delicious minutes.

Little faces stuffed with love and sprinkles.

Now THAT’s the makings of a happy Saturday.

Tales from the Crib

Married with Children…& Other Issues

Author: DeeDeeFilly