Oooo spooky…Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and I are are watching and posting about spooky cinema for the next two months, here and over on our Instagram accounts. We are starting fairly family friendly and working our way up to the scariest!! I love a thriller or chiller!

This is the movie I have been waiting for! We watch The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, both the cartoon and the Tim Burton version, every single Halloween. I have been watching the Disney cartoon version for longer than I care to say, and upon reading when the Burton version came out, yeah, that one too.

I love this story for some reason, so much. You know how there are people out there who watch and read every iteration of Jane Austen stories? Well, I am like that with Sleepy Hollow.

Let’s begin with the cartoon, shall we?

We watched this one with Wyatt and like his mother, he loved it. It will always be nostalgic for me. My little brother and I used to watch it together every year, we know all the words, and now we watch it with our children. It’s pretty fantastic. Brom Bones is a perfect villain, Ichabod the quirkiest hero (although, is he?), and Bing Crosby singing and narrating just is the icing on the cake.

I have two favorite parts – the scene where Brom is singing about the Headless Horseman and scaring the heck out of Ichabod, and the part where Ichabod is heading home from the party through the woods that night. I love how they made all the sounds of the woods at night have an alternate sound – the toads croaking Ichabod, the birds cry sounding like beware..there is just so much in that one part.

Then, after Wyatt fell asleep, we moved on to the Tim Burton version.

At this time in my life, 1999, I loved Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci (and Winona Ryder but she wasn’t in this one) and I remember being so excited to see this movie in the theater. It literally came out the day after my birthday, so my friends and I went as part of my birthday celebration. And I was instantly a big fan. It turned my childhood spooky season favorite into a version that young adult me loved just as much. And now middle age me still loves it. Crazy.

The costume and set design for this movie is amazing – everything is so visually interesting. The village of Sleepy Hollow is not so beautiful and quaint, not like the wholesome look of the one in the cartoon. It is more grim, ramshackle, and reflects the atmosphere of a town gone wrong. Because something is very wrong in Sleepy Hollow – people just keep getting beheaded.

The town elders send away to the city (NYC) for a detective, and loose cannon weirdo detective Ichabod Crane played by Johnny Depp is sent to investigate. He brings his toolkit of inventions and relies heavily on science, logic, and reason, and refuses to believe anything supernatural could be behind the murders. Until the day he comes face to er..face with the Headless Horseman. That sends him shaking to his bed. But he quickly rallies and gets back on the job. Unfortunately, the Horseman seems to have an agenda and despite Crane’s presence and investigation, the townsfolk just keep on dying. Crane figures out the secret, that the Horseman is being controlled by a flesh and blood human being – only who could it be? Baltus Van Tassel? The sweet Katrina?

Every actor in this movie is phenomenal and the cast included some big names – Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Christopher Walken (so creepy good!), /Michael Gambon, Jeffrey Jones, Miranda Richardson to name a few. Let me amend – almost every actor. Billy and I are not sold on Casper Van Dien as Brom Bones. He just didn’t have the presence in our opinion to play such an important character. However, we can’t think of anyone who would be better. Any suggestions? We also are so confused about young Ichabod’s home life. Was his dad a minister? Why did he have a room full of torture devices? Was he a witch hunter – and if so, why did he marry a witch? Also, wasn’t the whole witch trials over by 1799? We talk about this every time we watch.

This movie was the creepiest and goriest of the movies we watched for spooky season – the perfect last hurrah and I am so glad that we built our way up to it. It was a perfect finale to our Spooky Season Cinema. You can read Lisa’s movie thoughts here!

Let’s give some props to Lisa – she was a super trooper through this spooky season cinema as she is not a fan of spooky movies.

And, we had so much fun with this, that we are doing it all over again for Christmas! We will start posting the week of Thanksgiving and we would love to make it a linky event as well!

My Sunday Post is hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer
Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date

Last week started off pretty good then very quickly went downhill. We had to say goodbye to our sweet Maggie Jane Friday after she suddenly and unexpectedly took a turn. Cats often hide their illness and pain and Maggie must have been hiding something for a while, which breaks my heart. She was the sweetest troublemaker, independent and sassy, smart and goofy, kitty. We were lucky to have her in our lives for as long as we did. We will miss her very much as she was much loved.

Read Last Week:

I actually didn’t read anything. It was a really rough week.

Reading This Week:

I have certain book series that I save for when I really need the most comfort, and the Jan Karon Mitford series is one of them. After last week, I needed some serious comfort reading so I pulled out At Home in Mitford for some cozy self-care reading.

Posted Last Week:

A Whirlwind Weekend

Homeschool Journey: Nevada, Frida Kahlo, and a Sweet Story About Families

Watching/Listening:

We were all over the place with tv last week. The USA Ghosts, the British version of Ghosts, a little bit of the Great British Baking Show, and Miss Scarlet and the Duke, Season 2. We also finished up The Woman in White which was excellent.

I also watched the Disney cartoon The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as well as the Tim Burton movie for the movie posts Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and I have been doing. We usually post them on Thursdays but with the week I was having we moved our post. It will be posted tomorrow, on Halloween, instead.

As for listening, mainly Taylor Swift’s Midnights. Last week I mentioned I was sure how I felt about it, but now I am really enjoying it.

We started off the weekend with a birthday party for my youngest (as of right now) niece. We haven’t seen them in far too long, so it was so nice to see her and her sister’s sweet little faces.

We unfortunately had to leave earlier than we had planned due to an issue at Billy’s work. He had to get down to Detroit and fix the issue which was a bummer, but we had a nice time until we had to go.

Then Saturday was the Detroit Zoo Boo! We went with my brother and his fam, my SIL’s mother, Michelle, and my mom. The kiddos looked so cute!

It was the most beautiful fall night, if not a tiny bit too warm to start with. I want fall to be fall darn it. But it was an absolutely gorgeous night to be out and about, and everyone was so relaxed and just enjoying the event. We have gone before in the cold and rain, so this was a nice reprieve from that! I particularly loved seeing the animals framed in the autumn light and foliage. We wandered around, taking our time, making sure to visit as many favorites as we could.

I even tried a cider slush, which was delicious!

It was late when we finally headed home, and we were all full of happy moments and ready for bed. We had an early morning coming up, after all!

The next morning Billy, Wyatt, and I were off on another adventure – Billy and I feeling barely recovered from the weekend thus far but we were more than up to the challenge.

We wandered around the orchard and peeked into the corn, soaking up the October sunshine. After we had explored to our heart’s content we headed back to the shop for pumpkins and doughnuts and cider.

It was a perfect, peaceful moment. We had the whole area to ourselves, and we took a moment to just be.

Billy and I enjoyed our drinks while Wyatt played in the dirt, because we are those parents. You would never guess that up until two years ago Wyatt would not sit on the grass or touch dirt by how filthy he is here, but it took me years of working with him to get to this place. We were all in a place of happy. The orchard we go to makes their own hard cider and we always treat ourselves. I had a cranberry cider while Billy had elderberry, and both were so good.

When we got home Billy and I had to hit the house and clean up! We spent the weekend playing, and the house needed some love – plus my brother and fam were coming over that evening for a fire and we needed to make things presentable. We had popcorn around the fire and good conversation, and it was the perfect end to a fantastic weekend.

We are winding up our month of Hispanic artists and it has been a really fun unit! We started Frida Kahlo last week and will continue with a few more art projects and books about her this week, before adding in Jose Posada, just in time for the Dia de Muertos.

We read a book about Frida from the Little People, Big Dreams series which I absolutely love. I introduced who Frida Kahlo was and Wyatt and I put together a little Frida doll kit from Michael’s Craft Store. It was a super simple sewing project, with a big plastic needle and holes to thread through, and then the rest was all felt stickers. I did the sewing to help Wyatt out and he added the rest!

Our state for the week was Nevada! It always surprises me which interesting facts Wyatt chooses as his favorites. For Nevada he thought it was really cool that it became a state on Halloween (in 1864) and he also really liked learning about the blue tailed skink. That part wasn’t too surprising.

For our supplemental language arts we read The More You Give and we discussed how love can be shown by different acts that can’t be held in your hands, like pancakes in the morning, growing strawberries together, all these little things that are really actually really big things. I had hoped to make a felted acorn with him to accompany our reading but we just ran out of time!

I am super excited about this week ~ rather than study a new state this week for social studies, we will be instead learning more about Dia de los Murertos. We have talked about it here and there, visited ofrendas, but we will be digging a little further this week. And all the art we are going to do! (hopefully lol!)

What We Used:

This section contains Amazon Affiliate links. In addition to the curriculum I am creating for him, we also use curriculum from The Good and the Beautiful, The Waldock Way, and Blossom and Root for phonics, reading, science, and social studies.

La Catrina Emotions (to introduce a little Spanish) || Nevada || S is for Silver || The More You Give || Frida Kahlo

My Sunday Post is hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer
Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date

Hi all! I hope you are having a great weekend! Ours has been very full but fun. We had a birthday party, trick or treating at the zoo, and this morning we are heading out to the orchard for apples and pumpkins and doughnuts! And hard cider because the orchard we go to makes their own and it is fantastic.

Read Last Week:

I devoured this book! I could not stop reading it – it was wild and weird and I needed to know the end so I just kept reading, waaaaayyy past my bedtime. It was a bit of a crazy read but I really enjoyed it.

Reading This Week:

So, I have three books left on my October TBR, and not enough time to read them all. Gone are my days of reading 2-3 books a week lol. I am not sure which book I will end up reading – two are shorter so maybe just maybe if I try hard I can read two books. We will see!

Small Town, Big Magic || Goblin || The Raven Spell

Posted Last Week:

Family Day Out at The Henry Ford Museum

What Wyatt’s Reading: Halloween Edition

Wednesday Morning Coffee Catch Up

Field Trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts

Homeschool Journey: Diego Rivera, Texas, and a Field Trip

Watching/Listening:

We are still watching Ghosts, which makes us laugh. We also started watching The Woman in White and it is so good!!!

Tonight we are watching a double feature for Spooky Season Cinema – The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the cartoon and the movie. These are my favorite spooky season movies so I am excited.

I also started listening to Taylor Swift’s new album Midnights. I love her Evermore and Folklore albums but I am not sold on this one yet.

And that is it for me today! I hope you all are doing well.

Today’s brew of the day is Cafe Bustelo. It apparently has more caffeine than I am used to in my coffee. So if I get a bit off topic and rambly today, blame the Bustelo!

This past weekend Billy went camping and Wyatt and I had a quiet weekend at home. Which was nice, we watched movies and read books and took some walks including one along the riverfront. When Billy got home though, he seemed to bring chaos with him (thank you Lisa for this description lol). He hadn’t been home for an hour when the hose on the washing machine broke, flooding that area of the basement. Then about 20 minutes later, we heard a loud bang from outside somewhere near and then the power went out! A transformer blew and took out our neighborhood’s electricity. I had to race around putting towels on all of the gecko tanks to try and trap the heat in and was stressing about what we would do if the power was out for a long time since it is so cold right now. However, our city manufactures its own electricity and they had a team out to fix it right away. They are usually quick like that if an outage occurs but it made me think about getting a generator! The three of us and the cats could always vacate to my mom’s house but I don’t see us lugging the five lizards and their setups out with us too! Lol. Billy ran up to the store and bought a replacement hose and fixed the washer so that is all taken care of as well.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and watch a few YouTubers that I really like and want to support, even in a tiny way. So, I budget a few dollars a month for Patreon and choose a few to subscribe to for a while. Recently I switched them up and started being a patron of The Night Owl Podcast, and Alexandra Roselyn, a booktuber who always picks the best middle grade reads. I love to read middle grade, as a preview of books for Wyatt but also just because. She reads a lot of other genres as well, but I mainly started following her for the MG content. Anyway, she just launched a Patreon and she has put so much thought into it! It is designed with a whole secret society theme, and even the most affordable tier has a ton to offer, with two book clubs, liveshows, printables, a discord (whatever that is, can someone please explain to this Gen Xer? ) , and just a bunch of goodness. All for $3. I am sort of excited about this. She has set it up like a little story, a “club” name, it is just really cute. I am not sure if the middle grade book is designed for parents/educators because her YouTube seems to target that demographic, or if it is for actual kids, but I will be participating in the Adult Cozy Reads book club.

So I have that going on. And just in time for tea season! I have been stocking up on teas, from our favorite indulgences to our normal everyday tea. In our case, that is Red Rose tea, my favorite. I am so distressed though that the little ceramic figurines are no longer included in every box! You can still get them by ordering tea online from them but it makes me sad. For me, it was the adult equivalent of fishing the toy out of the cereal box. Apparently not everyone appreciated the little ceramic figurines so they moved it to this situation, but…it’s the end of an era I guess.

I decided to switch up some artwork this past week as well. I found a box of frames in our basement that I had forgotten about, left over from an old photography show I did, and put them to use! I framed my grandfather’s library card, my grandfather’s swim team picture (he is bottom row, second from left), and a painting Wyatt did of a butterfly. I also framed my grandfather’s report card but I gave that to my brother as a gift.

Edited to add: About a year ago I started listening to a podcast called Your Own Backyard produced and written by Chris Lambert, an investigative journalist. The podcast focused on the disappearance of Kristin Smart, who went missing after a party in 1996. Lambert’s work on the podcast and investigative abilities renewed interest in her case, and also produced evidence and witnesses. The energy of this podcast kept the case moving and yesterday, Smart’s family received justice after 26 long years – Paul Flores was convicted of Kristin’s murder. The podcast is very sensitive, compassionate, and well thought out, without the sensationalism that comes with some true crime podcasts. I hope that today Smart’s family has some sense of closure, and I hope that they continue to get answers.

And that is about all I have this morning! I am going to go read a few blogs, and drink my coffee and eat my apple pie for breakfast before starting our morning for real. I hope you all have a lovely day!

It was a great week! As it is Hispanic Heritage month, I thought it would be a great time to study a few Mexican artists, and we kicked it off with Diego Rivera. I knew a little about him previously, but not a whole lot. I was fascinated to learn that he was commissioned by his country’s government to complete a series of murals that was intended to “inspire and reunify the country after the horror of the revolution” (Diego-rivera.net). In our study, I focused on emphasizing to Wyatt how Rivera was an artist of and for the people, and depicted scenes from everyday life, workers and vendors and flower sellers.

For our art project, I thought it would be fun to recreate a version of one of Rivera’s flower seller paintings. I drew and cut out pieces of the actual seller for Wyatt to place and glue to create the picture, and had him cut out his version of the flowers. Then he went back and added in details with crayon. I was actually pretty impressed with how his flower stems turned out, honestly.

In Social Studies, we turned our attention to Texas- this state is so huge and has so much history, culture, biodiversity, just really so much in general, that frankly there was no way we could even really come close to even talking about it all. So, we stuck to the basics like the state flower, tree, etc. I wasn’t happy with what we learned but we can do a deep dive another time.

We of course also worked on the basics – spelling, reading, math, etc but I don’t share too much about that on here, except for our language arts projects. And this week the book we needed never came in! Since he does so much other reading during the week I didn’t worry about it and we will resume that part of school this week.

And, we went on a field trip! However, I am going to do a whole post about it tomorrow. Sorry, that was a bit cheeky of me probably to mention it and then not talk about it but there is so much to share.

What We Used:

This section contains Amazon Affiliate links. In addition to the curriculum I am creating for him, we also use curriculum from The Good and the Beautiful, The Waldock Way, and Blossom and Root for phonics, reading, science, and social studies.

L is for Lone Star || Diego Rivera His World and Ours

Overall, this was a good week. Not a ton of “extra” stuff but we did have that field trip!