Cambridge Carnival

Today was Cambridge Carnival and Joy, Karma, and I took the kiddos. Joy and Mini T's family is partly from Barbados so they wore blue and yellow like the flag. Karma and I are both white and we don't know the other kids' heritage so we all decided to represent Barbados too. I did my best to paint everyone's faces with the flag. I wound up touching it up midway through and the second go-around looked better than the first attempts. Oh well. Here are some pictures of us:

Group photo of everyone. 

Primo and Mini T watching the parade.

Primo, Secondo, and Terzo at the kids' table.

Secondo decked out in Barbados' colors.

Joy and I sharing a drink in a pineapple.

Two things that were really cool in the kids' section were people teaching you how to make origami flowers and people setting off film canister rockets with water and alka seltzer. Here's a video I found online about how to make the rockets:

We ran into people we knew at Carnival but I forgot to get pictures. I did, however, find some gorgeous photos of the event (including one of my friend and her son!) online taken by a fellow named Larry Aaronson.

My friend Jewel and her son.

People dancing.

Man with amazing whip skills.

Dancers.

Dancer representing Barbados.

More dancers.

More dancers.

More dancers.

Another person representing Barbados.

Dancers.

Dancer.

Dancer.

Aren't his photos amazing?! I wish he had a photography website I could link you to...

Carnivorous Plants and Fairies

Today was a great day. I began the day by taking a trip to Tower Hill Botanic Garden to look at their carnivorous plant show. Before this show I had heard of Venus Fly Traps and Pitcher Plants. Turns out there are TONS more carnivorous plants, including some that grow in New England. Who knew?

Venus Fly Traps.

The Judith plant (I thought it was pretty).

Pitcher Plant closeup.

Me with another type of pitcher plant.

After the plant show, I raced home to join Joy, Cupcake, and Mini T in dressing up as fairies for Fairy Day. We looked AWESOME. We took the T all the way to a street festival in our fairy garb and then we hung there for a few hours.

Cupcake before leaving the house.

Joy and Cupcake on their way to Fairy Day.

Mini T running down the sidewalk.

Joy waiting for the T and looking stunning.

Our fairy shadows.

Cupcake eating my horn while I smile nicely.

Cupcake smiling nicely while I make a scary face.

Joy and Cupcake.

Mini T in front of the candy store.

At this point Cupcake had to go to a party so the rest of us went to meet up with Belle at her work. But first we took a detour to the park for fairy frolicking and pictures.

Mini T playing with my fairy dust.

Me being a fairy behind a tree.

Me, Mini T, and Joy in our fairy outfits.

Here are a couple more pictures of my costume for good measure, because I'm super proud of it:

Me with my wand and my face paint and crown clearly visible. 

Serious fairy me.

Blowing fairy dust.

I kind of love this picture. I think it captures my mischievous fairy personality.

And now that you've made it through this whole post, here's a bonus picture of Sebastian on the day we made our costumes.

Sebastian with an orange bow on his head.

Also, in case you want to make your own fairy wings the website I used is here.

Work

This week I've done nothing but work work work work work work.

I'm even posting this from work.

What else? I hung out with Cupcake and we worked on making fairy costumes for an event this weekend. My big achievement of the evening was my fairy dust bottle. I took a $1 round glass bottle with cork stopper from the dollar store and used jute twine to weave a net around it and braid a strap so I can wear it. Then I mixed salt and food coloring to make the fairy dust which I then put into the bottle. I also have these kickass paper maché horns left over from a dragon costume I wore to a parade and costume contest several years ago which I thought would work perfectly for my fairy costume. Since I don't have an entire dragon headpiece to attach them to this time, I figured that while I was on a rope work kick I could weave a crown for them to attach to. Unfortunately my crown looks more like an 80s headband. Back to the drawing board?

Bottle of "fairy dust." 

Me and my horns.

Me wearing my ridiculous 80s headband.

Mmmmmm….

I spent my Saturday cleaning up the backyard with Joy and Belle. It looks pretty good now. Joy even got solar lights for the garden. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea:

Cherry tomatoes.

Hot peppers.

Chocolate Mint.

Regular Mint.

Tiny Cucumber.

Chives.

Sage.

Fairy garden!

Ginormous Sunflower.

Scarecrow and sunflowers.

Joy made empanadas, rice, and plantains for dinner. Belle made apple pie cupcakes with caramel frosting. And everything was vegan. Don't you wish your housemates could cook like mine?

Dinner.

Dessert.