Grand Ideas That End In Olives

I have these grand ideas sometimes. 

Sometimes, when I'm over caffeinated and not already exhausted by my day (usually, before like, 9:30am), I pop on Pinterest, get excited, pin 428 pins on paper roll tube crafts and hand rolled pumpkin spice gluten free pasta noodles, and fully intend on doing each and every one of those pins, that month. 

Especially during the holidays. 

I had this great stupid idea that I was going to do 31 days of Halloween in the month of October. You know, because I have all these great (not my original) ideas that I can punch out! And it's Halloween so it's fun! It's pumpkins! It's monsters! It's family time together!

It's stupid. 

No, it really isn't. But it's unrealistic, and whatever Martha Stewart-wannabe that created the idea of 31 days of Halloween (also found on Pinterest) obviously has no job, hires a maid, doesn't involve her kids in any extra curricular activities and even then, probably lied that she was doing an activity every day. 

But dammit, I wanted to try. 

October 1st was easy. We pulled out the Halloween bins and decorated the house. I would consider that an "activity". 

But then, another day passed, and another, and suddenly it's nearing the end of the 3rd, I'm barely coming home from work, and we have baseball games tonight. 

What a stupid grand idea of mine. 

But, I want to make it fun for us, I really do. So, I decided that dinner (if you can call it that, because it was at 3:30 in the afternoon due to impending baseball games) was going to be Halloweenie. 

I took some sourdough rolls, cut them in half. Slapped some ham and salami on it, and then took some provolone cheese and cut some jags on the edges to make it look like teeth, and put the other half of the roll on top, and bake for a bit. Then, I added some sliced olives for the eyes and carrots for the spikes or whatever, and tada! It was some sort of lizard dragon monster thing. I put them on the kids' plates and waited for them to get home from school, grinning victoriously to myself that I successfully managed to squeeze some sort of Halloween out of the day. The kids will be thrilled!

The monster sandwich with cheese teeth and poisonous olive eyeballs. 

The boys came home from school and I was excited! Camden was first, bounced over to the kitchen table, and then stopped abruptly, staring at his sandwich-creatures. I expected a laugh from him, but instead he stared at it suspiciously, stuck out a finger and said: "Are those...olives?" while cringing as if I were trying to poison him. 

"Oh, just pick the olives off. I needed something for eyeballs. But isn't he a cool little dragon guy?"

"Yeah. I'm going to throw those olives away because olives are gross."

Calen came in next. Okay! He's always my easy to please one. He'll see it and giggle and give me a few compliments and fully appreciate it. He always does. 

Calen wandered over to the table and took an extra long look at his sandwich. I eagerly awaited his response. 

"Mom, are those olives...?"

YES OKAY THEY'RE F**KING OLIVES. - I didn't say. 

"Yes, throw them away. They're just for decoration. I just thought it'd be funny."

"Yeah. I just don't like olives."

"I know."

And that was the most I got out of either them. They ate their dragon sandwiches, or whatever they were, sans olives, and that was the end of it. 

Whatever. I tried. 

Later, the boys were giggling about their dragon sandwiches to each other in the car. So they did actually like their sandwiches and the creativity behind it, though they weren't about to let me know about it, because that would mean they'd have to publicly forgive me for putting OLIVES on their sandwiches.