Arcade Toys

I meant to post these like a month ago.  😐  I have had a busy month, but I'm close enough to being caught up on the more important things that I figured I could take a few minutes to get these out there.  These toys were won from a claw game at Combat Ops when we went with our friends.  We had to wait in line to use this machine, and when we finally saw our chance, we decided to have Joe use it as we figured he'd be the most successful.  To our surprise, on his first try, he managed to grab two toys.  I reached into the compartment to grab them, but I quickly realized that one of the ones I was holding wasn't one that I saw drop from the claw.  I got on the ground to reach farther into what was actually a quite large compartment and found a couple more toys left behind.  So that was cool!  Haha!

The weeks have been flying by and I recently realized that Haleth is getting fairly old.  She'll be 2 years old in February!  I don't see her too much as she's always only been active while I'm sleeping, so I don't really know if she's really slowing down any.  But she seems healthy to me, so I hope I still have a long time with her as she's so sweet!

For the first few weeks of having Glorfindel, he was always already awake when I got up and would stay up each morning until about 10.  I'd also find him awake at night starting around 8, so I would get to interact with him a lot in a single day.  I especially loved hanging out with him in the mornings while I drank my coffee.  But as it's gotten colder and darker, he seems to have switched to a more normal hamster schedule like Haleth, and now I don't see him as much.  He's so dang cute though!  This was his first photo session, and he did so well!  I can't wait to do more pictures with him!

RIP Fili

 My little old ham, Fili passed away earlier this week.  He was about 2 years and 9 months old which is super old for a hamster and why he earned the nickname as my immortal ham.  I got Fili in March of 2020 (along with his brother Kili) from the Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control right before we went on lockdown for the pandemic.  Kili passed away back in April 2022, but Fili lived on for another 7 months.  Fili loved food but got progressively grumpier over the last 6 months and seemed happy being mostly left alone, so that's what I did.  After Kili passed away, Fili became my favorite office buddy because he took over spending a lot of time awake during the day to get snacks and go for a run on his wheel.  However the last couple of weeks, Fili really wasn't out and about much, so I knew that his age was finally catching up with him.  Each day that he would wobble out of his little hut to grab a drink and putter around doing hamster things brought a smile to my face knowing he made it to yet another day.  I'm gonna miss the little guy!  Below are some pictures I never ended up posting of him, including the last 6 pictures which were taken just last week.  💗

Sweet Potato

Happy Halloween!  I hope you all are having fun and staying safe!

For Haleth's final Hamster Halloween Costume, I knew I wanted to dress her up as a sweet potato.  I'd like to start by saying that I hope that no one takes any offense as that is not at all my intention with this.  So the explanation is that I have nicknames or sayings for all my pets, and from the beginning, I've always called Haleth my cute little potato.  I also generally refer to my hamsters as hams.  So from there it didn't take long until I began calling Haleth my yam.  So this final costume is to honor my favorite sweet potato aka yam.

It's been such a joy doing Hamster Halloween Costumes again this year.  I hope you all have enjoyed following along with my silly creations.  While I am sure I won't get another chance to do this with Haleth as she is already fairly old, I am quite confident that Glorfindel will be able to continue this tradition as he already begs for attention and I think he will be a fabulous model.  💗

Meeple

Today has been a busy day, so I'm just now getting to posting day 5 of my Hamster Halloween Costumes series.  The idea of doing a meeple came from last weekend when Joe and I were out for lunch after church.  I told him my plans and how I was running out of time to actually do the project.  At that point, I had too many ideas and needed to make decisions on which ideas to use for this year and due to the time constraints, I specifically needed easy ideas.  As we talked and finalized the list, this just popped in my head, and I knew it was perfect!  Joe and I love board games and have over 150 on shelves that line a wall in our basement, so I'm actually surprised that this idea hadn't come to me sooner.  Of course, an idea for a costume has to include the set or background for the costume to make sense.  With so many games, I had to figure out which one to use.  Obviously my choice had to include actual meeples which did narrow down the list of possible games I could use to about 10.  My first idea was Stone Age and that's the one I went with.  Stone Age was one of the first board games we got when we first started building our collection.  I really love it, and we still play it fairly often even though we have so many newer games.

I know I put way more effort into setting up this game than necessary, but I wanted it to look like it could be a real, in-progress game of Stone Age.  As I carefully arranged pieces, Arien kept batting them around so I eventually had to lock her up.  And then I brought out Haleth, got her costume on, and set her in the middle of the board. I think she must have been a bit confused as to what she was supposed to be.  Instead of staying in one spot as a meeple for this worker placement game, she acted like King Kong trying to destroy everything in her path.  In the end, I was just pleased that Haleth didn't eat any of the game pieces.  😂

Among Us

I have mentioned this before, but pretty much every Saturday we get together with a group of friends for all sorts of shenanigans.  Last week one of the guys was sick and stayed home, so we decided we would play Among Us with him.  It had been quite a while since we had played, and we had to wait for updates which included new roles.  We weren't sure if we'd like them but decided to give them a try and found they made the game even better!  I don't know how many times we played, but I am pretty sure I was the impostor for at least half the games.  I definitely prefer being a Crewmate, but I've gotten SO much better at lying for games with friends and actually won some games as the Impostor.  😎

I will admit that this costume was not at all on my list of ideas.  But after we played Among Us again last weekend, I knew I wanted to include it this year!  I initially thought I would make it look exactly like my character with all the accessories I have, but I kinda ran out of time for the extras.  😁  In case you are dying to know what my character looks like, I typically stick with a chef's hat and a hamster in a ball that follows me around.  But for the record, hamster balls are actually dangerous for hamsters, so I'm not advocating for the use of them.

I don't think Haleth would make a very good Crewmate as she clearly is more interested in eating than in doing tasks.  And I like to believe that the last picture of Haleth is her impression of what she would look like if the Impostor killed her.  Hahaha!

Tinkerbell

 For day 3 of Hamster Halloween Costumes, I eventually landed on Tinkerbell.  This idea itself was one I had written down for a while now, but there were 2 or 3 other ideas that were much higher on the list of possibilities for this year.  But yesterday, when it came time to make the final costume, I wanted something that I perceived to be the easiest to make and fastest to complete.  I figured a plain green cape for the dress and a pair of wings would be perfect.  The fabric I used for the wings was actually quite difficult to work with and since I was rushing, they didn't turn out quite as nice as I had hoped.  But I really do love the final outcome!

Haleth had a bit of trouble fitting the whole piece of apple in her cheek, but eventually she got it all in.  😅  I did manage to catch her tongue out in two pictures.  I think that was just her getting into character as a little fairy that spends her time surrounded by children who don't want to grow up.  Haleth did a wonderful job yesterday modeling these last two costumes that I hadn't photographed yet.  I knew she had it in her, but she was just so rotten with the first group we did that I was second guessing my decision to be doing costumes with her.  I actually think she's noticed that she has a cute boy (aka Glorfindel) living next to her and that's why even though she's getting old now, she's been acting a bit crazy at times.  Hahaha!

I do wish that hamsters could stay young forever instead of growing up so fast.  😕  As a quick update, Fili hasn't been waking up as much during the day, but I still typically see him at least once.  I realized yesterday that he already has Tarcil's record beat for being my oldest ham.  I've been referring to Fili as my immortal ham, which I know isn't true, but for now it kinda seems like it could be.  Haha!

String of Pearls

For Haleth's second Halloween costume, I knew I wanted to do a houseplant.  In the past year and a half, I have really gotten into houseplants.  My collection has grown, I've learned so much, and I even joined an awesome local Facebook group where I have bought from and sold to.  I'm a sucker for syngoniums, pothos, and calatheas.  Although I managed to get spider mites in my terrarium where I keep my calatheas, and it's still unclear if I'm gonna win this battle or not.  😓  Pro tip: make sure to actually quarantine new plants for at least 2 weeks.  😐  Anyways, my three favorite plants that I own are my albo syngonium, manjula pothos, and white fusion calathea.  I definitely prefer the leafy plants that want lots of water and typically don't do very well with succulents and cacti, but I'm kinda getting the hang of those too.

When I was trying to pick what houseplant to use as inspiration for Haleth's costume, I immediately thought of string of pearls.  I have a tiny one from my sister that started out as just 4 little pearls and has grown a lot.  You can kinda see it in the background, directly behind Haleth.  I mentioned yesterday that Haleth was a bit rotten for me during pictures, but I didn't elaborate.  Well, I initially had the string of pearls in the front to be more prominent in the picture, but the little stinker tried to eat them, and I quickly found myself trying to get a hamster to spit something out of its mouth as one does with dogs or cats.  Surprisingly, I was able to get Haleth to drop the pearls and only one got a little damaged.  😅😂