Halloween

Kevin made some decorations for Halloween. He made several ghosts using napkins and string; a scarecrow using some of his clothes, a hat, and an old broom, and these decorations for the door.

DO NOT ENTER!!!!
P.S. in back There's Danger in The air and on The ground.
Do Not Enter is just a joke, you'll still get candy.

I did a lot of sewing this year.

Kevin wanted to be Harry Potter. His costume was the easiest. The robe was an XL black shirt from Walmart, I made the scarf, he used a stick for his wand, and the rest was from his closet.

Ann Marie was Ponyo because we're nerds. I was aiming for her to look like this. Ponyo is a Hayo Miyazaki film (we own most of his movies) about a fish who uses her father's magic to become a human and becomes friends with a boy named Sōsuke. She loves ham, and at one point in the movie Sōsuke's mother gives them ramen with ham on top.

I used a pattern my grandma gave me a few years ago, and it ended up being more complicated than I expected. I learned how to make and attach a collar, sew french seams, and make buttons instead of a zipper in back, plus I got really good at gathering.

Heidi wanted to be Belle. I had wanted to sew a Belle dress for a long time, so I looked up several tutorials and thought I could pull it off. I used a jumper pattern that I have made several times for the main dress. I wanted to make gathers in the skirt so it would look like Belle's dress, and some tutorials suggested using elastic, which I thought sounded easy. Unfortunately, the result looked pretty bad, and when I tried to pick out the stitches the elastic made it very difficult and I ended up ripping holes in the fabric. So I cut out a completely new skirt and decided not to bother with the gathers.

The Wednesday before the Trunk or Treat party I had finished the main part of the dress, but after my issues with the elastic I was a little demoralized and I had to give myself a pep talk to remind myself that I was trying to replicate a dress that never existed in real life because it was a cartoon. I felt a little better after seeing the store-bought version at Walmart because I knew mine would look better. So I used what was left of the first skirt to make long strips for the sashes at the bottom of the skirt, and then I made the fabric that goes around the shoulders, and then I decorated the dress with some little roses that I had bought at Jo-Anns.

In the end I was very happy with the result, and what's more important is that Heidi loves her dress. She puts it on all the time to play dress-up.

I way underestimated the number of children in our ward. I had bought a bag of plastic dinosaurs to pass out at the Trunk or Treat party. We saw the bishop and his wife at Costco earlier that day and I realized as we were chatting that we wouldn't have nearly enough to pass out, so we got a bag of candy at Costco. I ended up handing out all of the dinosaurs and most of the candy. I like to hand out the dinosaurs because I feel like the kids will be going trick or treating as well and they don't need any more candy, plus lots of kids love the dinosaurs, but the older kids really just want the candy. I tried having the candy hidden and only giving it to the older kids, but it's hard to tell at what age they want dinosaurs vs. candy, so maybe next year I'll just put both out and let them pick.

At the school, Heidi's class had a party and then did an alphabet parade for the school. Ann Marie and I came to help with the party and see the parade. Heidi had the letter P, so she went as a present.

We had a nice time trick or treating in our neighborhood. Ryan and I both ended up going with the kids. Our porch light turns off if it doesn't sense motion, so we didn't get a lot of trick or treaters. Trick or treating in a neighborhood was a new experience for me because I grew up in the country. We would go visit a few of Grammy's neighbors and then go see the Rosenbaums and get some of their yummy popcorn balls, then when I was older we started having Trunk or Treat parties. So I wasn't really sure what proper trick or treating etiquette involves. Turns out that generally you just go to the houses where the porch light is on. :) We ended up joining with some other kids and their parents and grandfather, so it was nice to meet some of the neighbors.

Halloween 2015

Happy Halloween from Superman, Anna (from Frozen), and a lady bug.

In the past I haven't done a lot of sewing for Halloween, but this year I thought it would be fun. I sewed Heidi's cape and dress, Kevin's cape, and Ann Marie's ladybug wings. They all turned out really well. I think the zipper on Heidi's dress is my best yet. (It took me a few days to work up the courage to start on the zipper. They're still challenging even though I've done it four or five times by myself.)

When the kids woke up in the morning they were as excited as they would have been on Christmas morning. We had a fabulous ward Halloween carnival at the church in the morning. There were breakfast, carnival games, and a fun spook alley with "gross" things to touch (like spaghetti for guts and a jello brain), then trunk or treating at the end. Ryan said that Ann Marie figured out the concept after three cars, and after that she insisted on carrying her own bucket and going to the cars herself. Kevin didn't figure out the point of trick or treating until he was four.

In the evening we went trick-or-treating in our apartment complex, which was very fun for the kids. Ann Marie figured out that people loved it when she waved and smiled sweetly at them, which might explain how she managed to get more candy than her older siblings. You should have seen her when we tried to take her candy bucket away when we were getting her ready for bed. She screamed bloody murder and held onto the bucket with a death grip.

I actually bought pumpkins this year. The kids were talking about carving pumpkins and I thought it might be a family home evening activity or something. But after I brought the pumpkins home the pumpkin-carving talk changed to, "Mom, when you carve my pumpkin I want it to look like such-and-such," which is when I realized that the kids weren't planning to carve their own pumpkins, which should have occurred to me much sooner. I didn't want to touch the slimy inside of the pumpkins at all. So we did put the pumpkins outside our door on Halloween, but other than that they ended up sitting on the kitchen counter with all the other clutter and not really being decorations. Then they got moldy spots on them and we threw them away.

Halloween

The kids had a fun Halloween this year. Kevin and Heidi dressed up as Pazu and Sheeta from Castle in the Sky, one of their favorite movies. The costumes were actually pretty easy to put together. For Heidi's Sheeta costume, I used one of my dark blue shirts to make a dress by following this tutorial, and that was the hardest part. It wasn't perfect, but for a Halloween costume it worked just fine. Then I bought a headband and braided Heidi's hair. Sheeta's stone is a very important part of the movie, so I drew the design with a yellow pencil onto blue construction paper and taped it to the medal Kevin got from playing basketball last spring. For Kevin's Pazu costume, I basted a patch to some worn out Sunday pants and cut the sleeves off of a brown button-up shirt I found at Goodwill to make a vest. The hat was borrowed from a friend and the bag was one I already had. When the kids got all dressed up it was so fun! I was really pleased with how the costumes turned out.

We had a ward trunk or treat party on October 30. Amazingly (and thankfully) it was not a chili cook-off (I know, heresy!). We had a baked potato bar, and it was actually really good. The kids even ate a good dinner. We ended up sharing a table with some people who recently moved here from China, and it was kind of funny to see their reactions to everything. They were very confused by the concept of a baked potato. One of the ladies held one up (still wrapped in foil) and said, "Are these steamed?" I explained that they were baked, and she wanted to know if they would taste like steamed potatoes, so I said they were kind of like steamed potatoes. They looked pretty skeptical, but they did eat the potatoes. I'm not sure if they liked them.

We had one friend from the ward who saw Kevin and Heidi in their costumes and knew who they were dressed up as without us telling him. There were a few more people who recognized them once we told them who they were, but apparently most people have never seen Castle in the Sky. Most people are missing out.

After dinner the kids were invited to dance on the stage, then we had trunk or treating outside. Normally we buy a big bag of candy from Costco for Halloween, but I didn't want to have all that sugar in the house this year, so instead we bought jelly bracelets and little plastic dinosaurs on Amazon and handed those out. I know the big kids were probably disappointed, but a lot of the little kids were really excited, and so were many of the parents.

I always enjoy seeing the kids get to try different types of candy after trick or treating. I never buy candy, so it's usually a fun new experience for them. Heidi didn't like the Sour Patch Kids (see the picture below). Actually, about the only candy she liked were suckers and smarties. She didn't even like any of the candy bars (which is okay, because Ryan and I were happy to take them off her hands).

On Halloween we went trick or treating in our apartment complex, which was also really fun. Ann Marie came along in the stroller dressed as an elephant, but I didn't get a picture of her. Maybe sometime I'll get around to it. I was pretty impressed by all of the kids who knew Kevin and said hi to him.

Happy Halloween.

I hosted Heidi's playgroup the week of Halloween, so we made jack-o-lanterns. I cut out the pumpkins and the mouths and shapes, and then I put glue on sponges. The kids dipped the black pieces on the sponge and then glued them on the paper. Most of the kids needed a lot of help, but I heard later from the parents that the kids were apparently very proud of their creations. That evening Kevin saw what we had done and wanted to make his own. (I had actually gotten the idea from Kevin's preschool, so he knew what to do.) He probably made five jack-o-lanterns. This was the extent of our pumpkin carving.

(The last one is Heidi's.)

Kevin was the Cat in the Hat and Heidi was Thing 1. I made the hat using this tutorial and it turned out great. The bow is just red felt that I cut into the general shape and pinned on his shirt. Heidi's sign is the inside circle from the brim of Kevin's hat with "Thing 1" written with a Sharpie. It was enough work for me to get my sewing fix and feel like they had decent costumes, but it wasn't way too much work for me. I was initially planning to make a cat body and everything, but then a friend pointed out that really a black shirt and pants would work just fine because all you really need is the hat, so that made things much more manageable.

The kids had a lot of fun trick or treating in our apartment complex. We ended up going around with some friends from our ward (the Larsens) who were in the hall as we came out. This was the first year that Kevin really understood what was going on. Heidi got the idea pretty quickly. They were both really cute. Heidi did an adorable happy dance at one of the first doors because she was so excited.

We had a tri-ward Halloween party this year. I suspect that the young men and young women thought it would be fun to do Halloween games for the kids, but since the three wards are combined for youth activities, that meant all three wards got combined for the party. The games in the classrooms were pretty well done, and the trunk or treating actually wasn't too bad. There were just way too many people crammed into the gym for dinner.

Trunk or Treat party

So, we had a good time at the ward party. The kids napped late and it took a while to get them in their costumes, and then there was traffic because last night was the UNC vs. NCSU game, so we ended up getting to the ward party an hour late. We had just about enough time to eat a little bit and then go trunk or treating.

I decided to rebel and bring bean dip and tortilla chips. Since we were late, most people probably didn't even know it was there, but I got a few compliments, and one guy said, "You brought this? Oh, bless you." Check out the awesome spiders made of olives that I put on top:

Ryan took Kevin trunk or treating and Heidi and I passed out candy. Kevin didn't really get the concept until the very end. At one of the last cars he saw one of his friends and he walked right up and said, "Trick or treat, Edward!" He's so smart, but sometimes he can be so oblivious.

Here are the kids in their costumes: Kevin the mad scientist (accessories: old computer hard drive and an electrical cord) with Heidi the pink lab mouse

Ryan said that even though parents and dentists and doctors freak out about kids having all that Halloween candy, there's something magical for kids about eating their Halloween candy. He's right. So I'm trying to let Kevin enjoy the magic. Heidi got to eat some Starbursts and thought they were great.