Halloween

I found this costume for really cheap last year and had to get it. When I got out the Halloween bucket, Everett had to wear it. This is what he looked like when we took Chloe too school the next morning. He had to have his new Spiderman umbrella. He's been sleeping with it and everything. This is not a terribly abnormal outfit for him either, so Everett is easily the most recognizable person that enters the school doors every day. Every week yields a new and crazy ensemble. Before I had to retire the Spiderman costume, he was known as Spiderman by all that we passed. It's too bad I had to trash it, but maybe Santa will remedy that ;)

Since this is the first time we've done Halloween in our own house, I had no decorations. And yet Halloween is not a holiday I care to spend ANY money on. (I had to go to party city for Chad's costume and was shocked at how much he and others spend!) Anyway to save some money, we did lots of crafting of decor. This scarecrow was an idea I stole from a friend. It cost less than a dollar for some paper grocery bags. It ended up being more involved than I'd hoped, but the kids LOVED painting them, and Chloe LOVED drawing the shirt and gluing the patches. I had a hard time letting her do her thing b/c didn't look "right." This is why I craft, NOT with the kids. But I'm glad they had so much fun with it.

The Frankenstein was a Super Saturday church craft idea, while I came up with the bat and spider later. I bought the flower pots and a package of foam sheets for the bat. The foam was $5, the most expensive part of the whole front porch. Even our two pumpkins cost about$5 together. So the whole porch cost about $20.

I used the rest of the white foam to make some ghosts. Chloe liked that one too. She got to help trace the template and insisted on drawing eye lashes on most of them :)Chloe made this jack-o-lantern at school. What a cute idea! And the "Happy Halloween" was a $1 tree special that I mounted to a painted piece of scrap wood.
And of course we had to carve pumpkins. I thought we wouldn't, but it's a must. So I scraped the bottom of the barrel a few days before Halloween. I couldn't decide between a spider and a castle. So Everett chose the spider for me to do, and Chloe chose the castle for Chad to do. Totally fitting right? Here they're blowing out the test candle.
Chloe desperately wanted to help, but our designs were way to involved for her. So Chad quickly drew a face on the back of the castle for her to work on. I was quite impressed with her ability to cut along the lines. She had trouble with the mouth though. So I finished that part.

She wanted to taste a bit of the pumpkin entrails. Here was her face. Here's her finished face.

This was Chad's costume for work. I didn't get a very good picture though, and he refused to wear it for any of the other festivities.

My MIL managed to find a modest Ariel costume!! Shocker! And I got by without having to make any! That was very exciting for me.

I ended up finding this one for really cheap back when I found Everett's spiderman. So he got a choice, and I spent about $10 for both the dragon and this one combined.Here they are, ready to go to the church party.We had a chili cook-off where I got a fabulous white chili recipe. I'm not a big chili lover, but this one will be a staple this winter. Afterwards the kids played a few games."Digging graves":
Afterwards, they did a trunk-or-treat and ran around.

The next night, I thought Everett might choose the dragon. But no such luck. It's too bad because this was a popular costume both at church and in the neighborhood. Plus the dragon was so darn cute with the little claws and tail. He did carry his Buzz gun though throughout the trick or treating.
We had another family over, hit a few houses, and watched "How to Train Your Dragon" while handing out candy. It was mellow, but fun. Here are our jack-o-lanterns. We were really pleased with how they turned out, especially with Chloe's scary face on the wall. When Chloe saw them, she said, "Oooh! It looks like there's a princess in there with the lights on!"
Now on to Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm usually of the Dec. 1st, "crap what am I going to get for everyone?" persuasion. But this year, I already know what I'm going to do for everyone and have already gotten started. I'm excited about all of them too. Go me!