Halloween is definitely one of my favorite days of the year, it's the only day I can purposely look ridiculous and not only does no one care, but they give you candy for it! It's really quite amazing. So since Elijah was born I am even more involved in Halloween because I want him to grow up with lots of traditions to hold on to. So every Halloween there are lots of things to do, but only a few that we absolutely must do. The first, of course, is carve pumpkins.
These are our pumpkins from this year. The one on the left is Chris', then Elijah's, then mine is on the right. Silly me, I didn't take any pictures of the actual carving, but Elijah wasn't all that interested in it. He just liked to hug the pumpkins and roll them around. Crazy kid. Next year I think he will be very excited about it, at least about scooping out the guts of the pumpkin :-)
Another absolute must of Halloween is to dress up. The nice thing about Chris and I having kids so young is that I never took a break from dressing up for Halloween. Before we had Elijah I was still young enough that I didn't look ridiculous, and now I have the excuse that I have to dress up with my son. It's great :-) Now, Elijah has only had 2 years of Halloweens so far, but I have decided that as long as I can get away with it, I'm going to try to do a theme costume for the 3 of us. So instead of dressing up in our own individual costumes that have nothing to do with each other, we are all going to dress up as a unit. For example, the first year we took Elijah trick-or-treating it was just me and him since Chris had drill that weekend (Chris did end up coming and surprising us that night, but we didn't have a costume planned for him, so he ended up being a soldier - convenient, since he was already in his ACU's) so we dressed up as Cruella De Vil and a dalmation puppy.
Now this year Chris was with us so I was trying to think of something for all 3 of us. I came across a lot of great ideas, but they were too hard to make or too expensive to buy and I was having a hard time finding something simple and cheap, yet really fun. So finally I came across the idea of a s'more - one person is a graham cracker, one person is a chocolate bar, and one person is a marshmallow. Now my instant reaction was that Elijah would make a perfect marshmallow :-) So the decision was made! I ended up making the costumes from scratch. Unfortunately I don't know how to sew and I really don't have a creative bone in my body, but I AM a perfectionist so they didn't end up looking half bad if I do say so myself. Ideally, I would have put a lot more time and effort into them to make them full body costumes, but I just didn't have either time or effort this year to do that. But all I ended up having to buy was the white fleece for the marshmallow costume, which was about $4 - not bad for 3 costumes!
That's us! Now here is an up-close of our little marshmallow, since he's really the star of this show!
Want to know a secret? I mentioned I couldn't sew... Here is how I held together the marshmallow costume...
Yeah, those are binder clips. Shh... don't tell. I grabbed an extra piece of fleece and covered those up. Frankly, I think they worked great, made it real easy to put on and take off again, which is necessary with our crazy little guy.
Now the third part of Halloween that is an absolute must is to go trick-or-treating. How to define trick-or-treating is debatable, but no matter what, we have to get candy! I know there are sometimes church events or school events where you play games for candy, and there are trunk-or-treats where everyone lines up their cars and hands candy out of their trunks, or there is the original door-to-door candy raid, which happens to be my personal favorite. That is what we have done all 2 of Elijah's Halloweens so far and it has been a blast. Elijah doesn't quite know it yet, but he is a fantastic trick-or-treater. He's so stinking cute, he could probably get all the candy at every house we go to!
Well that is my blog about how much I love Halloween, I will be taking costumes ideas for next year anytime. I've got my heart set on Barney, Betty, and Bam-Bam Rubble, but I have no idea how to pull it off without buying the costumes. Maybe if I start saving now... Who am I kidding, I'm not THAT crazy about Halloween :-P
These are our pumpkins from this year. The one on the left is Chris', then Elijah's, then mine is on the right. Silly me, I didn't take any pictures of the actual carving, but Elijah wasn't all that interested in it. He just liked to hug the pumpkins and roll them around. Crazy kid. Next year I think he will be very excited about it, at least about scooping out the guts of the pumpkin :-)
Another absolute must of Halloween is to dress up. The nice thing about Chris and I having kids so young is that I never took a break from dressing up for Halloween. Before we had Elijah I was still young enough that I didn't look ridiculous, and now I have the excuse that I have to dress up with my son. It's great :-) Now, Elijah has only had 2 years of Halloweens so far, but I have decided that as long as I can get away with it, I'm going to try to do a theme costume for the 3 of us. So instead of dressing up in our own individual costumes that have nothing to do with each other, we are all going to dress up as a unit. For example, the first year we took Elijah trick-or-treating it was just me and him since Chris had drill that weekend (Chris did end up coming and surprising us that night, but we didn't have a costume planned for him, so he ended up being a soldier - convenient, since he was already in his ACU's) so we dressed up as Cruella De Vil and a dalmation puppy.
Now this year Chris was with us so I was trying to think of something for all 3 of us. I came across a lot of great ideas, but they were too hard to make or too expensive to buy and I was having a hard time finding something simple and cheap, yet really fun. So finally I came across the idea of a s'more - one person is a graham cracker, one person is a chocolate bar, and one person is a marshmallow. Now my instant reaction was that Elijah would make a perfect marshmallow :-) So the decision was made! I ended up making the costumes from scratch. Unfortunately I don't know how to sew and I really don't have a creative bone in my body, but I AM a perfectionist so they didn't end up looking half bad if I do say so myself. Ideally, I would have put a lot more time and effort into them to make them full body costumes, but I just didn't have either time or effort this year to do that. But all I ended up having to buy was the white fleece for the marshmallow costume, which was about $4 - not bad for 3 costumes!
That's us! Now here is an up-close of our little marshmallow, since he's really the star of this show!
Want to know a secret? I mentioned I couldn't sew... Here is how I held together the marshmallow costume...Yeah, those are binder clips. Shh... don't tell. I grabbed an extra piece of fleece and covered those up. Frankly, I think they worked great, made it real easy to put on and take off again, which is necessary with our crazy little guy.
Now the third part of Halloween that is an absolute must is to go trick-or-treating. How to define trick-or-treating is debatable, but no matter what, we have to get candy! I know there are sometimes church events or school events where you play games for candy, and there are trunk-or-treats where everyone lines up their cars and hands candy out of their trunks, or there is the original door-to-door candy raid, which happens to be my personal favorite. That is what we have done all 2 of Elijah's Halloweens so far and it has been a blast. Elijah doesn't quite know it yet, but he is a fantastic trick-or-treater. He's so stinking cute, he could probably get all the candy at every house we go to!
Well that is my blog about how much I love Halloween, I will be taking costumes ideas for next year anytime. I've got my heart set on Barney, Betty, and Bam-Bam Rubble, but I have no idea how to pull it off without buying the costumes. Maybe if I start saving now... Who am I kidding, I'm not THAT crazy about Halloween :-P
Loved your post! A Pioneer Woman in the making, for sure! ;)
ReplyDeleteAlso, binder clips...INGENIOUS.