Happy Homemade Halloween!!

Sorry it's taken me so long to post about Halloween. I'm finally getting around to it.

Halloween was fun. My sister Traci, her husband Gene and their two kids Aidan and Mae came down to spend the day with us. We pretty much just hung out most of the day and spent time with one another while the kids got a lot of play time with each other. They had so much fun playing all sorts of different games, coloring, and just laughing at each other and the silly things they were doing (like pulling the legs off of the rubber spiders that my mom had). Right before dinner we carved all our pumpkins. Rob and I decided to go more traditional with all our pumpkins instead of doing those really intricate patterns you get in one of those pumpkin carving books.

Gwen and Grace were so excited!! They couldn't wait to try and take the "guts" of the pumpkin out.

We even got a pumpkin for Georgia and she had a fun time staring at it, trying to figure out if it was something she could put in her mouth.

I helped the girls carve their pumpkins while everyone else carved theirs (Aidan and Mae having help from Traci and Gene).

And a few weeks before Halloween, the girls and I made paper plate pumpkins. We took paper plates, painted them orange, then glued pieces of black construction paper that I had cut out for the girls onto their "pumpkins." They had a lot of fun doing that-especially the painting part.

While I helped the girls with their pumpkins, Robbie helped out by getting Georgia the grump to take a nap. Guess he was tired too because the next thing I knew, he was asleep too!

After Georgia woke up from her nap, she thought it might be fun to see what was inside my brother Jake's pumpkin and almost stuck her whole head inside his pumpkin!!

I realized a few seconds later that she was not only looking inside the pumpkin, but she was eating it and licking it as well. Eww!!

She seemed to like the taste though and was quite pleased with herself.

These are our pumpkins (all except the wolf on the top step...told you ours were the more lazy, traditional style!!). I even decided to try and carve Georgia's tiny pumpkin and it turned out pretty good I think.

After dinner we started getting dressed to go trick or treating. This year I decided to make the girls costumes instead of buying them, and I made them out of things I could find at second hand stores. It was a little challenging at times but a lot of fun for me and I am glad that they turned out as good as they did. They don't look as good as store bought costumes would, but I am pleased and the girls loved them so that's all that really matters. I will do a post about them on my craft blog (the link is in my blog list...it's called Congdon Craft) where I will try to remember each step I did to make their costumes.

Gwen wanted to be The Little Mermaid (it is her favorite movie...we watch it all the time...all the time) this year. I went to a store called Plato's Closet near where we are living that is a second hand store for mostly women's and some men's good quality used clothes (same quality that you would find in a store except they are used). My mom helped me find a women's green tube top shirt that was long enough from waist to feet to work as Gwen's mermaid tail. With some fabric, elastic, velcro, and painted sea shells, her costume came out pretty cute and all for about $15!

Grace wanted to be Tinkerbell (her favorite movie...again, a much watched movie) this year. I went to Once Upon A Child (yeah, they have one out here too) and my mom again helped me find what I was looking for. We found a girls size 10 skirt that worked perfectly as a dress on Grace. Again, with some fabric, elastic, felt, a couple pom poms, velcro and bias tape I had a Tinkerbell costume. Now, I did try to make her wings as well this year, but I only bought enough fabric to make each wing, and I screwed up on the first wing and after trying for two hours to fix it, I had had enough and made Robbie go out and by the wings. So, counting her wings, her costume cost $23. Not as cheap as I was hoping, but cheaper than buying the costume and wings separatly (which is the only way they come...I looked).

Gwen and Grace loved showing off their costumes and telling everyone who they were. In fact, Gwen told us after one house that she hoped the lady at the next house would know who she was because the people at the last house didn't and she sounded so sad about it. They were both so proud of who they were and of their costumes that it made all the mistakes and hours of work worth it.

I have never dressed the kids up until they were at least a year old, but I thought it would be fun to dress Georgia up this year too. So I decided that she would be a cat but when I went to look for stuff at Once Upon A Child I couldn't find what I wanted, but I did find things to make a leopard costume for her. So I bought the black shirt and pants there, and with a small bit of fabric, batting, crinoline and a black headband that the girls had (and never use) I made her costume for about $8. It was definately the easiest costume...if only all of them could have been. There are some things that I probably would have done differently now that I look back but all in all for my first try at this I think it turned out pretty good. Oh, and you can't tell in the picture, but she does have a tail.

This is the only picture that turned out of all three of the girls together. I did try to get a good one, but no success.

And trick or treating with their cousins was so much fun (and so much better than doing it with just mommy and daddy)! What a great Halloween (Gwen-The Little Mermaid; Aidan-GI Joe Character; Grace-Tinkerbell; Mae-Cinderella)!!