Seven Things My Kids Have Taught Me About Halloween

I approached the Halloween season this year with a bit of excitement.  Then all of that died when I opened the container of Halloween stuff and found what could only have been what was left of a mini pumpkin all over my decorations.

For once, it wasn’t a mouse peeking out at me that ruined the moment.  It was just plain gross.  So I hauled the foam pumpkins and what I could salvage out of the container upstairs, and that was about it.  I pretty much gave up on decorating.  I was frustrated.  And poking around on Pinterest at all of the seemingly perfect things that others have pinned that they have supposedly done was seriously bumming me out.

(Remember, my life resembles Craft Fail more than Pinterest…)

Then over the next couple of weeks as I helped my kids with their costumes and watched them getting excited for Halloween, I realized that it really doesn’t have anything to do with how perfect and “Martha Stewart-like” everything is in your life.  Halloween is about the kids!  As it turns out, having my kids has taught me some important lessons about special occasions in general.

I played with some of the pictures I have taken this year to make this list, there being seven things counting the picture at the top. The irony here is that I made them in “pinnable” type pictures.  This isn’t because I necessarily want them on Pinterest, I just like how they look.  I like squares… and borders on my pictures…

So as Halloween arrives and we prepare for class parties, costume parades, and trick or treating, I’m trying to give myself a break.  I may not have a perfect house full of perfect stuff, but what I do have are some wonderful memories to last a lifetime…  Take that, Martha Stewart!

Halloween Whine With Lots of (Cheap) Cheese

I happened to be on Facebook today (imagine that) and saw a costume that made me think “That’s awesome” and “How I miss those days when I actually got to dress up and have fun on Halloween!”

And of course I just had to share…

I don’t actually have permission to use the image, so I’m asking you to first pretend that I’m wearing this as a costume, then you can click on the link and see it for yourself…

http://www.instructables.com/id/Box-of-Wine-Costume/

Right?  Wine in a box?  Is that not brilliant?  You can bring your wine right with you!  And then you talk someone into dressing as cheese.  Get it?

Speaking of cheese, this got me to thinking about my post about cheap costumes from last year.  It was pretty good.  I even laughed as I read it.  I forgot that this is where “Tie-Dye Girl” came from, therefore it’s a classic.

I revamped it a little bit and decided to add it on right here so you don’t even have to leave this page to read it (even though you had to sort of leave the page to look at the wine in a box costume.) Isn’t that nice of me?

Halloween Costumes for The Broke, Lazy, And Uninspired

So it’s October, it’s almost Halloween, and you need (or even WANT) to dress up for Halloween.  But you’re broke, or busy, or lazy, or uninspired, or maybe even all of these things.  You’re in luck-I just happen to keep having all kinds of ideas for Halloween costumes!  These are one step above cutting holes in your white sheet and being a ghost (or a kleenex).  Aren’t you glad you have me to help you out?

Will you get rocks in your trick or treat bag if you dress as the Charlie Brown ghost for Halloween?  If you really want to take the time to do it, the tutorial for this is also on Instructables.com

1.  Nudist-Take off all your clothes.  You can also do a variation of this and yell “We’re going streaking!” over and over like in Old School, and be a streaker.  Note:  This probably isn’t such a good idea in colder climates.  Or places where police will be patrolling.  Or places where children will be present.  Or other people will be present, period.

2.  Jack of All Trades-Find a bunch of hats.  Put them all on at once.  Get it?

3.  Person Who Just Got Up-Get out of bed.  Don’t comb your hair. Stay in your pjs.  May not work well for people who sleep in their undies or in the nude (then a different costume may be for you-see #1 or #6).

4.  Poop-Dress in head to toe brown.  Try to get people to guess who you are, like telling them you really stink.  I don’t advise trying to make it smell authentic, because that’s just gross.  Oh yeah, I guess you could be chocolate, too.  Feel free to add scent to that.

5.  Laundry-If you have one of those cheap round laundry baskets sitting around, cut a hole in the bottom just big enough to wiggle yourself in.  Stuff some laundry around yourself.  Now here’s the dilemna-are you clean laundry or dirty laundry?  Clean laundry is nice-you could add dryer sheets and smell extra good.  I think it would work especially well if you happen to have a fever, because it would be just like the laundry came out of the dryer, right?

6.  Superhero-If you have a blanket that can be a cape, tie it around your neck.  What you wear with it and use as props determines what superhero you are.  Don an apron and rubber gloves-you’re Super Dishwasher!  I personally like Captain Undergarments myself.  A mask just adds to the effect…

7.  Clean Person-Wrap a towel around yourself and put a shower cap on.  Carry a bottle of shower gel, a loofah, a shower poof, you get the picture.  Wearing stuff under the towel is optional, but make sure that towel is secure!  I just happen to have a new shower head that we haven’t installed yet-oh the possibilities are endless with this one!

See? My kids already know the art of the cheap costume and they don’t even know it!

8.  Bag Lady-We all seem to have those reusable grocery bags laying around (if you don’t, I’m sending the environment police after you!)  Get a bunch.  Carry them.

9. Mom Like Me-Don’t sleep the night before.  Don’t do your hair.  Wear a wrinkled top and yoga pants.  Carry a coffee cup.  Talk in incoherent sentences.  Bonus if you can get a child to wrap themself around your leg.  (No offense to most parents who actually have their act together, this is just me on a normal day.)

10.  Target Employee-Have a red shirt?  Khaki pants?  You could probably find a nametag template somewhere, but again, remember that this may require a little work.  You’ll have to be really nice and helpful, because remember you work at Target, not Walmart.

11.  Art-Find a big picture frame.  Take out the glass and backing so you just have the frame.  Carry it with you and hold it up so you’re like someone in a painting.  It’s art, so you can do whatever you want.

12.  Fan Club-Find two small fans.  Make a sign that says something positive like “We’re you’re biggest fans” and attach it to yourself.  What would be even better?  Have a partner and you can follow them around as his or her very own fan club.  Unless it’s someone dressed as Charlie Sheen, I don’t think he has any fans anymore.

13.  Fashion Police-Find a whistle.  Dress in what you consider fashionable.  Make a badge of some sort.  Blow your whistle whenever you see things like people wearing white shoes after Labor Day.

So see, you’ll never be without ideas for costumes as long as I am around.  I’m the queen of lame costumes, as you can see…

Protecting the earth from evil by dying them hideous shades of tie-dye! Look up in the sky, it’s a peacock, it’s a rainbow, it’s TIE-DYE GIRL!

Weekly Wrap-Up: The Shortest One Ever Edition

I don’t usually get my picture taken and actually share it, because I hate how they turn out. Despite my yellow teeth, messy hair, and double chin this isn’t a bad picture.  But gosh darn it, that little girl sure is cute…

This weekend I went tailgating so am fairly late sharing my wrap-up.  It was a good time, and as you can see from the above picture I even had a camera with a charged battery AND the memory card in it.

AND this will be the shortest post I have EVER written…

It was a busy week for me as well at work as well as on my blog.

Monday Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Purse (at Target)  Got weird dreams?  I sure do…

Tuesday Twisted Mixtape Tuesday:  We Got Spirit, Yes We Do  A rather last minute but fun Twisted Mixtape Tuesday.

Thursday  Meltdowns…Reviewed  I got the exciting opportunity to read and review a book!  If you have ever had or have been close to having one of THOSE moments, this book, The Mother of All Meltdowns,  is for you!

Friday  The Evolution of a Halloween Costume  If you are a parent, do you make your kids’ costumes?  I try to every year.  It’s interesting how kids’ costumes can evolve from their original form when mom is in charge of putting it all together!

Best Stuff This Week

I love celebrating my friends accomplishments! Did you know that Menopausal Mother is the newest staff writer on In the Powder Room?  I love the fact that this great group continues to add top notch writers and has formed such a diverse bunch of ladies!

Another friend of mine, Karen from Baking in a Tornado had her Apple Pie Shotini featured on Felicity Huffman’s What The Flicka?  I think it looks a perfect drink for fall, don’t you?

Some Halloween themed posts this week included:

Finding Ninee It’s Halloween I Don’t Want To Be A Wonder Woman Skank.

My Skewed View on Halloween with food allergies Snickers Melt in Your Mouth and Then Kill You

Mommy is For Real Why I Always Wear Cat Ears on Halloween.

Left Brain Buddha Trick or Treat:  My Motherhood Journey in Nine Halloweens

And don’t forget the Laugh Til You Pee Your Pants Halloween Party is still going on too!

Best and Most Disturbing Search Terms

Other than “dying frog” I got nuttin’.

Next Week

For the first time in I don’t know how long I do not have anything scheduled any place else or have anything pressing on my blog.  Hmmmm… what to do, what to do?  It IS Halloween week, so I expect to be busy!

Or maybe I’ll just take my cat’s advice and relaaaaaax… Yes he actually was sleeping like this!

The Evolution of a Halloween Costume

This year my feeling on Halloween costumes remains unchanged.  If I can make it cheap or find it cheap, it works. I just hate paying much for costumes unless it’s an unbelievable deal, simply because I have a hard time with the idea of purchasing something that may be worn once.  When I was a kid we usually had homemade costumes that could be worn as something else later like pajamas.  To this day I still love that idea!

Last year’s costumes. I did buy his because I found one super cheap. We took the extra step of making it light up.

The Professor has a timeline of different costumes that he is going to wear for Halloween from now until he turns 32.  Every year a superhero, every year a different one.  Last year he was Iron Man.  At the same time he chose that costume, he announced his candidacy for Batman for the following year.

I really didn’t want to buy a costume again this year.  All of the promises that he would use it for pretend play didn’t happen.  So I’m trying to go a different route, figuring I’d make the cape and find him things he could use again.  However, finding a long-sleeve Batman shirt in the right size was a little difficult!  I finally found him a long sleeved shirt that had thermal sleeves.  How do you cover up thermal sleeves?  You make a cape with sleeves, that’s how!  Here is the link to the pattern we ended up using:  http://www.vanillajoy.com/the-nearly-no-sew-batman-cape.html

I found instructions on a number of sites on how to make a Batman symbol and mask out of felt, and how to make a utility belt out of yellow duct tape.  In the end I actually spray painted a cat mask that I found in the Hobby Lobby clearance!  I used a roll of the tape and an empty fettucine box to make a rather cool utility belt.  I even made a bat light.  And yes, loyal batman fans, I realize that batman wasn’t the one that actually used the bat light.  Details, details…

He’s a pretty cute batman…

And then there was the other child, the one that changes her mind every 28 seconds about her costume.  At least until she came up with this idea last month:

“Mommy, I want to be a dancing flower for Halloween.”

“A flower?  Like a flower around your head flower?”

“Yes.  A dancing flower.”

So we googled “homemade flower costume”.  I can tell you this, that flower costumes range from the adorable to “what does this have to do with a flower”?

She kept looking at the baby costumes.  I reminded her that she is not a baby.

Image used with permission from Coolest Homemade Costumes.

We finally found one that seemed to be the closest to what we were envisioning.  It was on a website called Coolest Homemade Costumes, as seen in the image above.   I found a green shirt with sparkles, and coordinating material.

Shirt from Wal-mart and material to make a tutu from JoAnn Fabrics!

As it got closer to the time where she needed the costume, I started to panic.  I have PTSD from first grade and therefore am totally paralyzed with fear when it came to the head part of the costume.

Huh?

In my first grade class I had to play a flower in Mary Mary Quite Contrary’s garden.  Whoever made the tops had to be a person who loved inflicting pain upon small children.  That part of the costume was so heavy it weighed my head down and cut into my chin.  I can close my eyes and feel that stupid flower on my head.

Somehow I convinced her that perhaps a crown was better.  Then I came home a few days later and found her watching Sixteen Candles (I guess she’d been watching 101 Dalmations on ABC Family and Dad just never changed the channel, I guess it could have been worse).  You know the wedding scene at the end where all of the bridesmaids have flower crowns?  She was sold.  Easy peasy.  We were now a “Dancing Flower Princess” complete with a homemade hippie girl floral crown!

Our beautiful dancing flower princess, crooked crown and all!

I can’t take credit for any of the sewing on either of the costumes, my mom is really good at sewing and volunteered her services.  She ended up making the cape and the tutu.  I stuck to the things that were more my speed-the non-sewing parts.

I will offer one word of caution if you are thinking about making a sparkly tutu:  the sparkles come off.  I am not kidding!  By the time we were done with her costume it had looked like we either had a glitter fight or had invited a bunch of strippers over for lunch.  There were sparkles EVERYWHERE!  On the floor, on the furniture, all over me and my mom.  I went into work to get something and my boss looked at me and said “Do you know you’re sparkly?”  Why yes, yes I do.  As a matter of fact, Monday was the first opportunity to show off their costumes at the library, where the kids decorated pumpkins in their costumes. Apparently she still had plenty of sparkles to lose-the library was also quite glittery in the aftermath…

Why is that?  To quote the great philosopher…

Did you make your kids’ Halloween costumes this year or did you buy them?  Any stories you’d like to share?

REBLOG: Pumpkin Carving, Squash Murder or Decorative Glee?

In honor of the Moms Who Write and Blog Laugh Til You Pee Your Pants Halloween Party, I thought I’d reblog a post from last year about our pumpkin carving experience. Please come over and share a laugh with us at our party!

Post by Moms Who Write and Blog.

The Sadder But Wiser Girl

Apparently there was a class I was supposed to take for my Mom license that I missed?  I must have been absent the day they held “Pumpkin Carving 101”.  Or in the bathroom.  Or just not paying attention. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen all of the intricate pumpkin design stuff that is so popular right now.  Supposedly this stuff is easy to do.  Especially if you shell out the money for a kit.  It’s then supposed to be so easy an untrained monkey can do it!  Nope, I don’t think so.

I had big plans for this year.  I was going to have all kinds of pumpkins to play with this Halloween.  We bought all the seeds for all the different pumpkins in our garden.  We planted regular pumpkins, mini pumpkins, and the white pumpkins. I was going to do all of those Martha Stewart glittery…

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2012 Is Done: The Year in Review So We Can Just Move On

I like this so I’m using it again, because it really describes my year!

2012 started out with a bang and went up and down all year.  The world didn’t end, so I’m saying it’s going out in a good way.  I didn’t start blogging until June and didn’t really start seriously blogging until fall.  Here’s an itty bitty summary of the Year of the Sadder But Wiser Girl:

2012-The Highs and Lows of the Year

January-The hubs took his degree he was awarded at the end of 2011 and put it to work at a wonderful corporation.  The downside?  Loooooooong hours and a loooooooong drive.  What degree?  What are you talking about?  Are they giving away degrees somewhere?  Where do I find one of these things called “jobs”?  Three years prior, my husband was laid off at the company that he had worked at for thirteen years.  They basically announced one day that “Yeah, we’re closing”.  He took a huge pay cut as he went on to another job at another factory.  When things were looking similarly dire over in that place, he made the ultimate decision:  he went back to school, full-time, to pursue his mechanical engineering degree at the tender age of 35.

February-We went roller skating for the first time since I graduated from college.  Since my husband has to drive an hour up and back to work each day, we had to buy a car that wasn’t old ant that we could trust.  Hello huge car payments.

March-We made our first attempt at compost.  It was a moot point, since we then had a drought and it really didn’t matter what we did…

The kid is cute, so what if we never really used the compost? 😉

April-Our fourteen year old kitty passed away on Easter Sunday.  In happier news, at the end of the month we went to our first live NASCAR race at the Kansas Speedway.

May-I turned 38.  My little girl turned four, and I attempted my first fancy birthday cake-a princess castle cake.  Someday I will blog about it and horrify millions of people.  My son survived first grade and lived to tell about it.

June-I started a blog.  If I didn’t start this blog, I was going to be mobbed by people who thought I had a real penchant for storytelling.  My first attempts were pretty bad, but eventually I caught on.  Read my June archives for my first and really lame blog posts.

Mid month I was informed my job was being taken over by a taco that would work on call for pennies.  No unemployment, just the promise of jobs falling out of the sky with great recommendations.  Neither of these materialized, by the way, and I progressed upon the path that brought this lil ole blog to what it is now.   With over 400 Followers, I can say it is almost a marginal success.

July-The day my job poofed into thin air, my husband achieved full time status.  Since then he is a minor celebrity at his workplace-I believe they could possibly build him a litter so he never has to walk through the plant again.

August-We got a dog.  My husband contracted shingles.  And my son started second grade.  All totally unrelated things, thank goodness.

September-We quietly celebrated our 13th Wedding Anniversary and I was buried under the artwork in my house.

My daughter made what she called a zamboni.  This is what started the nonsense with all the boxes.

October-I find that Halloween and Halloweens past provides almost unlimited posting potential.  All kinds of people come to my blog looking for costume ideas.  Nice.

November-I am dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming thanks to The Bearded Iris.  In other words, I actually start using my Twitter account for something other than just that mysterious entity that shares my posts with the world.  One Mom Dragged Into the 21st Century

December-I entered a Christmas tree contest and didn’t win, my kids made Christmas cards that didn’t get sent, I saw Elvis, and we didn’t die in a fiery apocalypse.  Merry Christmas.

And then, the year was over.

Stuff that people looked at a lot:  Man this Home Page/Archives post must be really amazing millions of people seem to visit it… I can’t tell a lot from the stats, but I Peed My Pants at Wal-Mart was probably the most popular post this year.  Hooray for incontinence!

Some of My Favorite Posts:  The Sadder But Wiser Girl…Poop Detective, The Five Stages of Dishes, Yo P.E.E.Ps and P.O.O.Ps, The Recessive Gene: My Pool Needs A Lifeguard.

Search terms used most to find my blog:  Fantasy Football, which is TERRIBLY uninteresting to me.

Funniest and Most Disturbing Search Engine Terms of 2012:  I pee funny, evil houses, glue sniffing crack, unicorn fart ffpp, I’ve just peed in my big knickers, image of every single pillow pet in the world, I think I have diarrhea from green bean casserole, naked pumpkin man costume, turkey toilet paper, girl poops out a mouse, the brain and people, bucket hoarding, garbage hums, and naked Chad Knaus…

I’m sorry, but anyone who’s looking for naked pictures of Chad Knaus has some serious issues…

Oh I LOVE it when google fills stuff in for me! The results are quite hilarious, just like my search engine results.

My Favorite Blogs of 2012-Now keep in mind that I JUST discovered blogging this year and I’m still a newbie. I read a lot of blogs.  As a matter of fact, the more I discover the harder it is for me to keep up with all of them, because you know I have to do stuff like pay attention to my children and (occasionally) do housework. Here are some that I have found myself reading the most.  You know, the blogs that I just can’t wait for new posts from and rarely miss reading a post?  My Top 20 in no particular order:  Menopausal Mother, momtimes4, atlantamomofthree, Motherhood is an Art, Funny Is Family, Cloudy With a Chance of Wine, Debie Hive, Diapers… or Wine?  Divine Secrets of a Domestic Diva, Miss Banana Pants, Lady or Not… Here I Come, Ninja Mom, Baking in a Tornado, The Tao of Poop, Rants from Mommyland, Marj Hatzell is the Domestic Goddess, Go Cheap or Go Home, Mom’s World, Something Clever 2.0, You Know It Happens At Your House Too.  And of course Parenting, Illustrated with Crappy Pictures-but she doesn’t really need the publicity, now does she?  There are others I’ve just started reading… Maybe you’ll make the list next year, which at the rate I’m going will be the top 100.  Don’t hate me if you blog and read my blog and you’re not on my list.  I bet I read your blog too!  Bloggers are awesome people, and the best circle of folks I know.  I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings!

Bloggers in my Top 20 could receive this beautiful handmade, um, thing. She says its a weapon…

So here it is, the New Year.  Did anyone actually, you know, go OUT and stuff?  We didn’t… details on how we spent our New Years will be coming.  For now I need to publish and be done.  Happy New Year everyone!

The Getting To Know The Blogger Challenge: Favorite Childhood Memories

I’m doing the Getting To Know the Blogger Challenge, started by A Little Unhinged.  Click on the link if you’d like to find out more and maybe even join in!

3)  What are some of your favorite memories from childhood?

I had a pretty awesome childhood.  We moved a lot, but we also tried to get back with family when we could.  Here’s some of the things I remember the most:

Being with Family-Just hanging out at my grandmother’s house and being with all of our cousins!  Christmas spent with the whole family on my Mom’s side was very special because there were so many family members there (my Mom came from a family of six kids).  Since we didn’t live close for a lot of our young life, those moments were especially memorable for my sister and me.

This is a picture of many of the cousins from my Mom’s side of the family. I’m the one squinting with the braids in my hair.

Chicago Attractions-We lived near Chicago during one of my dad’s tours of duty.  We got to go to some of the best places!  Shedd Aquarium, The Museum of Natural History, The Museum of Science and Industry, and so forth.  I would really love to have the opportunity to go back someday with my kids!

Radio station-My sister is three years younger than me.  We loved funny stuff, especially Weird Al Yankovic.  We made our own radio station for my mother by taking a set of walkie talkies and putting a rubber band around one so it would only send to the other one.  Mom listened downstairs while we did our very own radio show upstairs.  We made up our own versions of songs and commercials, and played records on my record player for the broadcast.

Halloween-We loved Halloween and it was always a big deal.  We would choose our costumes and Mom would make them for us.  It helped that she is fantastically good at sewing and crafting.  I have a link here if you want to see some of our AWESOME costumes:  Halloween.

Dough Art-Making things was a big part of my childhood.  We made our own dough ornaments every Christmas.  I can even remember how the dough smelled and how my hands would feel after making things with it.

The Barbie House-My sister and I had many different things that we liked to play with, but none as famous as the Barbie House.  My Dad made our Barbie house, and it was complete with windows, carpeting, stairs, many levels and even a roof with fake grass.  We spent many hours making up stories about the families that lived there.  This was so much better than any plastic dream house.  Many of our things were homemade or things that were repurposed into Barbie things (a mouthwash cap as a trash can, for example). The best thing was that Barbie did not discriminate.  We had Barbies from every ethnic group and walks of life in our house-we had African American Barbies and Kens, Hispanic Barbies, Asian Barbies, and even Barbies and Kens that had physical disabilities (in other words were missing limbs but we loved them anyway.)

There are many more, but those are the things that stand out most vividly and fondly in my mind!

Previous Blogger Challenge Posts-This Could Be Fun:  I’m Doing the 15 Day Blogger Challenge, Where I Grew Up

 

Happy Halloween!

As Halloween season draws to a close this year, I think I did alright.  I’m feeling better after my little meltdown!

I did get the costume repaired while The Professor was in school so it lit up once again.  That night we had a special dinner:

Ghostly grilled cheese for the Pre Trick or Treat Supper.

Trick or Treating went pretty well, other than it was cut short by the frequent “pee-er” (That would Iron Man).  We pretty much hit our whole street, and then we were done so he could pee.  That was probably just as well-it was getting chilly.  At least I was getting cold, they were wearing long johns under their outfits.

Cat Girl and Iron Man, crime fighting duo.

Acting as their characters. They had a lot of fun with this.

Both kids seemed pretty satisfied.  I got my Mom tax for taking them out, two Reeses Peanut Butter Cups.  I can’t complain about that.

Happy Halloween everyone!  Eat a bunch of candy and be merry.

Ready To Haunt: Let Halloween Week Begin!

At long last Halloween week is officially underway!  I think we’re almost ready.

It’s a full few days for the kids.  Tonight marks the first appearance of their costumes-the public library Halloween Party.  That will be interesting, since there are two different parties-I’m hoping the Halloween hating hubby will help me exchange children in between.  Then Tuesday Trick-or-Treating.  Wednesday The Professor has his class Halloween Party. That’s one more time that he’ll get to wear the costume. We’re hoping to go over to the school for the costume parade.  We’ll see if we can make it over there.

The final verdict on the Iron Man costume was to use vellum over the light so that it wasn’t quite so bright, and to sew a pocket into the costume.  The vellum part is done and I will be furiously trying to get the pocket sewn before The Professor’s parent teacher conference this afternoon!  The cat costume is positively adorable.  We used the accessories that we bought at Target, and she’ll wear a black fleece and black pants along with them.  It has been approved by Antisocial Kitty, who has pressed it for weeks by laying on it every day.  How nice of her.

Apparently laying her costume on top of the tp was the right thing to do, according to the cat.

I hope to have pictures taken and posted tomorrow or Wednesday.  However, things don’t always work out like I want them to.

We have made fun decorations using some foam shapes and glitter glue and markers, but really struggled on how to display them.  We finally punched holes in them and hung them in the windows using invisible thread.  Along with our purple lights and cobwebs in one window, and the bat lights in the other, we had a pretty great display!  For Trick or Treating we have a green glow stick for the cauldron on the porch to give off an eerie green glow.  So hey, we may not be giving out treats but our house is going to look really cool!  Again, I’m hoping to get it done and get pictures up sometimes in the next day or two.

I’ve said before how much I love Halloween.  It WAS a big deal when I was a kid.  Not only that, but one of my favorite rides at Disney World was the Haunted Mansion ride.  It was never scary, just really cool.  I always wanted to work at the Haunted Mansion for a summer job. Unfortunately we moved away before I was old enough to do that.  Such a bummer!

My favorite part of the Haunted Mansion, the ballroom.

What do you love about Halloween?  Do you have any great Halloween memories?  I’d love to hear any cool stories!

Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun: More Halloween Costumes

It could happen.

In continuing with celebrating Halloween I’m sharing some of my kids’ costumes.  I’ve been pretty lucky with my son because he usually  wants to be something we already have the stuff for right here in the house-like when he wanted to be a football player.  We just HAPPENED to have a football dress up set.  Yeah!  He was Jeff Gordon for several years, and that was just fine with us.  And his first real costume was also reused for his sister-a red M&M costume that I picked up a consignment shop for $4.  That’s $2 per year-I’ll take it!

My daughter was a pumpkin her first Halloween.  A friend I worked with happened to have a costume that her daughter had worn at the same age.  She very happily lent it to me.  It was adorable.  The next year she was the M&M.  After that it started to get complicated with her.  Two years ago she wanted to be a fairy princess like Abby on Sesame Street, only once we went anywhere she didn’t really want to wear the wings.  Last year I just told her what she was going to be-a sparkly witch.  I actually helped MAKE THIS ONE. I SEWED.  Yes, Little ADD ME!  It turned out quite cute.

I have seen a lot of very, very cute costumes on some of the sites I visit daily.  Like a lego costume-as much as my kids love legos I hope that one of them decides to be one for Halloween someday. I found the instructions on how to make the lego costume on the Country Living website.  I could do that!

Here is the lego costume that I think would be adorable. The source of this picture is in the link.

As I kept looking online, I noticed that there were a lot of variations in the lego toys and costumes,  Here we have a costume that is show on Instructables.com on how to make it.  I kept flipping through and eventually found some lego superhero costumes that were really great too!

Cute lego guy from the Instructables website.

Princess Difficult is going to be a black cat this year, but she has informed me that she is going to be a “Pink football player” next year.  That could be a bit complicated.  Or maybe not.  By then, her brother will have outgrown the helmet.  We have pink spray paint.  She has a pink jersey.  This could just work!  Now that she has mentioned this, The Professor has begun planning his costumes for the next few years.   Every year a superhero, just a different one.  Next year he wants to be Batman.  He is even trying to figure out how we can hit the reduced price costumes after Halloween to see if we can snag some of those costumes.  That boy!  I think I can probably take him up on that, after all, I suppose if we were able to find something cheap and maybe just a little big for next year he could use it as dress up.

I tried to put pictures in order of the kids in their costumes.  I’m having some issues with this, so I apologize.  They are here, just not in order.  But I assure you that cuteness abounds in this slideshow…

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