Halloween 2013

The Mr.'s decided to go with a theme again this year for Halloween costumes.  I was all too happy to oblige.  You know I can't resist matching people...

I was also a bit relieved that they wanted to do something other than Star Wars.  This year, it was all about the ninjas, Lego Ninjago Ninjas, to be exact.

I drafted the patterns for their costumes using their jeans and a Sunday shirt as my pattern starters, and I have to say, they turned out pretty nice.  I used this tutorial for the pants, and just figured out the wrap top on my own.  I also made the shoulder armor and pinned them to the shirts so that the rest of the costume could be thrown in the wash.  Want to know the trick for the cool head covers?  All I did was buy a matching t shirt from the craft store and sewed the crest on the inside back of the tee, then you tie it on like this (scroll down the post for the picture how-to).  Super easy!  Thanks to our Kalanui cousins for tipping us off to this easy ninja mask trick a few years ago.

It was really hard to get a good pic of all of the boys standing together, they all wanted to pose with their sweet ninja moves and some of them just wanted to go dig in the dirt.  I think I got a few good shots, though.

 Who knew measuring spoons and squirt guns were ninja weapons of choice?

The Sunday before Halloween, we had our traditional spooky Halloween dinner with my family. 

On the menu was pepperoni-fried mushrooms (not Halloweenish, but the mushroom lovers were so happy), monster fingers (chicken strips), ghost mashed potatoes, brie and crackers (the knife added a little Halloween element), red jello with candy eyes, veggies and dip in a jack-o-lantern bell pepper, and pumpkin cookies and eyeball pudding (tapioca) for dessert.  We had to have our kool-aid in our dry ice-filled cauldron as well.  I love themed holiday dinners.  It is a fun tradition that I hope we never stop doing.

On Halloween night, we went trick or treating with my brother's three kiddos.  It was akin to herding cats to keep them together, let alone get them to stand still and look at the camera for a picture!  I think the action shot is quite fun, though.  It captures the real moment, you know, with two of them play fighting, one on the floor, one trying to run away...  We met up with all the family in town for pizza and candy, then down a few streets in my parents' neighborhood to trick or treat.  They had a blast.

Mr. Four was happy to join in, as long as it involved having a sucker in his mouth for the festivities.  Who can say no to that face?  I don't even want to think about how many suckers he ate that night...

 

Just for fun, here are two art projects that Mr. Two made in school that I thought would be easy to make at home, too.  The mummy is made with masking tape.  Why didn't I think of that?!  So clever.

It was another memory-and-candy-filled Halloween.  Now, on to Thanksgiving trimmings, gratitude and some fun fall projects to finish up!

Halloween 2012

Here are snapshots of our Halloween this year.

 Mr. One and Mr. Two are very much obsessed with Star Wars right now.  I attempted to get them excited about a different theme this year, but Mr. One was adamant about wanting to be Luke Skywalker.  I was not too thrilled with this idea, especially considering that my children had not even seen the movies.  Then the idea started to grow on me.  I found several tutorials online and lots of images through Google image searches (thank you internet!), found lots of materials at thrift stores and on sale at fabric stores, and got really excited about the whole project.  After a few weeks of wading through yards of polyester and jersey knit sheets, we had a Star Wars family!

 May the force be with you!  In case you couldn't tell, Mike is Han Solo, I am Princess Leia, Mr. One is Luke Skywalker, Mr. Two is Obi-Wan (Ben) Kenobi, Mr. Three is the cutest Yoda I've ever seen, and Mr. Four is R2-D2.

Here is another close up of R2.  Mike hand stenciled and painted his onsie and hat.  Oh yeah, I am super lucky to have a creative husband!

Here's Mike's sketch and the carved pumpkin.

Darth Pumpkin was quite the scary site on Halloween.  Again, Mike is our talented pumpkin carver. He loves doing this each year, which is good, because I really dislike carving pumpkins, but the kids love it. 

While I was at Time Out for Women this Saturday with my Mom, Aunt and sisters, they also worked on Sharkie and watched "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown".  Mike even roasted some sweet and savory pumpkin seeds.  Aren't the teeth so fantastic?!

After all the women came back from Time Out, we watched Star Wars episode IV at my parent's house on their big flat screen TV with surround sound.  The boys were totally mesmerized and loved it all.  Mr. Three kept shouting out our names when the characters we dressed as came on screen.  Thank goodness he wasn't disappointed that Yoda didn't make it into the first movie.  Now I am going to hear about Star Wars non-stop for a while now...

Halloween Odds and Ends

Between the costume sewing, baking, helping with my sister's wedding, and general busyness of life, I have not posted much since, well, since Mr. Four was born.  I have tried to do some fun Halloween and fall activities with my little Mr.'s, and I've even managed to sneak in a few crafts of my own.  Here's a brief rundown of some of them.

I love the way my yarn wreath turned out.  I wasn't sure if it would end up a success or a huge craft fail, but I love the colors and the clean look of it.  Now I want to do more for other seasons.

My boys had a great time making these spiders.  They are just the right touch of bright and mildly creepy for our decor.

We made candy corn sugar cookies.  Mr. One and his friend cut the triangles, and sprinkled the cookies.  It was a fun treat to do together.  The tutorial is from Our Best Bites, using their sugar cookie dough with almond extract.  They were very yummy!

I made up this simple sensory tub activity for the boys, found here.  They had lots of fun searching for the ghosts and shouting, "Boo!  I found you!"

I can't wait for tomorrow's fun and trick or treating!  Luckily the force was with me in making our family's costumes this year (wink).  Pictures here in a few days. 

Halloween 2011

How was your Halloween?  I hope it was all treats and no tricks!

Here's a few fun things we did to celebrate.

Friday night, we opted out of the school carnivals and enjoyed a pumpkin filled evening at home.  We picked out two plump pumpkins to carve, munched on See's marshmallow pumpkins after dinner (a favorite childhood tradition of Mike's), and watched The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown with lots of popcorn.

Here's our finished pumpkins from a few days later.  I cannot claim any credit for these.  The boys wanted to make Lego Hero Factory pumpkins and they helped Mike pick out which characters to carve (Surge and Witch Doctor).  They scooped and cleaned, and Mike carved.  Pretty fierce!

Saturday night was our church carnival and trunk or treat.  The little boys spent the majority of the night jumping in the bounce house, almost missing the trunk or treat.  Even thought they may have missed the other games and treats, they had a ball!  Mike and I had fun watching them and visiting with church friends.  We decorated our van like a pirate ship.  Unfortunately the sail didn't make it that night (it was too big to fit in the car).  We set it up and took pictures later. :)

The whole family:  Mike is the Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride, Mr. Three is the parrot to my pirate, Mr. Two is a monkey pirate and Mr. One is a Lego Space Police officer.  Gotta love my kid's imaginations!

Parrots love their candy!

Monday night, we headed to my parents' house for our traditional spooky Halloween dinner and took the kids trick or treating.  They came home a lot less tired than they should have been (sugar anyone?).  Luckily, they hit the sack with little complaint.

Oh, and one more little treat:  In case you couldn't tell in the pictures (and you haven't seen me in person lately), baby #4 is coming in April!  We are very excited.  Hence, the infrequent posting.  Sorry about that.  We'll know soon whether it is another Mr. or a Little Miss soon...

Ten Timid Ghosts

Here's a few last minute Halloween activities Mr. Two and I enjoyed today.

I saw this post from Chasing Cheerios and loved the lima bean ghosts.  I knew my boys would love them also.

We started out replicating the spooning activity.  Then my mind began racing, thinking of all the other fun things we could do with our ghosts.

I got out some counting cups (numbers 1 to 10) I had made previously and had Mr. Two count out ghosts into each one.

He really enjoyed doing this and I was excited to see that he recognized and counted out the correct number of ghosts for each one. 

Then I remembered one of our favorite Halloween books, Ten Timid Ghosts by Jennifer O'Connell.  We had our ghosts, and I had our Halloween math book that was shaped like a haunted house, so we used them to act out the story.  It was fun to have each ghost fly away and re-count to see how many were left.

It's so fun to see another person's great idea and then be able to use it as a springboard to new activities and learning opportunities.

As an update, my house is starting to look more presentable and I am about 85% finished with costumes.  Hooray!  Halloween, here we come.

Witches' Warts

Here is a simple activity I made for my preschooler.

I found my witch graphic here, printed it, reduced it to 60% and made four copies.  I colored the witches with faces and hat bands to match the Halloween mini pom poms I found at the craft store, cut them out and mounted them on cardstock.  (I still need to laminate these babies so they will last.)

I put the pom poms in a little plastic pumpkin and gave Mr. Two some tweezers so he could give the witches some warts.  A great little Halloween activity for color recognition and fine motor strengthening.

I am only 1/3 of the way done with Halloween costumes so far.  Wish me luck!  I will be in sewing mode for the rest of the weekend...

Halloween Happenings

This year, I decided to make Mr. One and Mr. Two's Halloween costumes from scratch.  I bravely made my own patterns with what I had in their closets to make a bat/dragon (After choosing to be a black bat and having his costume finished, he decided he wanted to be Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon.  Luckily Toothless looks a lot like a black bat...) costume and a ghost costume.  Mr. Three wore Mr. One's baby spider costume from his first Halloween.  (Gotta love hand-me-downs!)  I have to say, this was challenging, but I am so happy with the end results.

I finished both costumes a few weeks before Halloween, which was good for several reasons.  First, they were able to have fun wearing them for weeks instead of just one day.  Second, I quickly became involved in several projects by the end of October that took up a lot of time.  It was a blessing to have them done and not have to be up all night sewing.

We went to my parents' neighborhood carnival Wednesday night before Halloween with the boys.  Poor Mike was really sick with strep throat, so he couldn't come (sniff!!)  It was fun to be there with my parents and sisters for the evening.  Mr. One found the inflatable bouncy rooms and the fish pond with prizes and was a happy camper.  Mr. Two discovered the joys of cotton candy and was happy as well.  Mr. Three was just glad to be held all night.

Saturday night we had our church Halloween carnival and trunk or treat.  This is how Mr. One enjoyed the evening.

 

This is how Mr. Two and Mr. Three enjoyed the evening.  They slept through the whole carnival!  Mr. One promised to share his treats and prizes with his brother, so all was good.

On Halloween night, we ate dinner with my mom's side of the family.  We let the boys dress up, but we didn't trick or treat.  It was nice to spend time eating and chatting with family.  It was a perfect night outside, so we ate out on the porch and let the boys run around in the grass. 

 

My aunt loves Halloween, so her decor didn't disappoint.  It was fun for the boys to look at all her decorations and we tried to snap a few cute pics of them together.

This is the only pic we got of the three of them that turned out.  Luckily, it's a pretty darn cute one!

Pumpkin Decorating

Decorating pumpkins is a must-do annual Halloween activity.

Mike's favorite pumpkins come from the pumpkin patch, large and heavy and full of their own character, ready for carving. The boys dig in, literally. I am happy to sit and watch. No thank you to touching the pumpkin guts!

Here's this year's jack-o-lantern creations.

Legos are a favorite toy here, so it was only natural to make a Lego pumpkin.

This one was nicknamed "Skeleton Pumpkin" by our boys.

My favorite pumpkin decorating involves cream cheese frosting, and pumpkin smells wafting from the oven. Find the recipe here.

The boys were eager to help with the decorating.

Then, they lost interest and Mike joined the decorating fun as well.

Of course, everyone was willing to join in the eating.

Pumpkins will always be an integral part of our Halloween, whether carved or eaten. We love them both.

Halloween Preschool Fun

We've been doing lots of really informal preschool activities at our house with a Halloween twist.  Here are a few of my 2 (almost 3) year old's favorites:

Spider Web Rubbings

You can read the how-to on this post.  I made it a bit easier for a younger child by putting the web and the tracing paper on a clip board to keep it stabilized.

Bean Tub

Yes, this one is still a huge hit.  See how-to here.

Toy Toss

Mr. Two loves tossing these little guys into our pumpkin trick or treat buckets.

Haunted House Math Bag Book

Still a bit hit.  I laminated all of the pieces for extra durability.  How-to is here (as well as some of my favorite Halloween stories).

Eraser fun

I found a bunch of Halloween erasers on clearance last year.  These are great for sorting, patterning, counting, matching and just throwing around the living room.  That's how we roll...
 
And of course, lots of Halloween stories.  We love a good not-so-scary book.