Busy fingers

Grandma has been busy busy with her crochet needles making all kinds of goodies for the kids. Elise is modeling a sampling.

I think she likes it!

The pink and white flowers were made to be a barrett, but I pinned them on her shirt instead.

These were not made by Grandma's crochet needles, but they are in the creative vein and I thought they were so neat. These are balloon sculptures that I came across at the convention center last week. So cool!

Lastly, this is my 100th post! So that's at least 100 memories preserved from the last 2 (I think) years. I thought about doing something fun and 100ish, but couldn't think of anything. If you have any ideas, send them my way and I'll celebrate my 101st post! (Now that Halloween is over, I need another creative project anyway.) :)

Meet Jack.

Jack O. Lantern. Yep, it's pumpkin carvin' time!

The night before Halloween, we went over to our friends Will and Danille's house to carve pumpkins. I love carving pumpkins. We carve them every year (except last year--I waited too long and then couldn't find one. I felt like such a scrooge!). But I remember carving them with my dad when I was little. We tried to make different faces every year. Turns out there are only so many geometric shapes you can use on a jack o'lantern's face. So needless to say, some years were cuter than others. Much cuter. I remember a few times, my parents would buy the REALLY big pumpkins. I checked them out this year, and they were $40! Did you really pay $40 for a giant pumpkin all those years, dad!?! Anyway, back to nostalgia...the second you cut open the pumpkin, that pumpkin smell just comes right back to you. As Will put it, "Ah, the smell of memories." Oh, and we roasted pumpkin seeds this year! That was my first time to try them--they were pretty good.

This year, everyone got to carve their own pumpkin. Only Reid, Blair and Jeremy actually carved theirs though. Elise's was just one of those teeny tiny ones that has no purpose other than to sit there and look cute. And Sloane's was oozing some sort of something--rotting pumpkin juice? I don't know, but it was obviously in bad shape when the lady told us we could have it for free--so we just left that one alone. And I must say, I was very impressed with the kids' work.

Reid, who had been fumbling around with a majorly loose tooth for over a week, ended up with a self portrait pumpkin.
 

By the way, that's a pumpkin up there, not his head. Hard to tell the difference with his giant noggin.

Jeremy made a skeleton which, judging by his expression, he is awfully proud of.

Blair drew the face exactly as she wanted it, complete with hair, and then I carved it for her. I think it's supposed to be a girl, but I think it looks like a scarecrow. She got a little excited with the pen though, and after drawing the facial details, scribbled all over it. It looks much better in the dark.

Yep, even the baby gets involved.

The final products. Oooo, spooky.

Busy bee

I walked into the girls' room to check on them before I went to bed one night. This is what I found:

"So what? What's that supposed to mean?" you ask....

It means, this:

Someone was busy before she finally nodded off. Can you spy the sleeping child?

May the force be with you as you follow the yellow brick road under the sea.

Halloween! Yea!


Obi Wan Kenobi
This was a store bought costume--or actually it was a garage sale costume that I bought for 50 cents last year just for Reid to play in. It just so happened that he wanted to be Obi Wan this year so it worked out perfectly! I made the cape though. And by "made", I mean "cut a piece of brown fabric and attached with a safety pin." He even had the braid that Obi Wan has! (You have to be a Star Wars geek to know what I'm talking about.)

Ariel, the Little Mermaid
We had the pink leotard, and the tail fins are a tutu that we already had. We made everything else and then sewed the tutu to the bottom of her mermaid legs. Blair had a lot of fun getting to help pick out her fabric and help sew it. Her job was to take the pins out of the fabric after the edges were sewn and put the pins in the pin cushion. I think she was most excited about getting to spray her hair red. Maybe about $10 in cost.

Darth Vader
Total store bought costume, and at the very last minute too! Lazy boy! :) We did already have the helmet/mask though. It changes your voice to sound like Darth and it makes a heavy breathing sound, so that was cool. Here's Darth Vader and his master Obi Wan.

Glinda the Good Witch of the North along with the Wicked Witch of the East (the one who had the house land on her)
I totally lucked out and found this dress at Goodwill for $5, and pink shoes that Blair picked out for $3. I used my petticoat from my wedding and bought silver sparkles and accessories from the dollar store to go with it and it came together perfectly! Blair made sure everyone knew that she helped me find that dress, so I need to give her the credit as well. All together, I think it ended up costing about $13!

As for the witch under the house, that's Elise!

Here she is IN the house. She was mostly pretty happy in there. When she wasn't in there, I hung a pair of fake legs and ruby slippers out from under the house.

I've always wanted to incorporate the stroller into one of the costumes, so I was excited about this idea. (The inspiration, by the way, came when I saw Blair, who happened to be wearing striped tights and her ruby slippers, laying under Jeremy's desk with just her legs hanging out.) The box was courtesy of Jeremy's office. A coat of white paint, black construction paper for the shingles and yellow tissue paper for the yellow brick road completed it. And yes, it had to have curtains. I'm obsessive, I know. $5 total.

And here's the little witch herself. I made her black dress out of some black fabric I had laying around. Not that a black dress was required for this costume, but I apparently have too much time on my hands. I also made her striped leggings, but that was because I couldn't find black and white striped tights, or even pants, in her size. I made them out of a shirt I found at Goodwill for 99 cents. And her ruby slippers were shoes I already had that I spraypainted red and added red glitter to. All for a grand total of 2 bucks! Yea!

And here's our Dorothy. She had already abandoned her ruby slippers by this time of the night. And forget about pigtails with blue ribbons. All she's interested in is candy. This was a dress that was handed down from my nieces, so it was free!

Check out this evil duo!

Ah, the ultimate battle between good and evil.

Our friend Will used his Goodwill-bought jumpsuit to be a Chilean miner. Here, he and Jeremy are reenacting a scene from Star Wars, minus the Chilean miner in the actual movie scene, of course.

Our friends Danielle and Isabella are fancy felines. As for everyone else that we trick or treated with, I either didn't end up with a picture--I don't know how that happens as I'm usually as bad as the papparazzi--or there are other kids in the shot that I don't feel comfortable posting without their parents' permission. So this is all you get to see! Happy Halloween!!