Halloween 2014

What is really spooky is that we are almost two weeks past Halloween and I still haven't had a chance to post anything yet. 

This is the second year in a row that we haven't made it to the pumpkin patch.  I think there are three reasons for that.  The first is time.  As the kids get older and more involved in things, we just run out of weekends.  The second reason also has to do with the fact that they are older.  They just don't seem to care that much whether they go or not.  They were just as happy to pick out pumpkins from the back of a truck at the farmer's market.  And third, since they don't really care whether they go or not, we would rather not spend a king's ransom to go to the pumpkin patch where you have to buy tickets to the corn maze and the jumpy pillow..etc.  The "farm" where we always went has gotten so commercial and so expensive.  

So that being said, a few nights before Halloween, we carved our farmer's market pumpkins.  I only have a couple of phone pictures from the festivities.  I wasn't really in the mood to haul out the big guns. 

My favorite part about Halloween is the kids' costumes.  I absolutely LOVE putting their costumes together.  I love coming up with ideas.  I love the hunt for pieces.  I love stitching and sewing pieces together. It is one of my favorite times of the year.

Hailey decided over the summer that she wanted to be Maleficient.  I was thrilled - for one, not Elsa- and second, there is not much better than a good villain costume.

One of my favorite parts of the costume was her staff with Diaval attached to it.  I almost jumped for joy when I saw that bird at the dollar store.

We purchase the dress on ebay - it was a standard Maleficient kit costume.  I didn't like that the dress was all black so I added a purple underskirt from a thrift store prom dress.  She wore a purple top she had underneath.  The costume came with tiny horns on a headband, but when she trick or treated at the campground nobody knew who she was.  They all thought she was some kind of devil.  So I knew I needed to make her some substantial horns.  They turned out pretty amazing.

Evan wanted to be an Indian brave.  We were able to throw together his costume pretty easily.   We found his pants and that amazing shirt at the thrift store.   The shirt had beading and fringe and even some real animal fur.  We purchased it for one dollar!  Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

We found that faux fur vest at the thrift store too.  I don't know if he really needed it for the costume, but he liked it and it was a good addition to the dress up box.

Spencer was not sure he wanted to dress up this year.  Insert super sad mom face.  Then, typical Spencer, decided the night before he wanted to be a zombie.  Never fear - there is an app for that.  It is called "text your dad and tell him to bring home makeup and a blow torch to zombiefy your old clothes".  Thank goodness the boy has a dad in the theatre business or I would have had to wring his little neck!

These are the best photos I managed to get of the three of them.  They were freezing.  We were rushing around like lunatics.  Evan was still chewing on dinner.

I can't wait until next year!