Halloween Costumes 2012

We got good use out of the kids' Halloween costumes this year! The pic above is just before they headed out trick-or-treating with J.

R was Hermione from Harry Potter, complete with a black grim-reaper robe J found on sale, a scarf that Grammie crocheted for her, a "Gryffindor" badge R and I drew together from an image we found online, and a stick J picked up in the Poconos.

RUS told J he wanted to be a super-hero. When J asked him which one, RUS said, "Red one!" and he stuck to it, so we made him a big red "R" (R for Red and R for RUS!), pinned it to a red shirt, had him wear red pants, and found this red hoodie complete with a very super-heroish mohawk.

The kids wore their costumes for their school parties as well as for a Halloween party hosted by one of my coworkers, whose kids are absolutely gaga for Halloween. We made a dirt cake, decorated with gummy worms and tombstones that R drew and that we taped to toothpicks, to bring along. Here are the kids helping decorate before the party.

Milburn's and Pumpkins!

While Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle G were visiting, we headed back to Milburn's to get some apple cider donuts and pumpkins to carve. We stocked up on some more apples, too--oh my gosh. Fresh apples from the orchard is seriously one of my very, VERY favorite things about fall.

We only managed to carve one of the pumpkins so far--J and R carved this while home waiting for Hurricane Sandy; RUS was too busy doing other things (reading books with me, watching Bob the Builder) and didn't end up carving that day. We're thinking we might make his a "Thanksgiving" pumpkin and carve a turkey in it now that Halloween is over.

J and R also decorated the back of her pumpkin by adding eyes with toothpicks and scooped-out pumpkin rind, and coloring on them with marker. ICK!

Halloween Party

The kids were invited to a really cool Halloween party at one of their friends' houses. The food was AMAZING! I couldn't resist documenting it all--there were deviled eyeballs, cake pops in various Halloween colors (see pic above) and in the pictures below you see witches' brooms, oreo spiders, popcorn balls, a skeleton veggie tray, and a dirt cake with gummy worms.

There were lots of games and crafts and all kinds of Halloween decorations. RUS loved the giant spider's web, partly because our back porch is often filled with spiders and we talk about them a lot.

My favorite activity was when the kids made mummies out of each other. Here's R converting RUS from a Skeleton into a Mummy.

Some holiday artwork from R

A Halloween scene she created with markers and several kinds of stickers

And a Thanksgiving letter she wrote to one of her pen pals. I'm especially proud of this because she asked me how to write "Happy Thanksgiving" and all I did was write the words on a separate piece of paper and she copied them. Then, after signing her name, I told her she could write anything else she wanted. She decided to add some hugs and kisses (xox) and then wrote "MOM" which is one of the few words she knows how to write without asking for help. She is really working on sounding out words and trying to spell them herself

Trick or Treat!!!

Orchard visit with friends

Early this month we scheduled a trip to an apple orchard in Pennsylvania with friends whose kids are the same ages as ours. This is the same orchard we took Grandma and Grandpa to the first year we lived in Delaware.

This orchard has a ton of kid-friendly activities and things to do, plus animals galore! Of course we had to start off with the farmer cutouts! Here's R as a farmer's wife with one of our friends as the farmer.

RUS has always been totally in love with D-- we used to laugh because often we would pass one another outside walking in/out of day care and RUS would literally lunge out of my arms and into hers. She says she's used to carrying both of her kids and RUS is a lot lighter than her daughter (who is R's age) so she didn't mind this at all.

The play area was a HUGE hit for both of the kids. Here's RUS crawling through a train

and finally arriving out the front. He was so tickled!

And this castle was wild. You had to climb a ladder to get to the second story (a ladder that I didn't climb because of the number of kids also trying to climb, so R had to do it by herself.) She was brave!

Here's a closer pic. She LOVED being at the top of the castle and really wanted me to climb up, but there was no way I was going to fight a sea of under-8-year-olds to try and get up there.

Then we went to where the pumpkins are and tried to get pictures of all the kids--we're only missing one in this picture!

One of the coolest parts of this orchard is that each year they have different pumpkin displays. This one was R's favorite (of course): Pumpkin Cinderella and her pumpkin coach!

And me and the two girls decided to be witches!

While wandering around the gift shop we saw this display of hay bales and tried to get a big group shot. The kids were not real into it! This is the best shot we got.

But R and her friend still wanted to pose so we accommodated them.

Before we left, we got the kids some apple cider for the ride home and R and I shared a caramel apple. YUM. Oh man. I remember as a kid my mom buying the caramel sheets for making caramel apples with. Me and my brothers LOVED those. 

As a side note, for this orchard, there's no entrance fee, but each thing you do (horse ride, face painting, play area, etc.) costs a small amount of money, which adds up. J and I tried to do the mental calculations and figure out whether we'd rather pay a flat fee for everyone to get in and then everything you do is free, or whether we'd rather pay per activity. It kind of worked out about the same for us cost-wise but I think having to pay for everything is a little bit of a pain (pulling out your wallet again and again, etc.)

The Angel Witch

This is the inspiration for R's Halloween costume this year. She wanted to be an "angel" but I didn't really know what she meant by "angel" so I got paper and crayons and asked her to describe for me what the angel should look like.

She said the angel should have a brown skirt with a black shirt, a rainbow nose, red wings with yellow on the outside, and one stripey leg and one polka dot leg.

So. J and I kept our eyes open for elements we could use. We had a lot of them already. She has a brown skirt. She needed a black shirt. We have stripey tights and polkadotted babylegs. We weren't too sure about the rainbow nose or the wings, but we figured we'd figure something out.

Then R and I were at the drugstore just looking around and she spotted a witch's hat in the Halloween aisle that she fell in love with. We happen to have a witch's hat at home but the one in the store had a flower on it. So we made a felt flower and attached it to our witch's hat with a hot glue gun. After that, she started saying she was going to be an "angel witch."

I found a witchy skirt on super-clearance and some butterfly wings that are actually orange and yellow but they made R happy so that was what mattered.

And we'll do the full costume reveal at the neighborhood Halloween parade tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Pumpkin Carving!

RUS and I carved our pumpkin while R was at gymnastics today. Here we are getting started. RUS put on his game face, aka "smile, RUS!" and we got started.

I drew a couple of different faces on paper and let RUS pick the one he liked best. We went with a simple triangle-inspired face: triangle eyes, triangle nose, triangle teeth. Here's how it looked after we got the eyes cut out.

And here's the pumpkin, completely carved. RUS helped by holding crayons and occasionally touching the pumpkin with the crayons. 

After lunch, R and J and I worked on her pumpkin while RUS napped. Here we are pulling out the seeds. J actually did the carving this time.

R was very particular about how she wanted her pumpkin to look. She drew a couple different versions on paper, and J and I worked to transform her inspiration into something carveable. She had full veto power over our drawings and in fact was quite picky. She wanted a biiiiiiiiiiiig mouth and big eyes and a triangle nose "pointing up!" So, that's what we did!

Clearly a princess pumpkin, isn't it??

Apple Cider Donuts at the Pumpkin Patch