Better late than never, right?
Timmy and I enjoyed carving our four pumpkins this afternoon. I’m so proud of Timmy, this year he offered to do everything but got really nervous about gutting the pumpkins. So I did it for him…because I’m a sucker for that stuff.
It was the saddest thing, not being home for my boys’ Halloween. I did my best to decorate the house — complete with a fresh batch of tree ghosts — but was away by the time my sons had their school Halloween parties, and other Halloween events (such as Jacob’s first boy-girl birthday party with dancing, which was Halloween-themed; he dressed as an Incredibles kid for it).
Enjoy some of the pictures from Halloween. Dave took all of them, most of them were texted to me over the course of the night. Sorry I’m so late with these….
We’re now in a place where the kids have many costume choices. I love how easily Jacob could don this for a birthday party.
The boys could dress up for Halloween at school. Timmy’s costume had to be a book character, so Harry Potter was our no-brainer option. Jacob had more liberties with his costumes, but couldn’t wear a mask, nor could his costume impede with school activities. That ruled out his Incredibles outfit, and also his Pikkachu costume, since it had a stuffed midsection and he couldn’t sit at his desk with it. So he put together this baseball player’s outfit easily. Completely last minute, good job!
On Halloween night, Jacob donned a Pikachu costume that a friend had made for her son years ago. That particular son is now in college, and she had held on to the costumes. It fit Jacob really well. I picked up the yellow-lycra bodysuit through Amazon, but I’m afraid it made him look more like a chicken from a distance…
Jacob didn’t mind.
Jacob even had yellow shoes, ha ha!
Timmy has a headlamp on his head.
The boys were quite happy with their take this year, they covered two streets, which may not sound like much, but it’s at least one mile worth of walking.
OOOOOOOoooooo……..
I love my ghosts! Last year my ghost door hanging and my 10 hanging ghosts got moldy from one too many humid Florida Octobers. So I trashed them rather then packaging them up with all of our costumes for a year.
This year I decided to make another batch of ghosts…and I figured I’d share this fun and easy homemade Halloween craft with you! And you get to recycle/repurpose plastic grocery bags, so win win for reducing waste!
Materials required:
It’s all pretty straightforward: wad up 2-3 plastic grocery bags and cinch them in a diaper with a twist tie or pipe cleaner. Then thread a needle with some monofilament (about 1 yard per ghost) to make a hanging loop through the top of the head. Simply hang them outside on your favorite tree or under your favorite eave…and let them blow in the wind!
This is the packaging to the diapers I picked up at Walmart.
We have fishing gear, so I didn’t have to travel far to find some monofilament…
Thread the monofilament through the very top of the ghost.
First of all, let’s show a recovering Dave this evening, happy after a Panera sandwich and chocolate brownie. My poor guy had to go 36 hours without food. While that stinks for most people, those who know Dave well can imagine how it must have been for him. He’s recovering normally (i.e. very sore for the first 48 hours) and we’re looking forward to him coming home tomorrow afternoon. He reports that he’s been walking around and not feeling the pain he’d had in his legs for the past 2 years!
Because his procedure was moved to Halloween day, the family’s Halloween plans had changed considerably. We didn’t carve our pumpkin, I didn’t wear any more of my costume this year than the hat at a spouses’ club luncheon 2 weeks ago, and I sadly had to unplug the ghost light timer from our front porch since no one would be home to give out candy.
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| The picture is supposed to be of the tiered sandwich platter, but you can see me in the background in my purple witch’s hat looking witchy. |
After Dave went to the recovery room and we could visit briefly with him, the boys and I enjoyed a short trick or treat trip at Hurlburt Field’s base housing area, thanks to an invitation from Dave’s squadron’s 1st Sergeant. Katrina had invited a couple of families of deployed over to her place so we could experience a safe, traditional trick-or-treat experience. Even though it was a short trip, and by the time we started many houses had run out of candy, the boys had a very nice time and ran into a number of their friends — who didn’t live in base housing either.
Enjoy some pictures from Halloween night:
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| On Sunday Jacob went to a Halloween-themed birthday party. Jacob has a rubber rat in his hand, who he’s named Scabbers. He’s with his classmate William, dressed as Link from The Legend of Zelda. His Mom did a great job with the tunic, hat and shield! |
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Timmy and one of his classmates he ran into while trick or treating.
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| The base fire station was out visiting the kids and handing out candy. The kids love Sparky so much — although the CE Squadron Commander told me that suit is VERY hot and Sparky had to take a lot of breaks in air conditioning 🙂 |
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| The kids enjoyed seeing the elaborate decorations. This house turned their entire — and I mean ENTIRE — front yard into a haunted cemetery! The boys loved checking it out. |
Jacob and Timmy wore their Halloween costumes to school today. It turns out Jacob and another classmate both happened to have “Luigi” costumes. In fact, I got a picture of the two of them!
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| From 2010 10 29 Timmy Jacob Halloween Parade 2010 |
The boys had a good time with their Halloween parade at school, and their respective Halloween parties. But after school Jacob asked if he could wear another costume to go trick or treating…his classmates told him he didn’t really look like Luigi as well as the other young man in the picture.
Jacob also claimed that he never really wanted to be Luigi, but that simply wasn’t true. The boys were super excited all month at how easy it would be for Jacob to be Luigi because he was tall and skinny, and Timmy would be Mario because Mario is shorter and less-skinny. It was also evident the first two times he wore the costume, he was having a great time.
At first I was ready to just run to the store and buy Jacob a polyester unitard of his choice…I guess Jacob’s getting to the age where individuality is going to be trumped by popularity. He’s getting older, and I think I’ve been lucky that he’s rarely expressed strong opinions in what he wore up till recently. I think he’d have felt better in the store bought version of the costume.
In general, I’m still heartbroken. I may just have to absolutely turn Jacob loose with the choice/shopping/assembly of his costumes from now on…with zero input from me.
Sniff…sniff…my babies are growing up…
This weekend we finally took some time to get into the Halloween spirit. Friday we went to the Bellevue Pumpkin Patch to choose the family pumpkins, then the boys had a chance to wear their Halloween costumes both Saturday and Sunday.
First of all, if you like this picture below, then click the link here to vote for them in a Fox Sports contest to have this picture shown during Game 3 of the World Series. No silly login/password/consent for spam required. The voting button is towards the right of the page.
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| From 2010 10 31 Halloween 2010 |
The Bellevue Berry Farm and Pumpkin Patch is right up the road from us. We usually pay a visit to the much-larger Vala’s Pumpkin Patch at some point, but always get so caught up in the attractions, we never make it out to get our pumpkins. Bellevue is so much more relaxing and laid back, we have an equally good time. Living only 10 minutes from there definitely helps too.
We met Timmy’s friend Roger’s family out there and had a fun morning.
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| From 2010 10 22 Bellevue Pumpkin Patch |
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| From 2010 10 22 Bellevue Pumpkin Patch |
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| From 2010 10 22 Bellevue Pumpkin Patch |
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| From 2010 10 22 Bellevue Pumpkin Patch |
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| From 2010 10 22 Bellevue Pumpkin Patch |
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| From 2010 10 22 Bellevue Pumpkin Patch |
Saturday was the AFWA Halloween party. For those new to my blog, AFWA stands for Air Force Weather Agency, and it’s the name of the military organization Dave works for. Their Halloween party consists of games and crafts for the kids, hot dogs and cupcakes, and then it’s wrapped up by a “Trunk or Treat”.
Last year we simply took the boys and they had a good time, but this time we did a bit more. I put on my recently-renovated witch costume and decorated our trunk up pretty fun. I got a bit overzealous thinking our car battery could power our fog machine, oops 🙂
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| From 2010 10 31 Halloween 2010 |
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| From 2010 10 31 Halloween 2010 |
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| From 2010 10 31 Halloween 2010 |
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| From 2010 10 31 Halloween 2010 |
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| From 2010 10 31 Halloween 2010 |
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| From 2010 10 31 Halloween 2010 |
Today we made our way to the Omaha Zoo’s “Spooktacular” event. Apparently this is a pretty big deal around here. Perhaps it’s worth its own “Nebraska Discoveries” blog post because it was a cultural attraction all in itself! Yes, I think that’s what I’ll do.
I’ll have pictures of the costumes later this week, the kids have the 1st of 4 Halloween events this Saturday!
The 2nd set of overalls were much more difficult mostly due to a finicky bobbin and a sewing machine that desperately needs a tune up. I switched to a red-threaded bobbin out of frustration and suddenly everything went much better. Sure, hints of red underside thread everywhere, but they’re Mario’s overalls, I’m sure it’ll be okay.
Tonight the boys and I stopped at Nobbie’s, the local Halloween shop, and picked up 8 stick-on black mustaches. This should be interesting, especially with Timmy’s not-so-dark head of hair, ha ha!
As for me, I’ll break out my witch costume from last year, but I’ll be making some edits to it.
*Wondering where the title comes from?
So here’s my hat trick for the boys’ Halloween costumes. We were fortunate to have a green ball cap in the house (from when Dave was on the crew of the New Hope Valley RR in North Carolina) and we have several red NC State ballcaps, so it was 50 cents at Michael’s to pick up some felt and make new fronts.
No, they aren’t perfect. And no, they aren’t the same floppy plumbers hats that the animated characters have. But for 50 cents for both hats…and the ability to bring the hats back to its original form by pulling the thread holding it in place…this will work well. Besides, these are adult ball caps, they’re pretty roomy on my boys’ heads.
Before:
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| From 2010 10 16 Halloween Mario & Luigi Costumes |
After:
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| From 2010 10 16 Halloween Mario & Luigi Costumes |
And here’s Luigi:
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| From 2010 10 16 Halloween Mario & Luigi Costumes |
I hope to have the 2nd pair of overalls finished by the end of this weekend. Then the only thing left will be the mustaches, which I haven’t figured out quite yet. The boys have two Halloween events next weekend.
I still need to fit the side buttons and hem the legs, but here’s the first set of overalls.
Let the sewing begin!!!
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