Halloween Madness!

WARNING: It's been a busy week - long post to ensue!

I am always just tingling with excitement when October finally hits and I can start putting some of my creative and mom energy into holiday celebration. We picked our costumes at the beginning of the month and figured I had plenty of time to put them all together.

Well, lets just say a week before Halloween, those store bought costumes (though seemingly outrageously overpriced in my book) were looking very appealing. I LOVE doing family themes, and will continue to do so as long as my kids let me (which will probably only be a few more years). Nathan was all set early, I had religiously hit craigslist and we had scored a great $5 darth vador costume. Check. Carter we started out with me making a jedi costume, but I had a hard time finding a good pattern, ended up winging it on making the costume, patternless (which I do often), but only ending up frustrated. So, we both happily settled on the less impressive, but less complicated storm trooper costume from the DI. Downloaded, printed, and laminated a mask for him and he was done.

That left Luke, Matt and myself. Luke was the one I was tempted to buy - a yoda costume. But, I finally dove in the morning of a good friend's kid halloween party (realizing at 8 a.m. that this was probably a COSTUME party! Ha!), and had that done in a few hours. It needed some adjustments between the party and Halloween, but in the end I was glad I put my scraps to work and didn't buy the store bought. I thought mine was cuter!

Here are some pictures from the fun party our local party queen Kari put on for the kiddos:

Nathan, his friend Spencer (aka Indiana Jones), and Luke doing a craft

We've all probably done the "use toilet paper to turn someone into a mummy" game, but I have never seen kids do it, and it was so great! Here is my cute little mummy. Plus, as a bonus, the kids loved playing in the toilet paper afterwards, dancing with it to halloween music.

I finally figured out how to do video clips! Yay! Here is the mummy game in live action:

On with the Halloween madness! Thursday I took Carter and Luke to meet up with Nathan at his first field trip - to the pumpkin patch! It was our local one, just up the street, which we hadn't been to yet, so it was fun. The kids loved the hayride, getting to pick out not just a pumpkin but a gourd, feeding the animals (who definitely had Luke captivated), and playing in the playground and haunted maze.

Nathan proudly showing off his "perfect" pumpkin:

Nathan on the hayride with two of his best buds, Mia and Aiden.

Carter loved this horse-shaped tire swing!

Nathan bravely feeding the goats

I thought this pumpkin snowman was awesome. No, Carter doesn't too...he just got a piece of candy and is doing a happy candy dance = ).

Friday I helped out at Nathan's classroom Halloween party and then watched the kids do their little Halloween parade. I had to laugh as at least half of all the boys were star wars themed - I had no idea it was the "thing" to be! Nathan just wanted to be Darth since last year, and we followed suit as a family.

The rest of Friday was spent madly getting Matt and I's costumes ready. I made both of them that day. Maybe procrastination exasterbated the halloween "madness" just a little! Let's just say I used my sewing machine more this week than the whole rest of the year...and am very happy to put it away, maybe until next halloween!

Here's our couple pic and let's see if you can guess who we are (again, think Star Wars):

Here is who we are modeled after (Queen Amidala - Luke and Leahs mother, and an ewok)

In the end, I had a lot of fun with my costume. I think all the girliness in my combined and enjoyed this princess costume. And, man, was I the envy of the 8 year old girls out trick or treating = ). They seemed to appreciate the costume the most, complete with "ooh"'s and "wow!"s. Though, I did have a man tell me that I was the best adult costume he had seen that year, which I appreciated. So, in the end the creative process was fun and worth it (though my husband might still be recovering...).

Finally, here are some pictures from our ward trunk or treat and the whole star wars gang together. Hope you had just as happy of a halloween as we did!

I love my little Yoda! Of course, he was the only one without a mask...masks sure do hide cute kiddos faces!