Happy Halloweeny!

Okay okay let's just skip the fact that it's been over a month since I've posted and go straight to the fact that October has been a BLAST for us! (well was a blast-is it seriously already a week into November?! yikes) I just barely got my Halloween decorations down (and that was only because we had pre-school here this week and I felt pressure to not seem like the slacker mom :). And technically speaking they're not actually put away; they are spread all over the garage until I can magically create some time to put them back into their bins), and am only half wayish done putting up "fall" decorations. Hopefully I'll get the rest of it done before it's time for Christmas...we shall see.

For being the HUGE procrastinator that I am, I was so proud of myself for having all my Halloween decorations/projects not only completely made, but put up by October 1st! (sorry I'm just getting around to posting them!) I've been cruisin' crafty blogs for the past couple months and when people started posting fun halloween crafts all over blogland, I got bit by the bug and couldn't help but get to work around mid-sept. I've never decorated for Halloween before, so this was new for us but Tyler LOVED it! He's just at such a perfect age right now to really get into the spirit of all this fun holiday stuff and it makes for such fun memories!! So blah, blah, blah I've talked enough, here's what Halloween looked like at our house this year!

On Oct. 1st, Tyler woke up to discover that a witch (we never could decide if she was wicked or not) had left ALL her stuff at our house!


Tyler was very concerned with the fact that if the witch did not come back and get her stuff she wouldn't be able to fly on Halloween, so every night we would look out the window for the witch and say, "Hey little witch, where are you? Don't forget to come back and get your witch stuff!" She never did-silly witch!-so we decided we would save it till next year and see if she still wanted it. (got the idea from here. I had been wanting to do something with my witch hat from last year, I just wasn't sure what and when I saw this I knew it would be perfect. It was all stuff I already had-minus the crow and broom which I got from the dollar store and wrapped with black and orange crepe paper)

Some other fun decorations:

Skeleton vase-


*I picked up some skeleton garland at the dollar store, took off the twine holding them together so I could use them individually, and stuck them in a vase, with black rocks, 2 candles stacked together and tied with ribbon to hide the "stacked" look cause I didn't have a tall candle (all stuff I had). Then I put the vase on top of a large candle stick I got at the dollar store (on .88 Tues. so it was only 88 cents!) which was bright blue with orange cats, so I gave it a couple coats of black spray praint, tied on some halloween ribbon I found at Walmart and voila!


Next, was this skeleton platter I found at the dollar store. It was a see-through black plastic material so I gave it a couple coats of black shimmery spray paint to make it more decorativeish and threw on some Halloween stickers I got at Michaels with my 40% off coupon. The candy corn jar was from the dollar store (also .88 cent Tues!), and after I tied some ribbon around the top, filled it with candy corn and put on a cat sticker, I thought it was perfect! The little spiders throughout the house I made using ping-pong balls, scraps of cheap fabric from Walmart, pipe cleaners and googly eyes. (kinda got the inspiration for the spiders here)


The BOO wood letters are from an enrichment activity last year, the witch boot and cat are from the dollar store!


The RIP is from the dollar store (are we seeing a theme here?!?) the candle holders and vases I already had, stuffed em with tissue paper and filled them with creepy crawlers from...you guessed it.


Made these Halloween frames from dollar store frames.


They were brown with words written all around the glass so I sprayed the frames black, the glass white, put on some Halloween stickers, and put in pictures of the kids in their costumes from last year.





Since I wanted to display these fun pumpkin pictures from last year, but didn't want to buy anymore frames I just taped the pictures to the white backing from my dollar store frames, threw some of my Halloween ribbon on to make it "tiered" and hung it up.


Ta Da!


For the outside I made some glitter pumpkins (got the idea here).


These were plain orange pumpkins I had used last year for our Thanksgiving name card holders. I lathered them up with elmer's glue and sprinkled gold and red glitter over the pumpkins and brown glitter for the stems.


They sparkled SO pretty when the sun hit them!


Last year I made this wreath and I still love it! (I totally thought I posted about it, but I can't find it so I'll have to post all my fall things I made last year when I get a chance!)




And now to the best part about Halloween...the costumes!

TYLER-
Tyler wanted to be a robot and he did not disappoint! We've known this is what he wanted to be since this summer, but of course we waited till the week of to make it and stayed up SOOO late every night the week before Halloween making both their costumes. Yes WE...Bobby was the mastermind behind the robot. Although to give myself a teensy bit of credit I did create the idea on paper, Bobby implemented it...and then some! Having NO experience with anything "boy" in my life, a robot was totally out of my element. Bobby was way busy with school that week so I wasn't sure he was going to be able to help, but no way I was going to let that stop me from giving Tyler the best robot costume this girly girl could make! I looked up tons of robot costumes online and drew a sketch of a mix between a few of them. I measured Tyler, measured and cut some boxes, wrote down ideas to use for the pieces on the costume, spray painted lots of things silver, and went shopping! I brought it all home, laid it all out on the living room floor and just stared at it. I think at that point Bobby took pity on me and took over. Thank goodness! I was in way over my head. This engineer/computer science guru of mine turned my idea into the coolest thing I think I've ever seen!


A little more up-close


At night he looked like this. The 2 little lights blink different colors every second or so (I couldn't get a great night picture of him in it):


The top was a little big for him so Bobby helped him out by carrying him from house to house


By the end of the night we were carrying the top of the costume and would just put it on him when he went up to the door. :) But he did LOVE his costume and wanted to play with it all the time!

(Tyler with some kids from pre-school)

One awesome thing about living in Utah is that everyone celebrates Halloween on Sat. if the actual holiday falls on sun. Stores, malls, neighborhoods, everyone! So Fri night we went to a party our friends from our last ward invited us to at our old apartment complex. The kids had fun doing the different games and activities but our highlight of the night was Tyler winning the best costume contest (out of over 20 people!). Bobby wasn't able to be there, but I knew he would be so happy knowing so many people loved the costume he made,so I was so excited for him! Tyler was just excited he won an ice-cream gift certificate! Bobby was also pretty stoked when I told him some college guys that were out playing ball in the lawn stopped us and asked if they could take a picture of Tyler's costume as we were walking by. We even had an offer from someone to buy his costume so they could use it next year when we were out trick-or-treating! ha ha! And after all that; he only wore his costume for about 10% of the time we were out. Maybe next year, we'll tone it down just a notch. :)

KYLEE-
Kylee was the cutest witch EVER!


Of course she didn't care what she was this year, but I thought it would be fun to be a witch with her (turns out I didn't end up dressing up that night-totally ran out of time) but she really did love that she was going to be a witch! We showed her witch stuff all month long so she would understand and she would tell anybody that would listen that she was going to be "a witch" for Halloween! I was a little worried she wouldn't get the whole dress-up idea and just want to rip everything off, but she got SO into it! Oh my goodness, I just can't even say enough how much I love this little stink. I just sit her smiling thinking about her eagerly getting dressed in her costume! I think it helped that she saw Tyler so excited about his costume, that she knew that this was something different and fun. Mindy taught me how to make her a tutu (and patiently sat with me the whole time I made it to make sure I did it perfectly!). It was SO easy and so cheap to make! I decided on purple and green for the colors of her costume and loved that she was a cute, good witch! I also made her cape. That's right people. A cape...WITH a hood AND a ribbon to tie it closed. I sewed my first ever article of clothing-if you can call it such. I know, I'm hot stuff. If you saw it up close you'd think someone with a little too much too drink got ahold of a sewing machine, but hey I was proud okay? And I did it ALL by myself, with no help from Bobby. (If you don't know by now, bobby is the go-to person in this house for all things robotic, scientific, domestic, etc. If you're laughing, it's cause you're jealous.) Anyway, it was pretty cool. See?


I bought her hat for a dollar at a party store and borrowed black boots, leggings and a onesie from mindy.


She LOVED wearing the skirt and would just stand in front of the mirror and sway from side to side holding different pieces of fabric. Having a girl is the best! Seriously, you should get one.


I also had fun making her have "witch hair". It looked awesome inside and then we went outside to take pictures...in the rain...and that was the end of the awesome witch hair. But here's what it sorta looked like :)


Another thing that surprised me is that she loved her hat! She wanted it on at all times and every time the wind would blow it off she would yell,"My hat! my hat!". She had quite the time trying to hold her hat and her basket all night.


By the end of the night the hat was so wet it actually just suctioned right to her head so she was a happy, yet cold little camper!


Sorry, just a couple more pictures of the two of them! (ya know...for the grandparents :) )

Sat. afternoon we went to some grocery stores for some trick-or-treating...




Then we went to our old Bishop's neighborhood to trick-or-treat so he could see the kids.




We were so happy this little princess-Belle (macey) could join us!


Kylee and Macey loved running from house to house together!


At the end of the night- tired, cold and ready to go home!


After all, she had plenty of candy to keep herself occupied!

I was surprised how into trick-or-treating Kylee was this year. I wasn't sure she would totally get it, but she did NOT have a problem knowing exactly what to do. She would walk right up to the door, knock as hard as her little hand could, and would say-in the cutest little voice of all time-"trick treat!", stick out her bucket and yell a quick, "thank you!" before running off to the next house. By the end of the night Tyler was a little grumpy and not so "into" the spirit of things hence the lack of pictures of him now. But he was happy to be home and loved answering the door, seeing all the kids come to our house dressed up and passing out candy. So by the end of the night everybody was happy!

I love my little witch and robot!!!


Hope your Halloween was awesome too!