The Requiste Halloween Post

Because I KNOW you're totally NOT sick of seeing other people's adorable pictures of their totes adorable kids in their amazingly adorable costumes, amiright?

Happy All Hallows Eve!  For the first time in forever (ha! now I've got you singing it...) we couldn't decide on a family theme.  We had been discussing ideas for months, but could not all agree on any single one.  So this year was a choose-your-own-adventure kind of Halloween.

There were a few rules: no choice may involve either a) an expensive get-up from the party store, or b) Mom spending hours sewing.  Sorry, kids, Mommy doesn't love you that much any more.

So, working within the stated limits, here are the spooks that haunt our house:

Mona Melendy, from The Saturdays, after she got her infamous haircut and manicure.

Miriam

A ballerina.  (She was crushed that we wouldn't get her a Classic "pancake" Tutu and instead insisted that she wear Mom's old, and therefore free, Romantic Tutu.)

Katie

 It got pretty chilly that evening, so Miss Ballerina had to add a layer to her elegant ensemble:

this is after Trick-or-Treating, if you couldn't tell from the battle-weary face

Darth Vader.  Anyone who says money can't buy happiness never spent $10 on a Darth Vader mask for a 6-year-old boy.  (The lightsaber was a birthday gift -- another brilliant purchase.)

aka Darth Jojo.

Daniel wanted to be -- of all things -- a fox.

sly old thing -- not holding still for ANY of the pictures I took

After a fruitless search for fuzzy ears and tail, we got creative using leftover craft stuff: red felt for the ears, an old red t-shirt for the tail, polyester fiberfill, and tempura paint, all for the low, low price of free ninety-free!

Katie helped paint -- Miriam was going to help sew but she was involved in the carving of her pumpkin Halloween morning.  What, doesn't everyone wait until Halloween day to work on their costumes???

To complete the homemade feel, everything's attached with safety pins.

  The tail held on admirably -- it went bouncing along behind the fantastic Mr. Fox as he booked it from house to house!

Andy got what we could dig out of the Dress Up Box: an elf (or an imp, depending on how you look at it).

He wore this hat for about 30 seconds -- just long enough for the picture.  And that was it.

So in retrospect I guess we DID have a theme this year: "Mom Is Cheap And Lazy"!  I find it actually more creative and challenging -- and therefore more satisfying -- to try to use what we have on hand to create the look we want.

Store-bought costumes are for sissies.

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In our house, every child picks his own pumpkin.  The only stipulation is that he has to be able to carry his chosen pumpkin to the car.

Miriam's pumpkin was 25 pounds.  Andy's was 2.5.

Here are Andy's and Miriam's pumpkins.  Miriam swore she would never a) get a pumpkin this big again because it took SO LONG to scoop out and her hands were SO SORE, or b) carve a spider web again because she COULDN'T get it to look right and it was SO HARD to cut out and it KEPT BREAKING.  Oh yes, preteen drama in full force here, folks.

We actually had to blow out Andy's pumpkin's candle before we left for Trick-or-Treating, because it was starting to cook the lid -- his pumpkin was so tiny!

L-R: Joseph's, Katie's, and Daniel's.  Joseph did most of his himself.  He was very proud of it.

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For dinner we had Smilin' Jack Casserole.  (aka "Beef in a Pumpkin," courtesy of Mom B.'s recipe from ages ago.  We did not have Wormy Baked Apples -- there is only so much ambition of which I am capable in one afternoon, especially since I thought it would be a good idea to can some apple butter that afternoon before we ate all the apples!)  It's basically ground beef sauteed with onions and bell peppers, then baked in a parboiled sugar pumpkin until mushy, and everything is scooped out together.  The grownups loved it.  The kids... not so much.  No matter what you flavor it with, baked squash is still baked squash.

One of the Jacks got poked in the eye.

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After a token dinner (the kids eating just enough to qualify for a candy binge when they got home), we went traipsing about the neighborhood with some dear friends.

when they arrived at our house, we didn't recognize the clown until she started talking!

We ended up splitting into two groups -- those able to run from house to house, and those needing to be carried after about 20 minutes.

Everyone had a little more stamina this year, so they brought in a larger haul.  We would have been out longer, but for the cold!  Poor Miriam's legs almost froze off.

Since Miriam couldn't eat any of the candy, she got to have... apples!  Yay!

No, I'm nicer than that.  We bought a big box of allergen-free candy earlier in the week so Miriam and Mr. Pickles could eat themselves sick too.  So now there's this poor, lonely, unclaimed pumpkin full of candy, just sitting on the kitchen island....

Happy Excessive Flossing Season, everyone!