Halloween

(Okay, so I know I’m a little behind. So, I’m trying to get caught up before Thanksgiving gets added to the mix. Sorry in advance for the long posts.)

The first thing we did this Halloween “season” was go to a pumpkin patch. I (that’s right, me by myself) took my kids and the Brown’s kids (which I was babysitting at the time) to a nearby pumpkin patch. As you can see, they don’t actually grow their own pumpkins, but it was still cool. It was a local place called TGR Exotics and they’re kind of  like a mini zoo.

They had a couple of great photo ops all set-up, (If you can’t tell, that pumpkin is huge!) Bouncing balls to bounce and race on, Troughs full of dried corn to dig, pour, and rake, (It was hard to pull them away from this.)And they even had a kangaroo roaming freely around the pumpkin patch! It actually held still long enough for Josh to pet it.( Normally, I wouldn’t advocate petting a kangaroo because they are pretty fierce, but since this one was roaming freely, not caged, content, and was wearing a diaper-- I figured it was probably okay.)  The kids had so much fun and all went really well. In fact, my kids were probably better behaved with their friends there, than if they had been on their own. (Or maybe they just took pity on me knowing I was outnumbered 5 to 1.)

For Family Home Evening, the week before Halloween, we carved the pumpkins. ( I should say, Aaron and I carved the pumpkins.)

 

Isn’t that face just too cute!!!

The boys cleaned out their pumpkins and then drew what they wanted me to carve. Then,  I carved their pumpkins while Aaron worked on his.

Joshua’s pumpkin with “angry eyes.”A

Seth’s pumpkin. At the pumpkin patch, he told me he wanted an “ugly pumpkin” because they make good jack-o-lanterns. So, yes, he meant for all those brown spots to be on the face. That’s his creative mind for ya…

Lit with battery-0perated tea lights

And in the dark. Sadly, these guys didn’t make it to the big night. They were moldy and toothless by Halloween. We kept them out because they were a little creepy. Next year, we’ll carve only a day or two in advance. Oh, and of course, I can’t forget Aaron’s creation (with my help of course)…

The famous hamburger and fries! He cut a wedge out of the side of the pumpkin, used the pumpkin seeds for sesame seeds, painted Styrofoam for the hamburger and fries, and colored foam sheets for the toppings. He took this one to show off at work (they had a carving contest) and entered it in the contest at the Trunk-or Treat. And now….

Presenting the Palmer family costumes of 2010…

Nintendo!

Josh was Mario. He loved the costume but hated the mustache. I think I.. possibly… might have…had to threaten to take his candy if he didn’t wear the mustache at least for pictures.  I mean what’s Mario without his mustache?

Seth was Luigi. If I remember right, the whole idea of dressing as the Mario brothers was his idea. He really wanted to be Mario, but was sweet enough to volunteer to be Luigi. The boys had white gloves as part of their costumes but we forgot to put them on.

Aubrey was Princess Peach. I LOVED how her costume turned out. She was so stinking cute, even if most of the time she wouldn’t leave her crown in her hair.

Aaron was Bowser. We didn’t really get a good picture of his costume. He had a dinosaur hat that I decked out to look like Bowser, complete with spiked dog collar and wristbands, and a turtle shell. That night, I realized that he needed a tail and something better to wear under his costume to get the full effect (yeah, jeans aren’t working here). Oh well…C’est la vie!

I was a Nintendo NES controller. If you haven’t seen or heard about it, this is what we are rocking at our house. We have the same Nintendo system Aaron got when he was a kid. I mean THE same set.  It was really funny how many kids came up to me and were clueless as to what kind of controller I was.  I’d get comments like, “Um, what are you?” or “You’re missing some buttons.” The parents got it and would make funny comments like, “Mom is the controller. Isn’t that the truth?” to which Aaron would reply, “Yeah, but we like to push her buttons!”

So I made all of our costumes which is one of my favorite parts of Halloween, but the thought of making overalls for the boys seemed kind of daunting. One day, I was talking to my good friend Elizabeth about Halloween costumes and she was saying how much she was NOT looking forward to painting on the details of her son’s Buzz Lightyear costume.  Half-jokingly and half-serious, I offered to paint her costume if she would make my two pairs of overalls. She agreed!

We both agreed that it would be easier for me to paint the Buzz Lightyear costume and  her to sew the overalls, than the other way around. So we did just that. (So, technically I guess I didn’t entirely make our costumes.)

Pretty good, right?! She just made a white jumper/coverall and I painted it with acrylic paints and fabric paint markers. It took a few hours to do but was so much fun. If you ever try to do this yourself, only use the markers for details. It took nearly an entire marker (and a lot of time)  just to fill in green on the chest area.

Since Halloween was on a Sunday, our ward did a Trunk-or-Treat the Saturday before. It was a lot of fun. We were kind of bummed we didn’t win the costume contest, but there were some fun costumes. Then, on Sunday, we had the missionaries over for dinner. I love making fun treats for the kids on holidays, so I continued that over to our Halloween meals.

For breakfast, we had troll boogers and mummy dogs (green scrambled eggs and mini sausages wrapped in crescent rolls with mustard eyes).  For dinner, we had spider nachos, slime, and bloody applesauce. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture.) The nachos had a spider web drawn on them with sour cream and then topped with a plastic spider. The slime was lemonade mixed with green food coloring and the bloody applesauce was just strawberry applesauce cups.

 

Then for dessert, we had Ghosts in the Graveyard. This was a cup of chocolate pudding topped with Oreo crumbs. Then, I made an oval shaped sugar cookie and frosted the “RIP” for the tombstone. The ghost is a blob of Cool Whip with chocolate chip eyes. Everyone loved it all. It was fun and yummy!

Halloween is always lots of fun. Now, hopefully, I can get my Thanksgiving decorations up before it’s actually Thanksgiving…

(Like I said, sorry for the long post.)