my blog

halloween 2011.

Well, I guess I should preface this with, better late than never.

I just love Halloween as most of you know, and there is nothing I like better than going all out on our kids costumes. It gets harder and harder each year to “convince” the kids that they want to be what I want them to be, but I’m happy to say they are still making good choices when it comes to cuteness.

Hunter Potter. We recently let Hunter start reading the Harry Potter series, and we promised him when he finished reading the book we would let him watch the movie. He sped through book 1, loved the movie and has the rest of the Harry Potter books on his Christmas wish list.

I’m not sure just anybody could pull of this costume, but Lily certainly did it justice.

My mom and dad picked this costume up for Grey from Costco, and I must say it was my favorite this year! He looked SO, SO adorable in it!

Ava as a zombie bride.

My friend at work (did I mention that I work at Michaels?) made this bouquet for Ava’s costume, she glued in rats and spiders and all sorts of creepy things. The picture does it no justice, it’s just fabulous! Thanks Josie!

And last but not least, my little guy.

We had orange pumpkin part pancakes for dinner, which the kids thought were just awesome!

And Finn grabbed a quick bottle before we headed out the door.

We met up with some friends to go trick or treating, and the men got to take the kids out trick or treating, while us women folk stayed inside nice and warm with a big bowl of candy to snack on. Best idea EVER!

Once we got home, we did a huge candy dump and even weighed it this year. Each candy bag weighed almost 4 pounds!!

That’s equal to a lot of dental bills.

finn- halloween {2010}

Last but not least, our little Finn. I was worried that his costume would be too big come Halloween, but I was thrilled when it fit him perfectly! Although taking pictures of a newborn in a costume is no easy task. We did snap a few of our sweet little puppy dog.

We did take him trick or treating, but he stayed in the stroller the whole time. It’s crazy to think that next year he’ll be walking.

And a full length shot so you can see the whole costume. It was so warm and cute!

grey- halloween {2010}

I was SO excited to get a costume for Grey this year, in fact I bought it in August. ☺ (Mostly because he doesn’t care what he wore and I got to pick it, yes!)

So here he is our little robot baby.

Doesn’t he look adorable!!

 

He doesn’t like to look at me when I’m taking his picture, ever… so these ones are rare to see.

He kept playing with the chin strap for these pictures and I was worried he wouldn’t want to keep it on, but he surprised us all and kept it on the whole night.

It was hilarious to watch him walk in this! I loved it!

lily- halloween {2010}

Lily is too sweet in my opinion to be a wicked witch, but she definitely is a cute one… with the occasional wicked streak in her. ;)

We didn’t agree totally on what type of witch costume she should wear… she wanted a short skirt… I won.

 

 

The little black kitty on the skirt was her favorite part.

 

ava- halloween {2010}

After a couple of different costume ideas, Ava finally settled on being a kitty for Halloween. And this darling little costume was just purrfect for her. ☺

hunter- halloween {2010}

I am so torn today, because I want to blog, but my babies are sleeping, and I really need to spend some quality time with my kitchen while I have the chance to actually open the dishwasher without Grey sitting on it and pulling out random dishes.

Decisions, decisions.

So, how about a bit of both. I’ll start with Hunter and try to get the other kids posted once I’m done my chores. It might even motivate me to move faster.

This year Hunter was a Grim Reaper. I picked the costume, and he didn’t seem to happy with it, but I’m not sure he really cared anyways. I guess next year I’ll give him creative license and see if he shows some more enthusiasm.

Don’t you just love the adult teeth stage of kids. ;) He was doing all sorts of crazy things with his tongue.

 

pumpkin patch {2010}

Bright and early last Saturday morning, we found ourselves loaded up in the van and heading out to our local pumpkin patch. Really, it’s more than just pumpkins there, they have all sorts of kid friendly activity’s and you go for what they call “Pumpkin Days” and you get to tour around the farm playing mini golf, watching pig races, running through corn mazes and all sorts of different stuff. I of course took a gazillion pictures and feel it my duty to bore share them with you.

Mini golf was our first stop.

The giant stack of hay bales with a clever little tunnel was next on the docket. With a little bit of convincing Grey eventually took his turning going through.

Hunter on the other hand needed no convincing whatsoever.

Run through…

and pop out the other side like a jackrabbit leaving his hole…

Playground time was next…

 

Then onto Grey’s favorite thing in the whole world… guks. Or trucks to those that don’t speak baby.

Grey reluctantly getting off his guk. 

After racing the tracks a few times I made them pile in the hay loft for some mandatory “family” pictures time.

Only then were they allowed to play in the straw. Just kidding.

 

Where’s Grey during this lovely photo you may ask…

over here, practicing his B & E skills.

We’re getting closer to the actual pumpkin hunt, but first the kids got the chance to send some little baby pumpkins flying through the air with a sling shot.

 

 

 

 

Ava pulled back so far, that she flew back onto her backside…

Okay, so we’re finally ready to do our corn maze and pumpkin hunt…

But Grey was no longer interested in the standard family pose as you can see…

We settled for him being on Daddy’s shoulders instead (can you imagine him lost in a corn maze… heaven help me, he would run for days, we would never find him)

And I couldn’t believe when I saw this picture in my lens. I knew I had the exact same one from 2 years ago when we came to the same place.

 

How fast they grow.

After wandering for awhile we finally found the tower to show us the way out. (I hate corn mazes for the record, they just freak me out!)

And onto the long awaited pumpkin patch hunt. After a bumpy hay ride we finally landed at our final destination, pumpkin land. Unfortunately this little guy had had enough and was starving.  

So after a very quick look and pick of a pumpkin.

Their choices were made.

I sat on the side of the dirty field feeding my starving baby, watching my sweet kids haul off their pumpkins I couldn’t have been happier to be there, sharing in their excitement and wonder.

halloween cards.

I figured it was time to stray a little from the food side of Halloween and show you some fun cards that I made this year.

I used the new Stampin’ Up bat punch with chunky black glitter and embossed the background with a dots folder. I love the little pearls I added to the witches boots, my favorite part for sure!

For this little guy, I double embossed the background using a spider web folder (which I LOVE!) pop dotted the little spider and added some cute googly eyes.

 

I tried a new technique on this card, I know it doesn’t look very impressive, but I thought it had a cool effect.

I’m talking about the spider web that is half black and half white. I glittered the other web for some sparkle!

Lastly some chunky glittered candelabras and I love the sentiment on this one. A wicked Halloween!!

These cards are 100% Stampin’ Up, so if you have any questions or want to know what products I used, just send me an email!

I double posted today, so check out the yummy snack ideas below!

quick halloween treats.

A couple of really quick and easy Halloween snacks for those hungry little monsters in your life.

If you remember last year, Hunter’s school class had a healthy Halloween party, and I made these.

Well Ava has the same teacher this year, so she got an updated version of the apple snack.

Apple slices with marshmallow teeth. Use a light spread of peanut butter on the apples to hold it all together.

A little tray of chattering teeth, all ready to go. I also thought these would be so cute if you were doing the Tooth Fairy for a movie night. But all I could think of when I was making these was my Brother in Law, who’s a dentist, I think he would like them. ☺

Next, I thought they would be a little gross to eat, but once you get past the idea of what they are, they’re pretty yummy.

Start with some lollipop sticks and marshmallows.

Melt some butterscotch chips. (or peanut butter chips would work too)

And assemble to make some seriously gross Q-tips complete with ear wax.

 

I did add a little butter and corn syrup to my chips afterwards to make it a bit more smooth consistency, but just the melted chips worked okay too.

{And, no Mom, I didn’t make the hair band (but I wish I did, it is so cute!!) So the good thing about Lily being in every other day Kindergarten… Ava got to wear the hair band for her Halloween Party today.}

I feel like we should have a People Magazine article of who wore it better. ;)

halloween dinner.

I really wanted to have a special Halloween dinner for my kids, but I knew that this week was already going to be really hectic with school parties and Cub activities, plus the Church Halloween party on Saturday, and we have Stake Conference on Sunday, so basically the best day to do it was yesterday. And to add more excitement/work to my day I decided to invite the Missionary’s as well.

The bad part about that… well they white washed our area (which means they brought in 2 brand new Missionary’s) So I didn’t know either of them, and they didn’t know us, at all. I really didn’t want them to think I was some crazy person having them over for dinner to some elaborate spooky dinner party on a random Wednesday night, so I decided to scale back my ideas a bit, but still do some fun food and table decor.

For drinks I wanted a unique beverage, so we had Mountain Dew, and to make it extra fun I added a yellow glow stick to make it eerie and glow like toxic waste.

(A fun idea would be to put a toxic waste sticker to go on the front of the your glass beaker)

The other beverage was this awesome Goblin Juice I found at the grocery store… but it tasted awful. So we didn’t drink it. But it sure looked cute!

Black and white dishes with silver charger plates, black dinner napkins and vampire teeth for each guest.

Blood red Jell-O with gummy spiders and worms.

 

My favorite part of the whole table…

My skeleton salad servers. I just about DIED when I saw these in the store. So, so adorable!!

For dessert we had vampire cupcakes, complete with bloody teeth marks.

The inside was filled with raspberry jam for a oozy surprise.

I hung some skeleton grim reapers in the back window.

And that’s about it. Nothing too fancy, but still fun for the kids and Mommy.

While all of this was going on, we had locked Grey into the living room to avoid any messes or destruction to the table… when I walked in and saw this…

He got to three of them before anyone noticed.

 

Then it was back to baby prison…

He was very excited about that as you can see.