Halloweeny

So, Halloween!! It seems to get crazier every year, am I right?? The kids sure had fun, though.

Madelyn dressed up four different times. Luckily she has a lot of dress up outfits in her closet...

 

 She was a mermaid for her friend Kamryn's party (bought this costume 2 years ago and it was way too big, finally she got to wear it)

She was a pirate at her gymnastics party

And a witch at school!

 Luke decided to be a skeleton for his preschool party. Not the first year we've used jammies as a costume. (See him as Superman here.)

His preschool class got to go trick-or-treating at the businesses in their strip mall. So cute!

 

 On Tuesday, we finally got around to carving pumpkins.

Mark and Luke were quite pleased with their Pac-Man and Pac-Man ghost.

For their "real" Halloween costumes, I had ordered them back in July. They were going to be Aragorn and Arwen, my favorite Lord of the Rings characters! You know...

 

 

  

I didn't realize that the original sword that I ordered was a Ringwraith sword and it was ridiculously huge. Luke still loves it, though.

 

 So I ordered a child size Aragorn "Strider" sword, and it was a much better size. And so good at stabbing air cushions!

 But then I found it broken a few days before Halloween! Enter plastic cement and duct tape. It blended right in, so, whatever.

Madelyn's dress was a little plain...

 

I searched around stores until I found some flexible sequin braid and added it to the neckline with a needle and filament (and a couple hours of hand sewing). It's not much, but it added a lot of sparkle.

 Then, the night before Halloween, I tried my hand at making a circle skirt out of white tricot using this tutorial and made a long underskirt for her costume. And a shorter one for kicks.

And I had to hem Luke's cloak by 7 inches, and his tunic sleeves by 2 inches. I'm telling you, it was a Halloween miracle that I was able to do any of this, because I was feeling really cruddy and tired all week. The things I do for my kids!!

Madelyn looked absolutely beautiful as Lady Arwen, though! We got her Evenstar pendant and head chain from Amazon. She had a thermal shirt of mine on underneath, thick tights, and her white underskirt, because it was only around 55° outside at the trunk-or-treat. We also sprayed silver glitter hairspray in her hair.

 

 I am just really happy that Luke wore his costume at all! He is not really into dressing up and he hadn't tried on his Aragorn costume until right before we left the house. He had just come down with a nasty cold the night before and was tired and not feeling well. He was crying while Mark was getting him dressed and freaking out that he was putting a "dress" on him (the tunic). Haha, poor kid.

His LOTR Elven leaf brooch was also from Amazon.

This makes me happy. :) I love LOTR, and the kids love the movies (at least Madelyn does) and it's good to see another generation enjoying them. Their grandma Yoder, who is 75, just finished rereading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. So we gotta keep it in the family!

No one seemed to know who they were dressed up as, but that's ok. This was done to please ME.

 

 The stake trunk-or-treat was fun.

 This is our friend Jack, as Nacho Libre. His little sister was dressed as Sister Encarnacion, but I didn't manage to get her in the picture. Love it!

We were done in 40 minutes (aka ran out of candy) and the kids got quite the haul!

 Paul, Nikki and Cove came to visit and bring us cookies.

  

 Then, Mark and the kids went back out to canvas the neighborhood. Good grief! The kids have soo much candy!

 We finally wrapped up the night playing with the rest of the dry ice, watching The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown special, eating candy, and getting Madelyn cleaned up and in bed since it was a school night.

PHEW!!!!!!