Halloween 2012

To start this off I'll give a little background on our idea for Halloween this year... I'm crazy when it comes to Halloween and like to be prepared with an idea of what we're going to do as soon as possible. I have a friend that does a family theme each year and after seeing what she did with her family I thought to myself, "I want to do that too! At least for as long as the kids will let me." Since then we've tried to do something together. This was our second year with a theme and although our costumes aren't as elaborate or as beautiful as what my friends put together, it has been fun to challenge myself to make this happen. Last year I knew in February what the kids were going to be and got right on buying a lot of the stuff I needed so that I could get a lot of it on sale.

Unfortunately this year ideas were a little harder to come by and I just didn't know what I wanted to try to do. As I was looking through some photos of a friend I stumbled across the top photo below. It was then that I thought it might be fun to try to do a family theme centered around Pac-Man. At first tons of ideas started floating around in my brain about how I could make this work and slowly things started to come together. I started searching online for more images of Pac-Man themed costumes and found some pretty good ideas. The bottom two photos in the collage below are the other two images that helped me get the full idea going.

 How the idea got sparked. 

Once I knew what I was going to do I asked a friend of mine help me get started putting everything together, once I had all of my supplies. I'm so grateful I had her help because there is NO WAY I could have done what I did without her. I had two people help me with these costumes and with their help everything turned out great!!

Some of the supplies. I had each kiddo "tell" me what color ghost they wanted to me and with the help of my friend we got them measured and started sewing everything together.

Once we had the "bodies" cut out I tested out of few options for the eyes with paper.

This was a really creepy day. As I started putting the eyes together it was weird having them "watch" me as I worked and as I sewed them on. I'm no seamstress, or even handy with a sewing machine so all of the "smaller" things, like the eyes, were done by hand.

Once all of the eyes were sewn together I layed out each costume as a whole and decided how they were going to go on. Paul was a hard sell on the whole dressing up like this idea so he got away with wearing a large t-shirt instead of the big felt moo-moo's we all wore. It still looked pretty good though. He matched great!

Once I decided on the theme I had to figure out how best to incorporate each kid into the idea. Since Roslyn wasn't walking I didn't want her to just be tucked in the back as another ghost and I didn't want the older kids to feel bad about the main costume being different than theirs. I also didn't want to play the role or Pac-Man and I knew there was NO WAY I could talk Paul into doing it so that left Roslyn as the best fit for the role. It took a lot of research and a very general idea of how I wanted her costume to look but I asked for help from another friend and gave her the gist of what I was looking for an she took my idea and rolled with it. She did an AMAZING job!!! She was able to get the shell put together for me and then I added the eyes and mouth by hand, with the help of Paul in terms of creative concept.

This turned out AMAZING!!! There is no way I could have pulled this off without the help of so many people!!

Thankfully this year we had a few nights of activities to participate in before Halloween so I HAD to have our costumes finished early. Unfortunately Paul couldn't attend a few of the activities with us because of work but we had a great time when he was able to. The kids were also great sports when it came to getting dressed in the multiple layers they have to dress in the keep warm for Halloween in Idaho. Thankfully I think they enjoy Halloween ALMOST as much as I do.

The kiddos in their warm underclothing. I was too busy getting them all dressed to take pictures of each layer they put on but I promise, they're pretty warm under there. Yes, we did have snow for some of our Halloween events.

Our first big Halloween activity this year was a carnival/trunk-or-treat event at our gym. It was fun to go and see all of the other families the kids go to the daycare with and be out together as a family. The kids also didn't mind getting extra treats before Halloween night too.

All of us dressed up and ready to go participate in the activities at the carnival.

They had a photographer come in and take photos for all of the families that participated in the event. This was the one we got of all of us together. I'm so glad these guys are still willing to do something together.

Our second Halloween event was a party with a few families in our ward and some of their other friends. We were all asked to bring a dessert and there were a few I've been wanting to try so I thought I'd give them a shot for this night. They didn't turn out EXACTLY how I wanted them but they were okay. I think I now know how to do better next time and hopefully we'll get to do more fun stuff like this with the people we live near. It was a great night and the chance to make new friends was wonderful!!

The ingredients for our treats. I tried out a caramel corn and a candy bark recipe.

The caramel corn. It was a little harder than I wanted it but still pretty yummy!!

This was the candy bark. So many great flavors all mixed into one!!

My adorable little helpers. Riann actually wanted to help... Colby wanted to snack.

Our little family playing at the party. It was so fun to have Paul at this event with us because it had to miss out on the gym carnival and the first part of Halloween night because of work. We had a great time with him!!

They had lots of fun activities for the kids to do.

And LOTS of yummy food!!

The decorations were also adorable!!

After our two parties right before Halloween I thought the kids might be tired of their costumes and of Halloween but thankfully they were just as excited for the community trunk-or-treat as I was. The kids were able to go around with some of their best friends and had a great time collecting candy and sharing ours with others.

Our little gang of kiddos.

Walking around getting treats... and sneaking a few every chance they got, even if it meant sitting in the middle of the parking lot to get a candy open.

My happy Pac-Woman. I'm not sure her costume was the most comfortable thing in the world but she was such a wonderful sport and was so happy to just be there.

My cute blue ghost. He is so much fun to watch on Halloween because each treat is THE BEST thing in the world.
I love this guy!!

My beautiful purple ghost. She was so busy helping all of her friends and little siblings get candy and having such a great time that I didn't get many pictures of just her. She is such a great helper!!

Our wonderful neighbor Adele and her kiddos. She helped pass out our candy while I took the kids around with her MIL. We were both without hubbies for the first part of the night so it was great to have someone to team up with.
We love these guys!!

Once Paul got off work he met up with us in town and we did some door to door trick-or-treating. We always head up to a neighborhood in town because we don't get kiddos out in our neighborhood and I like for the kids to get a chance to do some of the traditional trick-or-treating too. They had a great time running between houses and were hard to keep up with. It was also really fun to have Paul with us to share in the kid's excitement.

Getting as many treats as they can before we headed home.

This year I decided to try to do something different for dinner and keep the Halloween fun going. We did some "spooky" items for dinner and the kids really enjoyed them. Next year I'll plan a little better and make sure we have dinner BEFORE our fun night of running around and eating candy. It was fun to see the kids react to the food. I can't wait to do it all again next year.

We had ghost bananas, apple mouths and mummy hotdogs.

And the kids had a great night being together!!!

I just LOVE Halloween!!!