1- Our ward Trunk-or-Treat kicked off the season the weekend before Halloween. I didn't get pictures of everyone, but there are a few snaps I shot before people ran off to find friends.
Nathan loves Halloween, and loves making creative costumes each year. His birthday is in October, so when he was a little boy he thought Halloween was his special holiday. This year he created a costume of Han Solo encased in carbonite. Then he created the bounty hunter's helmet for me out of several sheets of cardstock. Yes, cardstock. That man spent hours carefully cutting out dozens of helmet puzzle pieces with an exacto knife the weeks before Halloween. Then he carefully folded and glued everything to create this helmet. That, my friends, is true dedication to the holiday.
Sarah went as a vampire, Matthew was a masked ninja, Daniel sported a pirate costume, and Joseph wore the cuddliest lion costume ever. Don't judge me on the face painting here, I had literally 5 minutes to do everyone before we dashed out the door.
Joseph was hilarious. Anytime we dressed him in the lion costume, he'd lay on the floor and just stroke his costume. It was silky-soft, and he loved cuddling with it. He would hug himself and whisper, "It's SO soft, oh I love how soft it is! It's like my blankey!"
One night it was actually a bit of a trick to convince him it was worth getting up to attend the festivities
We loved enjoying our traditional chili dinner (Nathan spent 6 hours creating his white chicken chili, and it was the first pot empty at the dinner) outside in the cool fall weather. The trunk-or-treating was such fun and the children loved sorting their treasures and trading with friends under the glow of a street light. Matthew's favorite candy this year is Twizzler licorice, so he happily traded away all his chocolates to get a hefty stash of licorice.
2- Our neighbors invited us to attend the Halellujah Night at their church on Oct 30th, so we did. I just can't say 'no' to an event that happens so near our house- the Cowboy Church is less than a mile away. When everything else is such a long drive away, I am grateful to support a local event. We had such a lovely time playing carnival games and winning prizes. The Littles tried the cake walk many times, and Daniel was the winner from our family. He was SO excited to pick out a prize from the table heavily laden with full-size cakes. His choice was a large cookie-cake made with chocolate-chip cookie dough. We have enjoyed this cake for 3 days now!
Sarah's favorite carnival game was a Puppy Rescue game. There was a dog crate tightly filled with various stuffed animals, and the door was locked shut. Children were handed a large key ring packed with dozens of keys, and they were allowed to pick 3 or 4 keys and try to open the lock. If the lock opened, they were allowed to choose a stuffed animal for the prize. If a child failed to open the lock with their first couple of tries, the grandmother hosting the game would whisper sideways from behind her hand which key to use, so everyone eventually won a prize. Sarah was delighted with her stuffed pink poodle.
3- Halloween night itself was a bit interesting. I was hired to paint faces at a library in another town, but the timing to things meant I was forced to take my kiddos along. Yikes! I've never brought my entire family to hang out unattended at a job site, but there were simply no other options for me that day. We live so far away from the kids' school that it wasn't an option to take them home before heading to work. So.
I felt super unprofessional having a family of four kids with me, and even made a game plan to pretend they weren't with me. I entered the library first, and the kids had instructions to enter several minutes later, pretending they were there alone (or maybe their parent was in another section of the library). I worked in my corner of the kids' area, and the kids read books in another area of the kids' section. Sarah and Matthew did an AMAZING job of watching Joseph for 90 minutes in the library while I worked.
The librarians put two and two together and realized they were my kids at the end of the gig when we were the only people left. They told me that the kids were all so helpful with the activities and well-behaved (there's a huge sigh of relief!) and said the kids were welcome to come every time I was hired in the future.
We decided to skip the door-to-door trick-or-treating since we already had large bags of sugary treats. After we arrived home, we enjoyed a family picnic in the music room with pizza as we enjoyed a festive family movie. I remember Hocus Pocus being so funny as a child, but I was seriously unimpressed this time. I'm not sure why I ever loved that movie, but it's definitely not a keeper for us. I'm glad we only rented it instead of buying! We also stayed up playing Spooky Charades as a family, and enjoyed Daniel's prize cookie cake for dessert.
4- The highlight of our Halloween season is always our neighborhood hayride. Nobody goes trick-or-treating here on Halloween night....the houses are too far apart and the driveways are so long and dark, and the property gates lock out potential visitors. Instead, we all gathered for a neighborhood hayride on Nov 1. Residents volunteer to hand out candy at different locations in the neighborhood, then 8 large trailers full of hay bale seats pull the families around to each location. Oh heavens, it's such fun!
We all met at the park to load up the trailers, then each trailer began the trail about 5 minutes apart from each other. This year I was handing out candy at one of the stops. It was such fun to wait in the dark for the children- the stars are very brilliant here since the cities are so far away. The night sky is one of my favorite things about living here. I sat quietly looking at the stars and listening to owls until I could hear excited children's voices approaching through the thick trees. My family was on the last trailer, so I eagerly climbed on and joined the ride after passing out treats to the final group of children. Usually I miss this tradition each year since I'm always working for Halloween parties. Since it was scheduled the day after Halloween, I was available to join the celebration. What a treat it was to create these memories with my family!
The families in our neighborhood decorate their houses in such fun ways for this night, lighting the long path up their driveway with strings of orange or purple lights. Some houses looked very spooky as we pulled up through a long dark driveway with huge, dark oak trees touching branches over our heads like a tunnel, blotting out the sky. One house hosted a haunted trail the the local teenagers created for the night. They crafted a spooky story and teen guides led groups of people through the dark woods to be spooked by hidden zombies and monsters. Another house served hot apple cider along with the candy, and everyone loved warming up with it.
The night was nippy, so near the end we cuddled down in the hay and watched the stars overhead as we rode between houses. There are only about a dozen stops for the night, but this hayride takes over two and a half hours to complete. We enjoy every bit of it, and the children love laughing and chatting with new friends as we creep along the dark country roads.
We're so thankful for all the neighbors that volunteer each year to help run this event. It's so life-enriching and we look forward to it every year.
Oh, here are parting glimpses of a few of our festive decorations for the month. I love re-using the potion bottles I created last year for Sarah's Harry Potter party. We had run the party as a Day at Hogwarts, filled with magical classes. The Potions class was everyone's favorite, and the bottles work well for Halloween decor.
This year I've delved into sewing again. It's been such a treat to be creative with fabric after a year off. This month I made a few festive table runners with quilted fabric. I love the splash of color they add to each room!
I made them reversible so they can just be flipped over for the Thanksgiving season and I don't have to get out a new box of decorations for November. I love it! I hope to make reversible table runners for more holidays.
Here is the back side of the runner, ready for Thanksgiving.
I also finally finished these spooky place mats this year. I had purchased the fabric 3 years ago, and just never had time to finish them. So we always just put the cut fabric in all it's raw-edged glory on the table under the plastic table-top. This year I finished them with a reversible pattern on the back so -you've guessed it- we can flip them over in November for some festive color.
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