Halloween

I love Halloween.  I usually get excited to make costumes and enjoy all the fall activities, but this year it felt more like an extra burden.  I had a harder time thinking of our family's costume theme.  But in September (seriously!) our ward had our Halloween party.  My kids didn't have costumes yet, so I told them to find something from the dress up box.  Sophie found a Cleopatra costume that Isaac's uncle Layne gave us years ago and it was way too big.  But this year it fit perfectly. 

So after wearing it to the ward party, Sophie decided she wanted to be Cleopatra for the real Halloween.  So our family decided to all be Egyptians.  

Aspen also wanted to be Cleopatra.  

Luke was Anubis (or the Jackal).  

And Isaac, Hazel, and I were going to be mummies.

I whipped Aspen and Luke's costumes up fairly quickly.  The dress parts I can throw together in no time, but the detail work takes forever.  And I thought the mummy costumes would be easy.  I bought some cheap long underwear and was just going to sew strips around it.  How hard could that be?

But I hadn't finished the costumes by the time Fall Break came around, and I was hosting my family Halloween party the day after we came home.  So I dragged all my sewing stuff up to the cabin.  And I spent FOREVER working on one mummy costume.  After sewing all the strips around the leg, the material could no longer stretch and I couldn't get it on.  So I had to open the whole leg up and add an extra section to widen it.  Then I decided to pull the fabric as I sewed the waist section, but this just caused it to ruffle.  So my cool mummy costume then got a ruffle bum.  Argh.  So on the shirt I preemptively added an extra 4 to 6 inches in each seam so it wouldn't get too tight.  And then it took forever to sew on all those strips.  I bought 5 yards of muslin that I planned for 3 mummy costumes.  I used all of it plus another 9+ yards of medical gauze on ONE costume.  So I quit.  I whipped up another Cleopatra costume for Hazel out of scraps.  And I didn't have time for my own costume.  So the night of the party I dresses as Indian Jones or an archaeologist.

My family Halloween party was fun.  Since we just got home the night before, we decided to keep it low-key by just ordering pizza.  I think everyone (especially the kids) liked that.

Here is my family in their Egyptian costumes.  And Kevin was a mummy too.

My parents were Buttercup and Wesley from the Princess Bride.  (I thought my dad looked just like him.)

Barry and Karla were Mr. Fredricksen and his wife from UP.

Jamie and Steve were Dustin and Suzy from Stranger Things.

Lacey's family were characters from Aladdin.  Justin looked great.

Hannah and Gabe were tourists.

We also went to a pumpkin patch.  We let the kids each pick their own pumpkin, but those suckers were expensive.  So we are never going to do that again.

We carved pumpkins one night and the kids didn't even make a huge mess! (Carving pumpkins and dying Easter eggs always sounds like fun, but when I'm actually doing it I can't stand the mess.)

On Halloween night it was really cold, so Isaac took the older kids out trick-or-treating while I stayed home with Hazel to hand out candy.  Handing out candy is really boring.  The doorbell rings every 30 seconds, so you can't do anything in between.  I think I watched about 30 minutes of a tv show in 1.5 hours.