Halloween Greeting 2017

The kids worked hard on their costumes this year!  Blossom made a peacock costume and Reed was Agent Pleakley as part of a Lilo & Stitch group costume.
Here's my creative kids:

Here's Reed's whole crew before they headed out:

Halloween 2016

Happy Fall!

As always Fall time finds Blossom constantly changing her mind about Halloween costume choice.  After she described the dress she wanted me to make for her (fur-lined, no less), and I looked at my busy October calendar, we decided to google "easy homemade costumes" and she quickly found an idea she loved.

And she could help make it herself!  I bought a dress and leggings from primary.com (so that they can be reused for regular clothes after the holiday).  Blossom was excited to sew the leaf sleeves by herself.  We hot-glued a headband together and voila!  Presenting the "Hot Pink Azalea Blossom":

Here she is with her trick-or-treat crew ready to hit the streets:

This was the first year she was really into Halloween.  She ran up to each house, remembering very well all of her trick-or-treating manners :)

We had our annual homeschool Halloween party, and unfortunately, Blossom got sick about 10 minutes before it was time to leave, so stayed home with Dad.  Reed did go and had a blast, though!

Reed also had a much more complicated costume in mind, but he was out of town this month and couldn't find enough time to make it happen, so he created this Shy Guy costume (a character from Mario video game) from a nightgown and hoodie from Goodwill, and a paper plate and fabric scraps.  Turned out pretty great for a last-minute costume!

And here's Reed with his whole crew before they hit the streets!  This may be his last Halloween of Trick-or-treating, I'm glad he's still doing it ... I love these kids!

Christmas Presents (still)

In case you didn't know, my kids are awesome!  For Christmas, Reed asked for money from relatives so he could get his computer repaired and buy a couple other smaller things.  He checked everything off his list and then made a deposit in his bank account with the remainder.  From Bobby and I, he asked for a trip to Wilderness at the Smokies hotel water park.  Yay!

He got to invite two of his great friends and we went earlier this week.

The boys went on every slide so many times, enjoyed the hot tub, and of course just getting to hang out together in the nice hotel room!

Reed even wanted ZB to come along.  She only enjoyed the smaller slides, and loved the little kids' area and the shallow end of the wave pool.

She even wanted to make a music video of her singing in the waves!


What a great way to start off the week!

Pretend Trees and Real Cake!

If I had it my way, we'd totally ignore the Christmas holiday season.  My kids are mostly fine with that, but do like to have *something* to decorate the house and of course like receiving a few thoughtful gifts!  Each year, the tree is a creative problem-solving task.
This year, I found a bunch of felt at the thrift store and the kids got to work!

I cut out a large tree shape and taped it to the wall.  The kids worked probably a solid hour on making ornaments.

Reed made a sweet Pokemon ball:

ZB cut a few large shapes and then cut up little scraps.  Now, these ornaments can be mixed & matched on different days, since nothing is fastened together, besides the magic of felt stickiness.

And in the last couple days since we've made this - ZB has woken up first thing in the morning to re-arrange ornaments or make new ones (or change old ones).

Earlier this week, Reed found a Southern Living 1986 Cookbook at the Goodwill.  He LOVES it! He's been busy making shopping lists, and cooking up a storm.  Today, he made mini pound cakes.  Fortunately, ZB informed us that it's Dolly's birthday today, so the cake would be in honor of her :)  It was delicious!

Homemade Halloween

Clay has decided he is too old for trick or treating.  He's 15, so it's not any great surprise :)  He did walk around to some friends houses who were having Halloween parties.  He and a few of his friends printed off pictures of a singer's face and used them as a mask and that was it for them!

Reed and Blossom, however, got fully in the spirit.  Reed worked for so long on his Link costume (from the Legend of Zelda).  He actually made a wooden shield by himself several months ago.  Then, he designed the costume and meticulously painted the shield just right!

Blossom wanted to be Tiger Lily from Peter Pan.  Every little part had to be just right.  She painted some boots just the right color, even!  The dress was pretty quick to sew and we had a fun time making our first yarn wig.

Reed went trick-or-treating with a group of homeschool boys.  ZB and I went with another group of friends who mostly have younger girls:

Blossom got about 20 pieces of candy and was delighted!  Hope everyone had a fun holiday!

Pre-Halloween

Halloween is in the air!  We are prepping for the Halloween Festival for the homeschool co-op (which I am helping to organize this year), making costumes and cramming in  few Autumn activities in any spare time!

Yesterday, I took Reed, Blossom and one of her friends to the corn maze.  They LOVED it!  For the first time, Blossom actually did the maze!
First, they practiced in the hay maze.

They entered the maze quite excited, though about 1/2 way through we had to take a little break!

After we found all the stations and hole-punched our map, Taran and Reed did the second, smaller maze.  Blossom was feeling about done with mazes until she found out that one maze was a story maze!  The stations told parts of a story, she loved that!

Next, we checked out the hill slides.  Blossom had forgotten that she came here 2 years ago and did the slides all by herself.  Here's her friend going down the slide, and Blossom sitting reluctantly at the top:

After much coaxing, she finally went down, and had no interest in doing it again.  While the boys slid to their heart's delight, Blossom sat at the bottom making a pile of straw... which then became a pillow for her to rest on!

We all had some fun in the corn box before we had to pack up for the day!

We had other things to do with our day after all!  Like make Halloween costumes!  Reed has actually been working on his for quite some time.  Blossom changed her mind so much about what to wear, that I had to put off making hers until pretty close to the holiday.  She is going to be Tiger Lily from the Peter Pan movie.  The costume still needs some tweaking and final details, but here's what we made so  far:

To end on a totally random note, just for an excuse to include more photos of this sweet girl, these are from dinner last night.  She was cracking us up.  She finished most of her dinner and proceeded to take her fork directly to the saurkraut jar.

I was a little worried about the size of bites she was taking, but she just kept munching away!  The girl loves her kraut!

Michaelmas

ZB's little Waldorf preschool celebrated Michaelmas which is an old European holiday marking the beginning of Fall.  It was such lovely weather and was great to gather with the other school families.

There was a cape ceremony when each child received a silk cape they had dyed themselves with goldenrod flowers.  Miss Becca had out her apple press, and the kids could crank out organic apple cider!

After all the children had helped press apples, we had a picnic lunch with the fresh-pressed cider!  We're so glad for a break from the seemingly non-stop rain we've had the past couple weeks.  This was a sweet way to celebrate that Fall time has finally arrived!

Lots of Love

Before the month is over, I want to make sure to share about Valentine's Day!  Our homeschool co-op had a little exchange - well, actually lots of people showed up and we kind of freaked out the ice cream shop employees (note to self: hold it in a bigger venue next year!).  Reed filled little bags with homemade treats - he melted a Hershey Hug on a square pretzel and then squished an M&M on top.  Sweet and salty yumminess! (not my photo)

Blossom did marble paintings.  If she had her way, she would probably spend a good portion of each day painting.

In a baking pan, she rolled paint-covered marbles over paper until it created really cool designs.

We let the paintings dry and then cut them into heart shapes and glued on little Valentine messages.  They turned out really sweet!  Even though Reed's treats were probably more of a hit with the other kids, I like to fool myself into believing that the kids loved these as well :)

The kids get to share a little more love this month with our new chicks!  These are called Buckeyes (from, you guessed it, Ohio).  We bought them on craigslist.  They are a rare breed and I am excited to add them to the flock!  They will turn a very lovely dark reddish-brown as they get older, and the roosters are supposed to be very docile.  They are good meat birds as well as egg-layers.

We have 5 of them peeping away in the brooding box in our living room.  Never a dull moment!

Halloween 2014

The kids had a great Halloween this year! 

Reed and Blossom had a great time decorating their pumpkins.  Reed worked hard to carve some choice spooky animals on his pumpkin (bat & raven).

 Blossom had a lot of fun painting, applying sharpie and hammering nails into her pumpkin.  Most of the nails she had threaded with a couple beads before hammering them in.

I wanted to make Blossom a costume for Halloween, but she changed her mind at least 2-3 times each day about what she wanted to dress up as (rainbow, fairy, bat, princess, and "no-noggin" were in constant rotation, along with many new ideas).  We decided to just let her wear things from her dress-up.  Then, we received a package from Gram in the mail on Halloween day that had more dress-up clothes.  At that point, Blossom chose a new costume, which was a mermaid.

Reed was a homeless guy.  Here he is with his trick-or-treating buddies:

Clay (didn't get a picture of that sneaky teenager!) dressed up as "the Party" with a couple of his friends.  They had matching fleece animal pajama-looking costumes and a backpack with built-in speakers and glowsticks, so they played music and danced wherever they went :)

We took Blossom trick-or-treating at about 5 houses (notice the very small pocketbook she was using to collect treats!), which was just right for her first time doing it.  The boys, however, came home with piles of candy, which I'm sure they'll take care of quickly!

Halloween 2013

The skies are cloudy with an big rain storm coming in - the kids are hoping to collect their candy loot before the rainfall, but the cloudy skies give the night a nice eerie backdrop.
Reed (Harry Potter) and his friend Chiron (Hermione Granger) posing with "Wands at the Ready!" before they hit the streets for trick-or-treating.  Reed read the entire Harry Potter series this year and was excited to dress as Harry using a robe I made for Clay's Grim Reaper costume a few years ago (sewing the sleeves smaller), and also a Gryffindor tie he made in the H.P. class at co-op, and of course taped-up glasses.  He even has "I must not tell lies" written in red ink on his hand (he's been planning this costume nearly the whole year):

Clay and his friend Solomon decided to be the main character's from Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog.  Clay is the self-centered hero Captain Hammer.  And Solomon is, of course, the lovable villain, Dr. Horrible.  If you haven't seen this movie, you must watch it - it's on netflix, and only about 45 minutes long.  Anyhow, their costumes were fun and they did a really good job on them!

Everyone is off trick-or-treating now, ZB and I are having a quiet night at home, very nice!  Happy Halloween!