For Halloween this year, the kids all wore homemade costumes. One evening several weeks ago, we were eating dinner as a family when out of the blue Stella announces "I want to be a pizza for Halloween!"
I'm not sure where that thought came from, because we were eating Mexican food for dinner that night. But, I looked into how hard it would be to make a pizza costume and once I decided it was something doable, I agreed the help her make it.
Stella and I went to Joann's fabric and bought all of the materials we needed and spent an afternoon measuring, tracing, cutting and gluing the toppings onto the pizza crust. I traced the shapes and she cut most of them out herself.
She was so excited about her costume and kept joking that she would have to run fast so the other trick-or-treaters won't eat her.
Once I decided to make Stella's costume, I thought it was only fair that the other kids have homemade costumes too - which really opened up the realm of possibilities for them. Carson has discovered his love for water and loves to bathe instead of shower so he can submerge his face in the tub. He has special water goggles for swimming in the bathroom. I have to sit near the tub with him and time how long he can last underwater. His best record is 11 seconds.
When we were discussing ideas on what he could wear I mentioned 'scuba diver' and he loved the idea. So I spray painted two 2-liter bottles blue to look like tanks, rummage through our swimming stuff for a snorkel and purchased some other accessories to dress up his costume.
Andrew was the hardest to decide upon. He's too young to have any favorites so we could chose whatever we wanted for him. Although he has been walking for about a month, he still stretches his arms out to help balance himself so we decided to turn him into a mummy.
I purchased a white turtle neck shirt, borrowed some white tights from Stella and ripped a fitted sheet into a lot of 2 inch strips of fabric which I wrapped around him. I thought about pinning them to his clothes but we were in such a rush that I just tied them together and tucked them into each other. By the end of the evening they had all fallen out and he looked more like Lazarus raising from the dead.
At 6pm the triplets and Claire were waiting for us to get done with dinner so we could go out. We hurried up, got everyone ready and off we went. We usually just go up and down our street but the kids chose to go in a loop. They were out for an hour and a half by the time we made it back home. They all had so much candy, their buckets were overflowing and getting really heavy for the little ones.
We saved visiting our neighbor's haunted ghost town 'til the end. He puts up quite a production and gives out the biggest candy in the neighborhood so the kids love to visit his yard.
Earlier that afternoon we made our first attempt at caramel apples. After having some at Gardener Village we thought we could make our own. Each of the kids got to chose what they wanted on their apples. Carson had plain caramel, Emilia had caramel with almonds, shredded coconut and drizzle chocolate. Stella's has caramel and chocolate mixed. The last two were chocolate with sprinkles.
It was of fun for them to pick their flavors and decorate.
