Tricks, treats and parties

Halloween this year was a rather elaborate production.  You could even call it The Year We Went All Homemade.  For some unfathomable reason, I made both girls' costumes: the Bug was Strawberry Shortcake and the Bunny was a rainbow butterfly.

They turned out wonderfully, if I do say so myself (although the Bunny's does have a little Pride Parade thing going on) - but at the expense of several nights' sleep and a Saturday morning of fun.  First I dyed their flower girl dresses from earlier this month.  Which is apparently not recommended for 100% polyester.  Then I glue-gunned the hell out of a bunch of stuff from Michael's.  Strawberry Shortcake's dress and hat were primarily felt, and she had a yarn wig (braids) that took like three hours of tangling and untangling to create.  The rainbow butterfly's wings were posterboard.  Giant posterboard.  And I got to make her antennae (headband, shiny puff balls and shiny pipecleaners) twice since we lost the first one at a party.  And for all that, not a single picture of the two of them together.  Or of the rainbow part of the butterfly. 

Joker and the girls did the pumpkin carving.  All but Mommy opted for "scary," so my "funny" stands alone.  We learned a few things about the white variety, too.  For starters, they smell amazing - like cucumbers! - when they're cut.  For another thing, their roasted seeds taste terrible.  They're also really sticky and take forever to wash.  Not worth it.

This year, I got to go to both of the girls' class parties.  What fun!  The kids did arts and crafts, they ate spooky food, they paraded.  I can't imagine being their teachers for all of that, and today couldn't possibly have been better, but they all had so much fun!

And of course, trick-or-treating was a blast - both girls were super into it.  They tricked.  They treated.  They said "thank you."  The Evergreen downtown scene is pretty crazy - a ton of kids, all the businesses hand out candy.  Then we hit a neighborhood for more traditional candy hunting.  Today we sure could have used naps all around.