Halloween 2012 Recap

Halloween 2012 is in the books and we all had a great day.  The excitement was heightened with it also being a preschool day with a special party planned.  I signed up to be snack mom that day which ended up being a great idea although it did add a little stress to our morning because of what I decided to make.

Simone of course woke up raring to go and couldn't wait to put her costume on.  We managed to get a little bit of breakfast in her before that happened.

I snapped a few shots of her out front before we left for school.  Simone was Belle from Beauty and the Beast.  A perfect choice that took awhile to come together.  She had several other ideas that didn't end up working out mainly due to fit issues or being out of stock in her size, this ended up being her 3rd choice and it suited her perfectly.  And yes the Belle socks ended up as a happy accident after I drove all over town trying to find pretty ruffled ones to no avail.  We found these in the dollar bins at a craft store of all places. 

The parents were all invited to hang out for the first half hour of class and since I am one of the parent subs I was asked to be there for the whole class.  I needed to dress up in some way and found this cute tshirt and ran out the night before for the witch hat and some super cute striped socks.  It came together easily and ended up being just enough for preschool. 

The kids did a little trick or treating in the park which they all loved.

The kids had a fairly normal day in class and when the teachers took them out to the park for play time, the other parent sub and I stayed behind to set up snack.  I opted to make something a little more elaborate than normal since it was Halloween and found some really cute ideas on Pinterest.  I saw the idea for the cute Mummy Hot Dogs and loved it but knew it would be a challenge in the morning.  Larry was a huge help and got up early with me to help wrap the hot dogs and make sure they were all cooked and packed up for me before we left. 

Simone and I also made the cute Frankenstein treat cups.  She attached all the googly eyes and drew on all the mouths and scars too.  I filled those with crackers and pretzels.  I also brought cheese sticks for the kids that might not like the hot dogs.  Some other moms brought in the fruit and some orange juice and the teacher provided the plates, napkins and gummy worms!  The kids seemed to love it and they all took home their Frankenstein cups.

Since we still had not carved our pumpkins we had to tackle that as well.  I always love to look online for ideas for carving and found two really great ones.  Simone and I of course fought over who would do which but they both turned out great.  I drew the designs on and she pretty much carved most of hers.  Larry helped with the de-gutting and scraping of both pumpkins.

 

Here are the finished pumpkins all a glow.  I love the new tool that is available now to scrap some of the outer layer of the pumpkin away, it lets light thru but the pumpkin isn't cut.  I used it on the door edge on the pumpkin on the left and for the windows of the one on the right.  There are so many great ideas out there for this technique, I think I might try a more elaborate one next year.

We followed our tradition of having a nice chili dinner before heading out to Trick or Treat and Larry's sister came over to join us.  Of course someone could not wait to get out there and Trick or Treat so it was a quick dinner.  I photographed Simone at this house last year and was happy to snap one again this year.  I opted not to take my big camera out, I wanted to focus more on her and the fun instead of tweaking my camera settings all night.  I did take my phone with me so this was taken with that.  Not to bad for a no flash shot.

She was all excited when we got home and had a chance to inspect her loot.

So much so that she almost ate it without taking the wrapper off!

I think Simone likes to pass out the candy more that she likes to Trick or Treat.  She couldn't wait to get her chairs set up by the door to see all the kids.

She has her system down.  This one does not like lulls in the action and if she had no visitors she would run out to the sidewalk to make sure more were on the way.  We had a decent number of trick or treaters and managed to pass out a pretty large bag of candy.  I guess we shut off the light a bit before 9pm and happily no one rang our bell when the lights went out.

She's already talking about next year, but its hard for kids this age to understand what 'you need to wait until next year' really means. 

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween!