Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope it was a good one for you. Here at our house it was a full week of spooky preparations leading up to the big day.

It started early in the week with the pumpkin carving.

Of course, this actually means I do all the carving since the kids are really too little to wield a knife safely. So they play around and act silly, I carve, and Travis takes pictures of it all. This is me trying to carve a kitty pumpkin. Bree always asks for the hardest things!

Meanwhile Noah mostly just played with the seeds. (We like to save them so I can salt and bake them later for a yummy Halloween snack. Although, this time around I put them in the oven, forgot about them, and burned them to a crisp!) He also spent quite a bit of time tasting the parts of the pumpkin that were carved out.

Then I spent the rest of the week finalizing the family's costumes. We thought it would be fun if the whole family dressed up this year, even picked a theme. We also decided we didn't really want to spend at least $25 a pop for outfits we'd wear, at best, maybe twice. And since I'm sorta crafty/sewy anyways, I thought I'd give it a try.

It all started with Bree, who thought it would be fun to be Tinkerbell this year. Actually, at first she wanted to be "Evil Tinkerbell" but then decided the original Tink would be best. We already had the wings and fluffy skirt so all I had to make was the tunic.


That got me thinking...wouldn't it be cute if Noah were a tiny Peter Pan?

Naturally then, that led to Travis suggesting that he and I complete the picture and go as Captain Hook and Wendy!
Doesn't he look great?!

And here's "Wendy" as well, who ended up having to haul tiny Peter Pan around quite a bit. Wendy was the easiest costume, just needed a blue nightgown really. In fact, it kind of looked like I was just dressed a bit oddly and no one really knew who I was unless I was walking with the whole family, then they'd go, "Oh look a tiny Peter Pan! And Captain Hook! There's Tink too! Oh, and that must be Wendy!"

Of course, we all got some interesting interpretations of our costumes. (Except Travis, he was pretty obvious.) Brianna was called a butterfly or a princess a few times.

And Noah was mistaken for Robin Hood or an elf once or twice. Mostly though, he just stole the show with his charming little self and had everyone commenting, "Oooh. Look at the little Peter Pan! What a great costume. He's just adorable! What a cute little guy. He'll never grow up right?!"


But whatever people thought we were, we had a lot of fun parading around as the whole cast of Peter Pan. No, literally, parading around since our first stop was the annual town Halloween Parade down Main Street.

Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, ready to Trick or Treat at all the local businesses.

Tinkerbell had no problems at all, having mastered Trick or Treating, it's old hat for her these days.

Peter, however, found it all a bit overwhelming and did a lot of wandering around, stopping to stare, and trying to peek into his bag and eat all his candy immediately.

He got pretty tired by the end of the day, but still stubbornly insisted on marching along by himself, even refusing to hold hands most the time.

And of course, Travis had to take a staged photo of all of us in character... and it turned out great! So here we are looking like a poster for a play of Peter Pan with Travis as Captain Hook, Beth as Wendy, Bree playing Tinkerbell, and Noah as Peter Pan himself.

Happy Halloween from the Taylor family!