Kisses Come in Twos: Halloween 2014

Halloween has come and gone and now I'm sitting in our cozy living room while the kids and husband nap and snow falls outside and decided there is no time better than the present to write my Halloween blog post.

A month or so before Halloween, Sam and I started talking about costume options for the kids. We wanted something that allowed them to coordinate and they would be happy about. After throwing around a few options, we settled on Cookie Monster and a cookie. I knew I could make the costumes as long as I could find blue, scraggly fabric. I went to both stores that carry fabric in Stillwater and, although they had scraggly material, nobody had blue. I knew it was polyester, so it wouldn't dye very easily and decided to look online. The blue scraggly fabric I found online was over $20 per yard plus shipping, so I decided to abandon my Cookie Monster dreams and move on to plan B (have I mentioned I'm sometimes a little cheap?). My plan B was Charlie Brown and Linus since Sarah is very attached to her crocheted blankets right now, but Sam didn't like that idea since they don't watch Peanuts, so we brainstormed a little more and came up with Curious George and The Man in the Yellow Hat. This was going to be perfect since Sarah could wear Joseph's monkey costume from last year and I thought I could make a Man in the Yellow Hat costume pretty easily. The only problem was that Joseph was adamant that he would be Curious George and Sarah would be "Yellow Hat." Hopefully this video uploads correctly so you can see what I was up against.

I began researching how to dye polyester fabric online and decided to give it a try. I called JoAnn's to ask if they carried any polyester dye, and the guy that answered told me no, so I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a yard of the white scraggly fabric (because I didn't want to buy a lot of fabric if this wasn't going to work out) as well as some dye that the lady thought was my best bet. An entire day spent stirring fabric in a dye bath later, I still had white fabric. At this point, I was pretty much over the whole Cookie Monster thing, so I went to JoAnn's to buy material to make a yellow hat. As I walked down the aisle to get my yellow dye (for the pants and shirt), I happened to see a selection of DyePoly (the stuff I read online was the best polyester dye) and low and behold they had one package of blue! I snatched it up and headed home to try it out. I had hoped to get two packages, but the label said it would dye two large shirts, so I thought it would be enough for 1 yard of fabric. It was, kind of. I spent another day stirring fabric in a dye bath with the end result being a lavender color. Joseph was so excited about his soft cookie monster fabric that I had no choice but to persevere and finish this project. We went back to JoAnn's to get a pattern only to find they didn't have the one I had planned on buying, so I decided to go with a dinosaur pattern and just omit the spikes, horns, and tail. I also checked to see if they had received any more dye since I didn't think a yard of fabric would be enough, but they didn't. Luckily, Joseph is a little on the short side, so I was able to tweak the pattern and have enough fabric. All in all, I was happy with how my little lavender, curly cookie monster turned out. And, better yet, Joseph loved it!

Sarah's costume was much easier. It was pretty much two light brown circle pillows with dark brown "chocolate chip" appliques on it and straps to attach them in four places. One of my favorite parts is the cookie bow.

The Tuesday before Halloween, we took the kids to the downtown trick or treat. I had heard they had a costume contest, so of course we had to enter. We weren't sure where they belonged since they should have been in different age divisions, so we decided Sarah was Joseph's accessory. I wish I would have known they had a group division, but it's ok. Joseph ended up winning "funniest costume" in the 2-3 year old class. He proudly wore his medal around for the rest of the night.

This walking back to the car after a night of trick or treating picture might be one of my all time favorites even though it's blurry.

The next day, it was brought to my attention that the kids were on the front page of the O'Colly (OSU's newspaper). I didn't realize they were THE front page.

Thursday night, after a short, random on the floor nap,

we decided to carve some pumpkins. Since it was a little windy and chilly outside, we decided to do this in the garage. The kids weren't too sure at first,

but Joseph quickly warmed up to it

and was eager to dig in and help

Sarah was more the I'll watch you guys do it type.

I attempted a long exposure picture since it was dark outside and I thought it would be cool with "pumpkin head" as Joseph named him (it was originally "fire head" but got changed), but Joseph did not understand the whole sit completely still part (this pic would be really, really dark under normal circumstances).

After we came back inside, I made the kids stand together so I could get a picture of the Halloween shirts we made this year. I kind of like them a lot.

After Joseph walked away, Sarah went back and made noise until I took a picture of her by herself. Isn't she getting big!

Halloween night, Sam went to Dallas to a friend's costume party (we had planned to go together, but due to a lack of sitter ended up doing things this way) while the kids and I went to our church's Harvest Carnival and hit up a couple of friends' houses.

After we put Sarah to bed (sister likes her sleep :), Joseph and I watched the Curious George Halloween movie.

At the party Sam went to, all the guys dressed as Will Ferrell characters. Sam was Elf. I'm pretty proud of myself for making this entire costume in a little over 6 hours (not counting the time spent gathering materials the day before)! Wasn't the whole crew awesome! I told Sam that if I spent the time and energy making this costume, he had to pose like this all night.

I failed and didn't get any good pictures of the kids before Halloween, I decided to dress them up the following Monday, and try to get some. This is what it's like taking a picture of a 2 and 1 year old by yourself.

This was the best both of them together picture I could get... and neither of them are smiling.

The best way to get Joseph to sit still for a couple of seconds was to ask him what Cookie Monster does, to which he makes the appropriate sounds and actions,