Halloween 2009

What a busy day! and yesterday was too with the Halloween party at school in the afternoon and then dance after school. Brenna’s first grade class in their costumes:

Today started with makeup dance classes for Brenna and Sarah. There aren’t too many things I will give up sleeping in on Saturday morning for, but my kids are one of them and they were disappointed they missed classes because of the snow on Wednesday and Thursday. So I dragged myself out of bed early to take them this morning to classes they could substitute for their regular classes. The kids are allowed to wear costumes to class the week of Halloween, so everyone has fun dressing up and showing off their costumes. Even the teachers get into the fun and  most of them dress up to some degree. Ms. Rozanne was a witch this morning. She had a fabulous twig broom parked outside the door to the ballet room and a sign announcing that “The Witch Is In” hanging on the doorknob. She left the door open for us to watch today too, and one of the fun things she had the girls do was practice their leaps while jumping over her big black hat. She had some extra fun with the girls dressed as Dorothy and would chase them briefly after they had finished their leap. LOL

After dance was over we came home and waited for trick-or-treat time. Daddy brought home the new Tinkerbell DVD from the Redbox when he got back from hiking, so that helped pass those last few minutes of waiting. Finally it was time to get ready and while we were getting on costumes, Grandmama showed up with the new Rusty. While he is the same breed as her previous dog, he is definitely not the same. His coat is a bit redder and he is a much calmer dog. He checked everyone out for a few minutes and his nervousness subsided. He definitely seemed to have more of an affinity for Bryce over the girls, but he happily went to anyone who called him.

Darth Vader (Bryce), 50s girl (Beth), a doll (Carissa),
bumblebee (Brenna), and a ballerina bunny (Sarah)

Beth and Carissa had been invited to their friend Brooke’s house for a party and trick-or-treating, so after taking the yearly photos I dropped them off and then came back home to take the other kids out. Grandmama and Rusty stayed to help answer the door and hand out candy while we were gone. It was a beautiful night for being out, which is amazing considering how cold and nasty it was just a few days before. Sarah wore a coat while trick-or-treating and I got by comfortably with just a light sweatshirt jacket. After a few houses, I asked the Sarah if she was getting tired and she answered ‘no, there’s still room in my bucket’ I then asked her how much candy she had and she leaned over it and started counting LOL She probably could have counted them all at that point if we let her as she can get to 20 now correctly, but I told her that I didn’t really need to know and that we had better get busy and go to the next house to fill it up some more.

I think we hit a record for the number of kids that stopped at our door for treats this year. The final number was 112 when we ran out of candy about 8:45. Many of our neighbors had run out and turned off their porch lights earlier.

I’m off to turn the clocks back and get into bed. I'm coming down with some sort of crud- I have been coughing all day and am just feeling congested overall now. My voice is all scratchy too. So, night everyone and Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Carving

This week has been crazy weather-wise. The kids had school Monday, but on Tuesday the weather went nuts and we had a 2-hr delay to start that day. Wednesday and Thursday school was just cancelled because of the snow, winds and ice. Even dance classes were cancelled so we had lots of time on our hands. It was almost like having another week of fall break. Wednesday night we decided to occupy ourselves with carving the two pumpkins we got at the Happy Apple Farm last month. I started out with 4 helpers, but that dwindled down to just Beth before too long. 

While Sarah couldn’t help a whole lot she kept an eye on the process as I worked on her little pumpkin.
Beth did a lot of the carving on the big pumpkin, I just had a few pieces to help finish up when it got to be bedtime.

credits: everything from scrapbookgraphics: Halloween Magic by Tangie Baxter and Sherrie JD, Mixed stitches 2 by Manuella Zimmerman, Orange Chipboard Alpha by Flergs; based on LO by Jumlai for the 10/27 ICST challenge at scrapbookgraphics

and we have been nibbling on roasted pumpkin seeds – always a yummy treat!

The kids thankfully did have a regular start to the school day today. Brenna was worried about missing her class Halloween party today, but as the weather has finally started to thaw out a bit she won’t have to. She has worn a different costume every day this week for something or other, one of the joys of having older twin sisters is lots of hand-me-down costumes to choose from!

It feels good to scrap again

I haven’t had much time to scrap lately, or when I do have time I’m too tired. That’s the way it goes, I guess. I’ve managed to get a few new layouts done recently- yeah!

The twins and their close friends at the end of 5th grade last year.
credits: Pop Summer by Glam Fairy at scrapbookgraphics, Text Paths Collection 1 by Jen Caputo at scrapbookgraphics; fonts: CK Curly Cursive, Century Gothic

 
journaling:   What a difference a year can make! Sarah thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of her birthday party this year. We opened gifts first so the kids had time to play while we finished getting dinner ready. After dinner we enjoyed cake and ice cream and then talked and played some more with the Tamblyns until bed time. Sarah received lots of new animal friends, the La-Ti-Da Hair Salon My Little Pony Set, and a Dora the Explorer Wii game. She was one happy and content 4 year old little girl that night!
credits: Template 130 by Yin Designs; All The Sweet Flavors by Lauren Grier; Sweet Cupcake by Dani Mogstad; Bubblegum Kinda Love by Traci Reed; fonts: CK Becky, FO Journal Away

 
journaling: One night during fall break, we sat down and made goodie bags for Brenna's 1st grade Halloween party. Bat rings and small candies filled the inside of the containers and we will hand out glow bracelets to the kids as well at the party on October 30.
credits: Spooktacular Solids, Elements, and Addon by Dianne Rigdon at scrapartist; Black Jelly alpha by Lili Designs at scrapartist
for hybrid goodie bags: Spooktacular Papers and Spooktacular Wallart by Dianne Rigdon at scrapartist
fonts: Tom's New Roman

journaling: It’s hard to believe that our little Sarah is 4 years old already. She has definitely brought some extra spice into our family, that something unique that we wouldn’t be the same without. Most of the time sweet, she has just a bit of sass and spunk too, which means that things are never boring with her around. She wants to be like her big sisters, but I’m sure that she will find her own way eventually too.
credits: Rebel Rock by Pixel Works at scrapartist; template by Zora, Jennifer S. Wilson | simplescrapper.com; fonts: Century Gothic

Halloween Album

For a couple of years now I’ve wanted to put together an album that had all of the Halloween costumes through the years in it. I finally got started on it about 3 weeks ago, and it turned into a much bigger project than I had originally anticipated (that seems to be the way I do a lot of things these days LOL). One of the things that took so darn long (other than the sheer number of photos I was dealing with) was finding the very early pictures since I didn’t start taking digital pictures until 2002, and even then it was hit or miss the first couple of those years because I was using both film and digital cameras. I had to dig out negatives and scan them for quite a few of those early years. By the time I was done I actually had 2 albums because the binder album that I started with obviously wasn’t going to be big enough to hold all of the photos I had. The first album is the original idea I started with and just includes the group shots of the kids over the years in their costumes before going out trick-or-treating.

The back cover and then a shot of how the pages are inside. Pictures are printed at 5x7 or 4x6 and just stuck in the album however they needed to go. It gives it a fun random look.  

The second album is the ‘big’ one and not only includes costume photos, but also has all of the pumpkin carving and jack-o-lantern pictures, fun food and crafts things we’ve done, parties, and photos from trick-or-treat outings the years that I took my camera along. For some pages I made montages of several pictures if they were all of the same event (like pumpkin carving, crafts or parties). There are divider pages between each of the sections.
 

Credits: Fright Night by Flergs and Kaye Winieki at scrapbookgraphic; Fright Night: Glitter, Fright Night: Word Art, and Purple, Orange and Green Chipboard Alphas by Flergs at scrapbookgraphics; Bracket page templates by Bannerwoman and Jen Caputo. Binder rings by Staples, ribbons are by Offray, American Crafts and Michaels, and glitter glues by Sulyn and Roseart.

Really overall it was pretty simple once I figured out the format that I was going to use and let photos be my pages and didn’t decorate them other than to put the year and a small description of what each child’s costume was or if there was a particular name for something. I think it is fun to have everything all in one place so you can see how much the kids have changed over the years. We don’t really do all that much for Halloween other than costumes and trick-or-treating, so this is a neat way to see all of the different things we have done in one place. Here’s a compilation of the costume photos through the years and a few other favorites too to give you a small taste of the albums as a whole.
 

Sarah’s 4th Birthday

We celebrated Sarah’s 4th birthday on Saturday evening. She was having a hard time waiting for her party and most of last week you could find her ‘baking’ cakes out of toys. She would pile them up pyramid style and call it a cake- so cute!

Thursday, a birthday card from MommyPat and Walt arrived in the mail. While I was shopping for the groceries we needed for the party on Friday the big girls took Sarah over to the toy section and helped her pick out something to get with the money that was sent in the card. She chose a Pinkie Pie pony, some glittery pink nail polish and a tube of pink lip gloss.

Finally the big day arrived, and I had a hard time keeping her out of the way while I worked on the cake for the party. The theme was Carebears this year. Carebears, My Little Pony, and Strawberry Shortcake are favorites of the smaller girls in our house, which takes me back to my own childhood years a bit. We tried something a little different this year and let her open the pile of presents right away. Then, she had something to occupy her while I finished getting dinner ready for everyone. That worked rather nicely, I thought.

 
A cake and cupcakes. I had to have a few cupcakes for the cupcake princess at her party- she of course chose a cupcake to eat over the cake ;) 

One of the biggest differences that I noticed this year during the party in Sarah was that she sat there while we all sang and just grinned from ear to ear that she had everyone’s attention. No trying to hide while we sang to her this time.
Fun with the party hats and blowers after all of the sugary treats were consumed. Tired kids probably had a bit to do with it too, but it was sure nice to hear giggling and laughter instead of fighting for a change!
And Sarah finally had the opportunity to try out her new Dora the Explorer Wii game on Sunday after lunch. She picked up on most of it quickly and completed the first level in the time she was allowed.