Trick or Treat???

 I call this a trick.  18 inches of snow fell on October 29th.  Though we are used to crazy weather and temperature changes here in the northeast this was new for me.  I have never seen this much snow before Halloween and I wasn't really thrilled about it because it potentially could stick around until April.  Winters around here are long enough!  The temperature has warmed up the past few days and we have seen a lot of it melt but it still looks so strange to have so many leaves still on the trees and
the ground still blanketed in white.  Despite all the heavy wet snow we didn't lose electricity, only our internet service for a chunk of the day-no big deal as we were busy clearing snow for most of the morning!

 The charcoal grill resembled a giant marshmallow.

Tuukka seemed to be the most excited about the snow, bounding around and burying his head in it.  It was such a heavy, wet snow though that it stuck to his long fur and he came in walking funny as huge snowballs had accumulated all over his belly!  They weren't easy to get off either!

Suprisingly the girls weren't that excited to hear about the impending snowstorm, but that might have come from them hearing us talk and being less than thrilled as we rushed around the morning before the storm getting last minute winterizing done earlier than we anticipated.
Of course waking up and seeing all the snow they were as suprised as us at the amount and how stranged it looked to have that much snow and still have leaves on the trees.  It wasn't long before they were clamoring for me to get their snow gear out so they could go play in the snow.

Luckily we got our trick or treating in before the storm.  It was cold but fun!

And last but not least the dogs got a little Halloween action too with their bandanas that I got at Disney last year.  Getting them to sit next to each other was not easy but at least Tuukka smiled for the camera!

Halloween Roundup

After having either one or both of the kids sick the week of Halloween I made the executive decision that we would do trick or treat at the mall where it was warm and dry. This was met with much grumbling from the oldest who decided that if she couldn't trick or treat with her best friend she wasn't going to trick or treat at all. And just for the record her best friend was sick.

After much coaxing and unfortunately a few tears she reluctantly got dressed and joined us.

Now granted the mall isn't the most exciting place to trick or treat, but the kids get lots of candy, and it is warm so you actually see what everyone is dressed as. Now granted it was an unseasonably warm 70 degrees outside, and despite the predictions of rain it didn't start till after we got home. So maybe I was being a little overprotective, but considering Kenzie had a fever all week ( she was fever free for 48 hours we took her out in public) and there was a chance of rain I think I did what was best.

Once we left the mall with a bucket of candy Becca was in a much better mood and they spent the ride home checking out their stash and trading candy. So despite the rocky start we had a happy ending!

Here is Padme Amidala in attack of the candy corns. Apparently Candy Corn Witches will turn you into candy corn instead of a toad. And just for the record this candy corn witch doesn't even like candy corn but she sure got a lot of compliments on her costume. I made the leg warmers about a month ago when I thought we would be trick or treating outside.

Padme's laser blaster!

The candy corn witch taking a ride on her broom!

This is the candy reject pile. Lucky for me and Dom there is some good stuff in there!

Cannibalistic Pumpkin

I can't let the kids have all the fun carving pumpkins so here's mine


Run away! Run away!

Halloween Yum!

I made these cupcakes as a last minute treat for Dom to take to work because I thought they were so cute. I of course saved some for us, too! I discovered them on a blog called http://www.ourbestbites.com/ . They are candy corn cupcakes. The photos on the blog are better than mine but you get the idea. The cake batter is tinted yellow and orange and topped off with the white frosting to look like a candy corn. On the blog they topped them off with an actual candy corn. I could not find candy corn and substituted candy corn kisses instead. If you like to cook and bake you should check out this blog-lots of yummy stuff!

Pumpkin Guts

You can't carve pumpkins without dealing with pumpkin guts. Luckily, Rebecca loves pumpkin guts. She spent a good twenty minutes playing with the guts, creating a story with her sister and making wonderful sound effects. Just another occasion for me to wonder why I waste my money on toys when there are things like pumpkin guts to play with.

This is also about the time that little voice in my head starts complaining about the mess they're making. Luckily I am really good at tuning that voice out and just letting them enjoy themselves. In reality it wasn't that bad, as they kept most of the guts in the bowl and after the pumpkins were all carved we got to roast the pumpkin seeds which are of course yummy!

.

Halloween Craftin'

Here are some things I've been working on. I have accidently deleted my craft blog so the craftiness will be here until I decide wether to do another one or not.

This is my table center piece. Flowers are fake. Little creatures are paper. The base is a Create in a Vase I found at Ben Franklin. Very cool as it has an insert you can decorate any way you want and use it over and over again. They come in two sizes and would be really cool to decorate with pictures. You cannot burn candles in them. Partylite does make something similar which you can burn real candles in.
I just put some tissue paper in the vase for this.






This is what it looks like disassembled. The smaller round piece fits inside the larger one creating a little space to put decorations of anything that will fit. then the little silvery piece fits on top. These also came in a larger size that was about twice as tall.







These are just some jars of different sizes covered in tissue paper or crepe paper. Added some cute faces and stuck some white lights inside so that they glow.




These are Halloween S'mores. 1 quart jar,1 sleeve of graham crackers crushed,1/3 cup of brown sugar, peeps and 1 1/2 cups of M&Ms. To bake-empty contents of jar, snip peeps into little pieces mix together with 1/2 cup melted butter and 1 tsp. vanilla. Pat into a greased 8x8 baking dish and bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Cool and cut into bars. Or you can leave the peeps whole and just lay them on top of the mixture. Remember to include the baking directions if you give these as gifts!





Here is sign I made to hang between the kitchen and living room, though once I hung it up I realized I should have made it two-sided.

The same but different??

The girls have decided what they want to be for Halloween and I sat down today to order them online. (What they want to be will remain a secret until I can bribe them into posing for pictures. ) They had chosen some from a catalog I received in the mail so what could be easier? Little did I know it was going to be harder then I thought. I had actually received two catalogs in the mail, one several weeks ago and one about a week ago. At first glance I thought they were the same company. Both had the same special deal on the front.... and both had the same coupons on the back. And the costumes inside were all the same. Though one catalog featured more adult costumes than kids costumes.

So I just grabbed one of the catalogs and went to the website listed and put in my order. Everything was fine until I tried to use the discount code on the back of the other catalog. They looked the same so no biggie, right? Wrong! It wouldn't work! After a little frustration I realized that the web address was not the same for both catalogs and was finally able to get the girls costumes ordered with a discount. I am still a little confused and not completely convinced they are two seperate companies, despite the different websites, and yes the websites did look different but still had the same costumes. I imagine this is some kind of clever marketing tool but to me it was just confusing!

The pixie and the pirate

For Halloween the girls dressed as Tinkerbell and Elizabeth Swann in her pirates outfit from Pirates of the Caribbean. They even let me take more than one picture! In fact they wanted to act out entire scenes and have me take pictures of each one which got a little tedious for me but I did get a lot of pictures and here are some of my favorites. Of course many of my favorites are close-ups of their beautiful faces which doesn't really show off the costumes but oh well.

Trick or Treat

For the last few years we have gone to Strwberry Banke to Trick or Treat, but this year it was cold and rainy and we decided not to go. We did go to the trick or treat parade downtown to the local businesses. They do it early for the younger kids which is nice. The girls were excited to go and the excitment grew when daddy got home early to join us. The girls were happy with their loot. When we got home the girls and I decorated some halloween cookies and made "mummy pizzas" for dinner while Dom went to pick up the boat from being shrink-wrapped for the season. We ended the night with a viewing of 'It's the great pumpkin Charlie Brown'.

Have you ever seen such a cute pink leopard or Hippie Chick????

Mummy Pizza!

Halloween Highlights!

Another Halloween has come and gone. While the children are still blissfully sleeping in their sugar induced coma I will take a few minutes to share the highlights.
Friday evening we headed to Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth for "Ghosts on the Banke".
Many of you may have made school field trips here at some point. It is a colonial village and museum where participants actually live and work. We got to trick or treat from house to house. There was also a bonfire, Storytelling in a barn, firewalkers performing, hayrides, a creatures of the night exhibit. And even a screening of 'The Wizard of Oz' against one of the buildings. We went with a small group of friends and had a great time.
The weather on Saturday was rainy, cold and windy. I had been fighting a cold and Dom took the girls with him to run some errands. It gave me a little chance to rest.
Sunday Dom did yardwork and the girls and I made Halloween cookies. Yummy!!
The girls got to wear their costumes to their respective dance classes. So cute! Becca was a penguin and we decided she must be 'Happy Feet' which is a new movie coming out about a dancing penquin.
On Halloween we were treated to 60 degree weather. No covering up the costumes with coats this year! Remember being a kid and having a great costume? Okay so maybe it wasn't a great costume. It was the cheesy plastic smock thing with a mask that you could hardly see or breath out of. Your face would get all sweaty and you would sound like Darth Vader when you would breathe. Then your mom would make you cover it up with a big winter jacket, hat, mittens. Nobody knew what you were. Those were the days.
There was an early trick or treat for the girls in town at the local businesses. Becca had Sunday School in the evening where mommy got"tricked" as it was actually a Halloween mass, I mean 'All Saints Eve' mass. The kids got to wear costumes and were "treated" to goodies after Mass. The kids thought it was great. As for Mom, it was fun but lets just say mom is glad Halloween is over.