The Super Duper Deluxe Halloween 2010 Edition

We kicked off our Halloween festivities with the 2nd Annual Great Pumpkin Hunt. I always feel a bit exploited going to pumpkin patches. But going to the grocery store is not festive enough. So last year the family night before Halloween I hid pumpkins in the yard. This year we invited some friends over. If it's possible, we had even more fun. There's something thrilling about wandering the yard after dark, with flashlights.

The happy pumpkin hunters.

Here is Lizzy as Glinda the Good at our Ward's Halloween Carnival. I think it's worth mentioning that she made this costume. Of course the costume was a lot easier to make after we found a pink sequin tank top at Target. This was Lizzy's first time sewing an article of clothing and I think she did great. She really did it on her own since I was so busy getting ready for the Halloween carnival. When I left to set up at the church she was still sewing the skirt and needed to add sleeves, make the crown, wand and butterfly. She was Glinda because he friend Jackie was the Wicked Witch of the West.

The two of them grabbed some random two-year-old Dorothy to pose with them for a photo. Note: the cool back drop my friend Jordan helped me paint for the carnival.

I was actually kind of in charge of this party. I'm the activity chair. I wasn't completely in charge because we combined with another ward. It was not just a trunk or treat. We had carnival games, face painting, balloon animals, a cup cake walk and a spook alley put on by the young men. For some reason the young men used the head of a hammer head shark in the spook alley. Half the building smelled like dead fish. Fortunately, we ate outside where the evening was lovely. People really went all out for their costumes.

The most amazing was this family's rendition of the movie "UP".

We tried to have a family photo but John ran off. I wanted to make Bill a wolf costume to go with my Little Red Riding Hood which I've been wearing for the past 6 years but I didn't get around to it. Not surprisingly Will was a king. He wears some version of that costume every day. Zoey spent all her summer savings on her Southern Belle dress. Sometimes I find her sleeping in it. This is not such a good photo of me but captures well how I felt. That morning after running in the rain, I came home to find sewage seeping up the shower drain in the downstairs bathroom. We couldn't use water--meaning no shower for me-- until a plumber came well after I had left for to set up for the carnival.

Finally, a picture of John as a rat. He's actually Templeton, his favorite character from Charlotte's Web. I modified gray sweats to make his costume.

We had a nice quiet evening at home Halloween night.

We discovered roasting candy corn. Which is really pretty yummy but kind of tricky to roast. Warning: Do not try this at home.



Lizzy and my dad made doughnuts. She doubled the recipe because we had this vision of sharing doughnuts with trick-or-treaters. In the end we didn't get very many trick-or-treaters and all three came over before the doughnuts were finished. But some friends came over and we had a brief impromptu party eating doughnuts in front of the fire.