Halloween Creativity

It's not anywhere near my favorite holiday and there's a lot I don't like about it, but I *do* like creative costumes, trick-or-treating at our friends' houses, the kids' excitement, fall, fun foods, and fun traditions. We make our Halloween costumes and it's fun to see how creatively we can do it. Here are pictures of our costumes over the years:

Our first Halloween with a baby--what to do, what to do. We couldn't decide whether or not to dress her up. So, on the day itself, I was feeling sort of lame for not doing something, so we noticed she was wearing all blue so I picked off a piece of fake plastic plant, put it in her hair (so much hair!), and called it a blueberry costume. Yay us.

The next year, she had a bit more interest in the process, so we all dressed up as doctors. Not too much of a stretch for Mark. This was his third year of medical school.

The next year--a gumball machine!
I *love* this picture!

So, the next year, we started enjoying REAL fall weather in beautiful PA (after having lived in the desert of AZ for over 4 years). Unfortunately, I was dealing with horribly debilitating depression, but somehow I managed to sort of dress the kids like farmers.

The next year, the creative juices were flowing more and I dressed K up as a fridge. M would have no part in dressing up as the bag of groceries that I made. So he wore a pumpkin jacket and we called it good.

I was doing significantly better the next year and pulled off homemade cat costumes!

Aren't they the most adorable kitties?


The kids requested homemade Batman and Ladybug costumes the next year, so we obliged:

And this past year, they requested these--A Mummy and "Raining Cats and Dogs" (poor K had just twisted her ankle--it was NOT easy to hobble with the unevenly weighted umbrella)!

So, Food.

Every once in a while, we make mummy hot dogs (these are from K's Archaeology Birthday Party):

But every year, we make these DELICIOUS recipes--soup in a pumpkin and dinner in a pumpkin. DIVINE! And so so pretty.