Happy Halloween 2011

This year was a lot of fun.  Seth is almost 6 months old so he's not trying to walk yet and was content to stay in the stroller and Maddy and Isaac are old enough to get Halloween and why its so fun.



This year Maddy was a rock and roll witch.  Isaac was Luigi from Mario Brothers (I made the hat and overalls for less than $4 - take that cheap crap Walmart $20 costume!).  Seth was a bumblebee.  I was, well, I'm not sure what I was.  A barmaid from ancient days?  A swedish milk maid?  Take your pick. 

Let us give a moment of silence for the bumblebee costume.  Seth is my last child and so this is the last year the costume will be worn by one of my children.  All of them have had their turn.

 

Sherri came with us this year with her kids.  I think that made it fun for me to have her there but definitely fun for the kids to have kids their own age to run to people's houses with.  Except their exuberance bubbled forth a bit too much.  I'm not sure how many times Sherri and I got after them - "You only ring the doorbell once!"  "Not all of you need a turn knocking on the door."  "If they haven't answered the door after a minute, they're probably not home.  You don't need to alternately ring the doorbell and knock on the door to make sure!"

Then we all went back to my house and had a small party.  I made some kicking beef stew.  I had also attempted a punch - pineapple juice, frozen limeade, ginger ale, sugar and a packet of lemon lime koolaid.  It was good but tart.  And then there was Jack who got really excited about the dry ice.  He kept dumping it in until our punch was essential a slush.  It was kinda cool how that worked though.  I made the kids mummy dogs - hot dogs wrapped in strips of canned creasant rolls.  What a success!  Even my picky eater (Isaac) ate the whole thing!  Sherri made this awesome homemade bean dip with black beans, with home made guacamole on top with lines of sour cream.  I have to say - a complete triumph!

Everyone went home stuffed and sticky and it was a good year.

Maddy's Jammies

I love Pinterest.  I found this tutorial for turning an adult sized sweater into a dress for a baby girl.  But the concept of the dress is pretty simple.  So on Monday, Maddy comes home from school to announce that her class has won a pajama day at school.  Its going to be on Wednesday.  Well, slight problem.  She doesn't really have any jammies that appropriately fit her and we have no money.  But I do have tons of fabric, and some flannel that I kept telling myself I was going to do something with.  Well, with no time, and no pattern that could easily be done in a day and a half, I thought about that tutorial.  Seemed simple enough - cut a-line body, do a peasant style sleeve and neckline, sew a bias tube around the neck-line and use elastic to tighten up the neckline until it fits just right.  Here's what I made:

 

The neckline was probably done up a little too tightly but it still fit perfectly!  And can you believe it, it only took about 2 hours to do the whole thing, including ironing up my own bias tape at the neckline!

And then there was Seth . . .

Because I'm so behind, I'm not going to do a retrospective on Seth since he was born.  We'll just move on from here.  Plus, I'm going to be using this mostly as a forum for Mom and Dad to see pictures of the kids more often since Mom has an easier time using her email than her Facebook.

I took a few pics today because I wanted Mom to see some stuff!  Original, I know.  But here goes.

She never got to see what Seth's blanket and sheet set that she made looked like in his crib.  Unfortunately, the length of elastic in the crib sheet she made to go with the blanket was not long enough to allow me to put it on his mattress, so I may have to correct that some time myself.  But I did have another clean crib sheet in white that works just as well.  Here is Seth laying on top of this super-duper cute blanket!


 

And without binkie and mysteriously disappearing arms:

   

I love him.