My favorite project this year was freezing gloves with water in them to make an ice hand. I'm glad I brought home extra supplies because even Ian and Shane wanted to make them. We stuffed the gloves with little pom poms, spider sequins, orange and black pony beads, glow in the dark maggots and fingernails, and plastic pumpkins. We added water and food coloring and tied it tight. Ian made his The Red Hand of Ulster.
The next day we carefully removed the gloves from our ice hands and used boiling water and various spray bottles and medicine droppers to melt them. For some reason, pulling little treasures out of ice is a lot of fun!
With the help of those little pumpkin carving kits with the tiny saws, each kid carved their own pumpkin. It was the least stressful pumpkin carving Mark had ever experienced. In order from left to right is Shane's, Ian's, Daniel's, Fiona's, and Evie's pumpkins. Ian carved Daniel's pumpkin for him (Daniel drew several faces around the outside of his pumpkin and let Ian pick which one to carve). I love Fiona's kitty! And Shane's Bulbasaur! But overall, Ian's is the neatest, cleanest, most symmetrical pumpkin face.
Ian dressed up as a Viking. He made his own hammer and sword, but I made his outfit (brown flannel pajamas and a fleece tunic). Evie's witch skirt from this year still fits, so we just added a cute pair of tights. Daniel the lion, Fiona the ballerina princess, and Lula the doll all wore outfits from our dress-up collection. Shane was a ghost (I modified Ian's old King Josiah costume from Awana's) and was the only one to wear face paint. I was a knit witch; I found a crocheted skirt at the thrift store for $1 that I couldn't leave behind. When I find super awesome cool knit or crocheted items second hand, and I know the person put hours and hours of work into the project, I have to buy it simply because I respect the craft. And you can't even see the skirt in the picture! Heidi was the kitty that played with my balls of yarn. She was a very cute kitty.
We hit up both candy carnivals this year. Lula and Heidi fell asleep in the van on the way to the first carnival held at our church, so Mark was happy to hang out with them while I went in. I happily socialized and ate dinner with no distractions or interruptions while Shane took Daniel around to the games. Ian volunteered to run a game as part of the youth group. Halfway though, we left and went to the other candy carnival so Ian and Shane could volunteer as Boy Scouts at their game booths. Evie found a game that was closing up for the night and they let her take as many toy prizes as she wanted. The plastic junk is just as bad as the sugar junk in my opinion. When we got home, the little kids and Mark went to bed and Ian, Shane, and I stayed up to watch The Sixth Sense. I'm starting to think we have a new tradition to add to our Halloween...as long as Halloween falls on a weekend!
