{ halloween }

*I've tried to post this several times over the last week, but the spacing keeps being all funky. I have no idea how to fix it, so I'm finally giving up and posting anyway...* It appears that I only blog about birthdays and holidays, so here's Halloween. We had a golden fairy princess (Orva), a scary ghost (Ford), and a sock monkey (Housley). Here's our golden fairy princess (which came about because my sister's friend made a dress like this and then I just had to have one...I told Orva she could be a princess but that wasn't good enough for her, so she came up with "golden fairy princess".)

Here are some stats on the dress: - 30 + hours to make - 44 yards of tulle (!!) - 6 layers with ruffled trim sewn to the bottom of each one - 310 strips of tulle that were 3" wide by 48" long...ruffled down to 6" to make all the ruffled trim (yes, I wanted to shoot myself) - 3 entire spools of thread - 12 bobbin changes Toward the end, I finally cut the dress in half and made a separate skirt with the bottom 3 layers because I couldn't fit the dress on the sewing machine anymore - I was drowning in tulle! It actually made for a cute little pixie fairy dress with just the bodice and top 3 layers - I should have taken pictures. Oops. With all the craziness and work, it was still a whole lot of fun! I took the pictures above when Orva was on her way to her party for Preschool. On the actual day of Halloween, I didn't do so well taking pictures so the ghost and monkey costumes are not as well represented. Here are some from when we went to the airport Halloween morning to welcome Uncle Victor home from his mission

For the first time this year, I got to re-use a costume. Hallelujah! Ford wore this costume when he was a baby and it was just as fun to see Housley in it the second time around.

I started out wanting Ford to be the "man-in-the-yellow-hat" for my little sock monkey, but he had a total meltdown when we went to D.I. to find pants and a shirt to dye yellow. He asked if we were getting his Halloween costume yet (he was sick of me working on Orva's and not his) and when I told him what we were looking for, he totally fell apart..."I don't WANT to be the man in the yellow hat!" When I finally calmed him down, I asked him what he did want to be. He said, "I just want to be a scary GHOST!" I had no idea he even knew about Halloween, so I gave it a couple days to see how serious he was. He spent those few days moping around, hanging his head and telling everyone, "My mom just won't let me be a scary ghost. I just want to be a scary ghost!" So ghost he was! I'm not sure about scary, though - the simple cape and hood I made seemed a little too boring, so I added the silly glasses and fun shoes to make it a little more fun. Here are a few more pictures from the airport...

And finally, here are some pictures from the trunk-or-treat Halloween night:

Housley kept himself happy sucking on a bag of skittles the whole night...skittle juice was running down his chin by then end.

And finally, a few dismal attempts at a group shot:

Until the next holiday, then!