Halloween 2021

Did you have a fun Halloween?

I've already shared my Halloween pics over on Instagram, so if you're following there you've likely already seen our costumes and decorations, but I love looking back over our adventures and various holidays in more detail so I'm posting them here on the blog too. With a few extra photos, of course.

This year we ended up with a family costume for the first time ever. There have been years when the girls had costumes that go together (remember that time they were the Powerpuff Girls? You can see them here) but we've never done a whole family costume until now. It wasn't actually my plan to make a whole family costume, but it worked out that way and it makes me so happy. 

Ava decided that she wanted to be Mabel Pines from the Disney cartoon Gravity Falls. This inspired Lola to dress as the character Bill Cipher (a maniacal pyramid from another dimension) from the same show. Mathilde then decided she'd like to be Mabel's pet pig Waddles. With these three characters in mind, the girls decided that I should dress as Grunkle Stan. Kim doesn't usually dress up (unless he's wearing the nerd costume he wore for years) so I figured he wouldn't join in. Then when I was buying myself a fez for my Grunkle Stan costume I came across the hat worn by Mabel's twin brother Dipper Pines, and that was that. The whole family joined in!

This year there wasn't an awful lot of DIY involved in the girls' costumes, but there was still a little. Ok, so Lola's costume was pretty much all DIY but that was pretty much it. I made Lola's costume out of cardboard, duct tape and an elastic strap to hold it around her waist. Ava purchased most of her costume parts and then we made the sweater design out of felt and stitched it on. Oh, and that's a wig she's wearing in case you couldn't tell. Her friends didn't recognize her without her colorful hair and glasses! For Mathilde's Waddles costume I purchased a pig onesie (you can find it here) and then dyed it a brighter pink to cover up its white belly. The face needed changing to match Waddle's facial features, so I dyed a piece of pale pink felt the same color as the onesie, stitched black eyes onto it, and stitched it over the existing eyes and heart shaped cheeks of the onesie. Much better! Kim's costume consisted of clothes from his closet along with the cap I purchased for him. My costume also consisted of clothes from my closet (a blazer and black pants I'd totally forgotten I owned) and I glued a felt design to the fez I purchased. To make myself look like an old man I covered the lower half of my face with grey eyeshadow for a five o'clock shadow look, and use a lot of brow pencil and eyeliner to make my brows big and grey.

We headed out trick or treating with our neighbors (the Charlie Brown ghost you can see above) around our neighborhood. While it was still fairly quiet it was much busier than last Halloween when we only saw one other group of trick or treaters (also our neighbors). Most houses still had candy placed out on their porch or driveway to avoid encounters with strangers, but there were a few houses where the kids had to ring the doorbell and call "Trick or treat". We had so many trick or treaters come to our house that we actually had to top up the candy bowl twice! 

Ava had a Halloween party with school friends to attend so she finished trick or treating early to head off to that while the Lola and Mathilde continued collecting candy. They collected so much candy that their bags were becoming quite heavy. I weighed Mathilde's Halloween bag when we got home and it weighed five pounds! That's a lot of tooth decay! 

Anyway, that was our Halloween for another year. I hope you had a great Halloween too. I'm not quite ready to say goodbye to Halloween and hello to Christmas just yet so our front yard is still looking a little on the spooky side - minus the sandworm which we had to take down because it was sitting on top of new plants. 

Are you still feeling the spooky season or have you moved onto the next holiday? I've got one more spooky themed post coming so I hope you're still feeling Halloween too!