Happy Halloween!

Wow, we actually did Halloween this year! It's hard finding time to make/borrow/buy costumes, purchase/gut/carve pumpkins, and purchase/eat/purchase more/candy when you have two kids under four and two parents with full-time jobs.

Pumpkin guts were proclaimed "icky"

Happy family with...oh wait...

Last year's impromptu bonfire on our front lawn/s'mores distribution center was such a hit, we decided to do it again this year--with a lot of help from our neighbors. Key to success: teamwork and delegation.  Since we live in a duplex with a cottage in back, the three households combined candy, and our backyard neighbor, Else, was in charge of s'mores assembly. She recruited two friends, and they must have made 50 or more s'mores that night.  I made some very quick mulled wine (Two Buck Chuck!) and heated up some spiced cider. Micah was very ambitious and fired up the grill. We had grilled sausages on rolls for dinner.

Costumes this year were super-easy. Xander recycled his BART train costume from last year. Kai dressed as a bumble-bee, wearing a last-minute borrowed costume from a neighbor. Micah went as Captain America (well, a guy wearing the mask, anyway).

BART train Xander, Witch Jojo, and Princess Bella
shaking down a neighbor for Snickers Bars

Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I typically think about costumes months in advance. This year, though, I went to bed the night before with no clear plan--particularly tragic as work was holding a costume contest with a $50 prize. I fell asleep thinking about my costume options. The next morning, I macgyvered a passable garden gnome, using Xander's fitted blue bedsheet, a post-partum support belt, striped stockings, Dansko shoes, and lots of safety pins. I left for work in a nearly complete gnome costume. I just needed to find something to fashion into a tall, red, pointy hat.

Since I was running late, I decided to save time by driving. As I was turning into the Goodwill parking lot, I ran over the curb and heard a sickening hiss. Punctured tire. In the end, I managed to find some cheap fabric for a hat and a nice passerby helped me change the tire. I dropped the car off at the tire shop near work, and once I got to work, used some 11x17 card stock and spray adhesive to make my hat.

Mom's Garden Gnome outfit. Only $140 if you count the new tire.

So that's the story of my $140 gnome hat. Thankfully, we've gotten some post-Halloween use out of it:

Baby Kai-Gnome