Happy (belated!) Halloween

Last week was Halloween, and the kids had a lot of fun deciding what they wanted to dress up as this year. Thankfully, we spent less than $10 on costumes this year! Oliver wanted to be a spy, which was easy since he already had camouflage pants, Buttercup wanted to be a cowgirl, and Theodore ended up wearing two costumes that we already had from previous years. :-)

At some point, we realized that this was the first year that Buttercup chose to dress in a girl-specific costume -- in previous years, she was a lion, a robot, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Luigi (from Super Mario Brothers).  Ha ha!  

The kids decorated foam pumpkins with Halloween stickers and glitter this year, and I love all of them, but I think my favorite is this eyeball-covered pumpkin that Theodore decorated! He loved the googly eyes and he even found an eyeball sticker to add to his decorations! 

 We also decorated more mini pumpkins. This one of Buttercup's is my favorite -- it reminds me of a globe. :-)

And we also made mummies out of mini pumpkins. I think they came out really cute! 

Three little pumpkins

(Sorry for the blurry phone pictures!)

And last but not least, here's a picture of the cute baby swinging with his ball :-)

Spider web crafts

This weekend we got into the fall spirit and made some cute spider web crafts. I love fall!  Now, if only it were cooler . . . but I guess anything is better than 100 degrees. :-) 

One of Oliver's creations:

Oliver's spider webs:

Theodore didn't get to decorate a spider web this time, but he had fun posing for me, and then he got to decorate a mini pumpkin with a marker. :-)  

One of Buttercup's spider webs:

All of Buttercup's:

More fun Fall stuff

A cool front blew in a couple of days ago, and the chilly weather always puts me in the mood for baking and making fun holiday-themed crafts.

But first, here's a cutie with a pumpkin!



I made pumpkin bread (using my recipe for banana bread), and also made pumpkin cookies based on this recipe from Oatmeal Mountain. I bought butterscotch chips to use, but the kids and I were at Walmart yesterday and I found these new M&Ms to use instead:


The M&Ms are good, but they're really, really sweet. Almost too sweet. They also didn't really taste like candy corn, so I'm not sure why they're called candy corn M&Ms?

Anyway, I smashed them up and used them in the cookies, and I really like the way they came out. I'm not a very good cookie-baker, but the cookies came out to be very light and very tasty.


The kids and I also made some cute crafts. Of course my hubby teases me that I like doing crafts more than the kids do, but I think they really liked these. :-)

The first one is a leaf/tree craft. You'll need leaves, pipe cleaners, and 2 toilet paper tubes (or 1 paper towel tube, cut in half). Poke several holes between the middle and top of the tube. Cut the pipe cleaners into thirds, then poke a pipe cleaner through the bottom of each leaf, then poke the other end through a hole in the tube.


Our leaves are all dry and brown thanks to the never-ending drought, so I plan to redo this craft if we ever get enough rain for the leaves to change colors!

We also made handprint spiders . . .





. . . and ghosts. Boo!

Pumpkin carving

Buttercup's jack-o-lantern:


Oliver's:


(Buttercup didn't get to be a part of the photo because she was busy throwing a tantrum)