happy Halloween!

We got in our trick-or-treating in advance, actually - Hendrik's school did a trunk or treat event on Friday night, and then there's always a lot of downtown stuff in our area, so we enjoyed some games and candy at our local museum on Saturday as well. Which means I already got my cute photos, and I can use them to wish you all a happy and fun Halloween today...

I love a Halloween costume that has a set of PJs as the base - it's cute, and it's also handy because if you're going to spend $$ on a costume, you might as well have something that you can use (part of) for the rest of the fall/winter! And of course as soon as we saw this parrot option (well, scarlet macaw if we're being technical about it, and you better believe Hendrik is), we were sold on this for my bird-obsessed boy.

Hanna Andersson had several great mask/cape type options in addition to this parrot one, and I've also seen great, and quite inexpensive, options from H&M; if you're into simple DIYs with similar bases, Primary.com also has a whole DIY Halloween costume page with a lot of fun ones that utilize PJs or simple sweats/sweatshirts - keep all of those on handy reference for next year if you like this type of easy and cute costume too!

five things Friday: cute & quick costumes edition

Yesterday I shared the super easy no-sew ghost costume that Hendrik will be sporting for Halloween this year. As you can see, we're more into the cute versions of things than the scary ones... And there are soooo many other cute semi-DIYs on the internet that would be totally doable this weekend if you still need a costume. With just some cardboard or felt additions to things you already have, you can outfit the whole family, and quite adorably at that.

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Dragons Love Tacos is a favorite book around here, and felt spikes on a hoodie is pretty darn easy. The taco would be a bit more complicated, but if you have as many Amazon Prime boxes laying around as I do, you'll have plenty of supplies to start with...

Also favorites around here? Ice cream (how cute are the felt sprinkles on that baby!) and stripes, so the mini ice cream sundae and bandit get-ups would be winner costumes as well. But the best is that giant cardboard beanie baby tag... If you have a dog this fuzzy, PLEASE attach one to its collar for Halloween for me!

pin to present: ghost costume

Hendrik has been saying for months already that he wants to be a ghost for Halloween. He saw in a book somewhere the classic bedsheet ghost costume and was fully planning on that, until I disabused him of the notion - as a mom, it's pretty much my job to foresee disasters, and this totally would be, with the eyeball holes slipping out of alignment, or him tripping over the end of the sheet...

Though it seems to me a classic Halloween costume, there really aren't any to be had at Target or Amazon - so, naturally, I took to Pinterest to come up with an easy DIY solution. And what I came up with was not only easy, but it is also warm, a necessary component for Halloween in Michigan! The poncho style topper is made out of fleece, and is big enough to be layered over as many sweatshirts/coats as necessary, depending on how the weather turns out. Plus there's a hat!

This really was super easy following this no-sew tutorial - took me probably 1/2 hour, especially because I skipped the step of knotting the fringe. And since I hit a good sale day at Joann Fabrics (plus coupon), the whole thing cost about $10. All around better than an Amazon costume, and Hendrik loves it. I even have enough fleece left over that I might subject Ginger to the same treatment...

What's everyone being for Halloween at your house this year?

pin to present: googly eyes pumpkin

If you haven't gotten around to any type of Halloween decorating yet my third Pinterest-inspired no-carve (+ preschooler friendly!) pumpkin idea is the easiest ever idea for you. All you need is a pumpkin and a pack of googly eyes, and you can make this eerily eyebally guy, just like Hendrik did:

He has been kind of obsessed with googly eyes lately after a project at school, so when I spotted this one on Pinterest, I knew it would be just the thing for a little Saturday project. It only took about 10 minutes to assemble, but we got a morning of fun out of it - Hendrik is a kid after my own heart in how much he loves a project, so we had the most delightful morning together, visiting the craft store and farmer's market for supplies, and then applying dots of glue and eyes. That was $6 well spent. (Plus no pumpkin gutting required - I find that so gross.)

pin to present: herringbone mini pumpkins

Installment #2 in the 3-part "no carve pumpkins" series for this October is maybe not quite as kid-friendly, since it involves Sharpies and drawing straight lines, but it's just as easy and fun to add to your fall decor: herringbone mini pumpkins.

These little guys were something like 3 for $1 at my farmers market, so I snatched them up, and then remembered seeing this simple embellishment idea on Pinterest. You better believe I have metallic Sharpies included in my extensive stash, so all it took was digging those out and 5-10 minutes drawing on my pumpkins.

I like how they're kind of glam with the metallic, but the herringbone pattern makes them seem spider web-ish for Halloween. Yet they would still be most excellent centerpiece decor for Thanksgiving - so I think I just might have to make some more!

pin to present: drip painted pumpkins

I think Hendrik is excited about fall this year (i.e. his birthday season!), as he's been begging to buy pumpkins since about September 1. I tried to hold him off for a while so that I didn't have rotten ones on my hands before Halloween - especially with all the hot weather spurts we've been having - but with the calendar flipping over to October over the weekend, I relented and we picked out a few little ones at the farmer's market.

And since we had pumpkins and it was a nice weather Saturday, I figured we should do some projects with them! So we took to Pinterest and got busy - which means this month I'll have not one, but three, Pinterest-inspired no-carve decorating ideas. 

This first idea, squeeze painted pumpkins via Hello Wonderful, was a lot of fun for a preschooler - we filled up little plastic bottles with his choice of acrylic paint colors, put our pumpkins down on some cardboard outside, and layered on drips of paint that ran down the sides and mixed together to make cool patterns. Hendrik loved getting to just go nuts with the bottles of paint, and I found it oddly satisfying to do the same, I must say.