Halloween 2012

Here in the Great White North you need at least two costumes for Halloween.  One that fits as normal clothes to wear to school, and one to fit over top of a parka.

First, school costumes.

Sophia as Little Red Riding Hood (found the dress for 50 cents at local thrift store and Nathan's mom made the hooded cape using this tutorial from leftover material she had on hand - so, free!)

Olivia used one of her dance costumes and was a dancer

Emma and her friends decided to just dress in neon colours.

And here are the outdoor Trick or Treating costumes.

Emma is a gypsy (bought the shirt from local thrift store for 50 cents, black skirt given to her by one of my friends, and wearing one of my scarves on her head).
 Sophia is an iPhone (thanks Pam for letting us borrow this costume!  It was missing a few icons that I reprinted from this website, but there were still 2 spots open and Sophia wanted them filled in, so I made them myself for two of their favourite games - Super World Adventures and Subway Surfer).
  Olivia had her turn as Little Red Riding Hood.
And Jacob is wearing a transformer costume that I bought new.

Here come the Trick or Treaters!

And here is their loot - wow, that's a haul!  And they were only gone for less than an hour and a half!  Those two bowls are full of mini chocolate bars plus all the rest of the sorted piles.  All their candy always gets dumped together and then sorted by category (chocolate bars, chips, licorice, suckers, candy bags, etc) and they get to pick one thing for dessert for school lunches and for suppers - it lasts forever it seems!

I sometimes dress up to hand out candy to Trick or Treaters while Nathan takes the kids out - this year I dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz (dress from the thrift store for 50 cents, my belt, my red shoes)

Emma changed into a pirate costume used in a previous year to help hand out candy after they were done TorTing.

The friendly pumpkin greeting the kids at our door, carved by Olivia and her dad.  Nothing fancy, but she loved carving it with him.

The Gideon's gave out Bibles at our church this Sunday before Halloween for us to give out to kids that were trick or treating (they're no longer allowed to give them out at schools). We were supposed to make sure to give them to kids approximately Gr 4+ (though younger siblings were also welcome of course) and ask them if it was ok if we gave them a Bible along with their treats. If they said yes, we could give them one. If they said no we were supposed to say something like "That's ok. Enjoy your treats and have a great time tonight!" I wasn't totally sure how well it would go over, so I only picked up one pack of 10.

I admit to being a little nervous about doing this, which them made me feel ashamed. I chickened out when the first two age appropriate kids came. But when the next group of 4 came along, I asked them and they said "Sure! We'll take anything!" ;)

The next group was 3 girls and they said "That's cool!"

"That's neat, I've never seen that before". And then when they went off to go rejoin some other friends I overheard them say "You missed the house that gave us a Bible!" They seemed really happy to get them.

I only had 3 left after that so I prayed that a group of 3 kids would come because I didn't want it to be a larger group and have to leave anyone out. And sure enough, the next was a group of 3 girls. They were a bit older and by their reaction they seemed to think it was a bit uncool, but they said yes anyway.

So, that was our Halloween for 2012 - a good time was had by all!