Obligatory Halloween Post

Here it is, dear readers... the rundown of our annual dressing up. The kids all came up with their own costume ideas. I'm impressed with how well they turned out.. and (the best part) how little I had to spend.

Amanda participated in the Highland Village Studio B Hogwarts Festival last week and was happy to use her costume again the next weekend for a Halloween dance party and trick-or-treating. We found a cute navy school uniform skirt on clearance ($3), and added a Gryffindor tie ($8), knee socks ($1), and Hogwarts robe (borrowed).

Ashley was a cute Indian Princess despite the funny costume I made for her. I saw a cute dress idea online (made out of a pillowcase for a toddler) and tried to duplicate it in a bigger size. It didn't turn out quite as I envisioned, but she was happy with it and I only spent $6 on fabric and $4 on a necklace.

I think it's fun that my big kids still get together with friends to trick-or-treat on Halloween. In a world where so many teens are growing up way too fast I see no harm in participating in a little sugar-filled fun once a year.

Ryan has always been a man of few words, so his idea to dress up like a mime seemed fitting. I found that it's not easy to find a black and white striped shirt (I only checked one store) so I bought a plain white one ($5) and made stripes with black electrical tape (57¢). We added face paint ($2) and white gloves ($1) complete his look. He was cute to act the part while in costume.

Jacob isn't much into dressing up if it doesn't involve sports. The poor boy stressed for weeks about what to be and finally settled on Mario five days before Halloween. It was seriously the easiest costume to throw together with a pair of white gloves ($1), fake mustache ($3) and the letter M stuck onto a red hat we already had.

Shawn researched costume ideas online (on his own) and decided that a lawn gnome was the perfect costume. I only had to spend $3 on fur for the beard and felt for the pointy hat. He tried to pretend that he didn't like it when everyone commented on how cute he was all night.

Mason was dead set on being "Master Yoda" for Halloween. He loves all things Star Wars and Yoda is his favorite. I saw a Yoda costume at Target for $20, but was able to recreate the look by making a robe ($3) and a hat ($2). He looked forward to dressing up all week, so it was a bit surprising after dinner Saturday evening when he insisted on taking a bath and getting his pjs on. We finally got him to put on his costume and he loved trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. He was so adorable!

It wasn't completely intentional, but somehow we skipped the annual carving of jack-o-lanterns this year. Is it wrong to admit that I didn't mind not scooping out pumpkin guts?

We did find a few minutes Halloween afternoon to scoot over to the pumpkin patch for the boys to take a quick hay ride and run through the hay maze. I love that we were blessed with fantastically warm fall weather all weekend!