Halloween pics

Of course, can't beat Halloween for dress up and pretend.

Kenzie was a vampiress (again) and after watching the movie The Karate Kid (with Jackie Chan) Richelle just had to dress up as a karate kid.  The outfit is an actual karate outfit purchased from someone who advertised it in the local newspaper (her son was taking karate). I got it for $10... Just the way I like to buy things. I wanted to make her out to be a bloody mess, but Richelle opted only for the "black eyes". 

She was more than happy to show off her standing splits... 

And..... I voted today.  Hope everyone makes their vote count.

Halloween is the kids' favorite holiday

Last Wednesday, the kids got to carve pumpkins at our friends' Deb & Pet's house. That was a new experience for Richelle, too. At first, she was quite surprised at the feel of the gooey, slimey insides... but she acclimated quickly - to her, it was just another fun thing to do. They created their own designs, and they came out real cute.









Kenzie's Richelle's

Needless to say, Richelle got a taste of an American cultural holiday that is right up her alley - especially because she gets to dress up and then be given candy in return for going door to door. Last night, the kids went at it hot and heavy for quite some time... and the cutest thing is, although Kenzie would say thank you when given candy, Richelle threw in an extra Happy Halloween with her thank you's! It was too cute.

The night before, we got the kids dressed up for Roy's workplace Halloween party for the kids and their parents... it is for the staff and students. It was so crowded, we had a hard time doing anything easily. And the kids wanted to go through the haunted house portion - around the first corner, a guy jumped out and said boo - and Kenzie was a puddle of tears. Richelle jumped, but laughed it off. Talk about two different personalities. But Richelle did hold a little tighter to my hand...

After the haunted house, Kenzie was having trouble enjoying herself... and it shows in most of her photos... until the end of the night. She just wasn't her bubbly self. Nothing stopped Richelle from enjoying the night.

By the way - I did the makeup job. Creepy for Kenzie (she was supposed to be a vampire) and cutsie for Richelle (the cheerleader).

Whaddya think?

Halloween costume contest

Well, it's that time of year again. Ivytech had their Halloween party (it's for the general public, and of course, since my hubby works there, we have to go!

I remember in year's past when, if we got a face mask - and maybe a flimsy outfit, we were lucky. Most of the time, it seems we made up our own costumes. In retrospect, those were the very best ones. They took imagination and creativity - and it was a heck of a lot more fun finding things we already had to use in making a costume than just picking one out at a store.

I looked at lots of costumes - Walmart, K-mart, Target... I liked maybe one or two. But the cost was unbelievable...

So this year I decided I would make her into something from what we had around the house. She had overalls that had a big hole in the knee that still fit her. She had long johns that fit her. A friend allowed me to have one of her hats - and she said I could do whatever I wanted to with it (so of course I tore it up a bit and frazzled it in places). I bought her boots and a small galvanized pail. In the pail, we stuffed a small amount of newspaper in the bottom, and then we had plastic play veggies (carrot, tomato, corn on the cob, and bell pepper) in the tub, with a red bandana (I have lots of bandanas to choose from). We had the hairclips in pretty pink and white check to put in her hair. I picked out the pink bandana to tie around her neck. I did her hair in two braids. I also put a hairclip that had a pretty flower in it on her hat. A little pencil eyeliner for the freckles, and below is the result.






They had age categories for the kids to be judged in their costumes. Kenzie was in the 4-6 year olds. All of the kids just walked across in front of the judges, with the exception of one boy who had a batman costume - which, when you pulled two strings, the wings popped out. I told Kenzie she was to walk to about the middle and greet the judges (in her best hillbilly accent). She was supposed to say "Howdy, y'all!" Instead, she jumped up and down while waving her hat in the air and shouted "Yeeehaw!" OK, that will do. She also did her "top model" walk (in which basically she wiggles her hips back and forth) and she did that very well... looking every bit the farmer's daughter, walking lazily through her chores. All this to a lot of "Awwwwww... Isn't she cute!?"

Well, the judges conferred. I was close enough to hear what was going on... there was a young man and two young women doing the judging. The young man was convinced that the batman costume was the one to win - after all, it had gadgets that opened up (leave it up to a guy to be impressed by something mechanical). The other two ladies had other ideas. I overheard them say, "But remember, one of the criteria we are judging on is originality..." and then they looked back at Kenzie again with big smiles on their faces....

It looks like the ladies were able to sway the guy over to their side. Without having to spend $30-$40 on an outfit, she won 1st place in her age group.

I just love it when imagination rules! And it helps that I have a darn cute kid as well. I have the Youtube video of the evening here...