Halloween 2018 :: True and Zombie Orphan

Carys pretty quickly decided she wanted to be zombie orphan. She wavered between zombie bride and zombie queen and traditional zombie and a few other iterations, but somehow (!?!?) came up with zombie orphan. I'm gonna be real honest and say I don't know exactly WHAT about her outfit screams "orphan" but it's *exactly* what she wanted, so apparently she nailed it.

Carys's costume was easy. A dress from Goodwill, a length of black crepe-y fabric from Amazon, and some face paint.

Now Emmeline.

Emmeline wanted to be True. From some obscure Netflix show called "True and the Rainbow Kingdom." It's a VERY cute show and I highly approve of it, but approximately one person - a fellow 4-year-old - knew what she was. She also considered being Masha from another obscure Netflix show, but ultimately decided that blue hair wins (obviously).

Emmeline's costume was NOT easy. It was a mix of things I got off of Amazon (hair, leggings, shirt) and things I made (headband, backpack, belt, skirt), and things we had (rainbow Baby Legs, boots - which I had to spray paint yellow and which did NOT hold up after this one night, but whatevs).  Emmeline was SO particular - she almost refused to wear the shirt because True's shirt doesn't have buttons on it IN REAL LIFE. Emmeline. It's a cartoon. It's NOT REAL LIFE.

Having wishes (the little yellow balls) was VERY important to her, so I painted a bunch of ping-pong balls yellow and painted little faces on each of them.

The backpack was the hardest part of the costume by far. True's backpack in the show is like three rounded sections and wishes go in and out of each section. And I couldn't find a good picture of it online, so I had to watch the show, pause when True turned around, and the screenshot that to look at.  Per my usual method, I went into making the backpack with just a VERY vague idea of what I was going to do and figured it out as I went. And in the end I absolutely loved it, and Emmeline was thrilled with it (most imortantly, obviously). If you're looking for your own True backpack, I wish I could give you more specific instructions or that I'd taken more (ANY) in-progress pictures, but alas. I did not. Basically I started with the flat part that goes against her back and sewed the outside edge (strips of colored felt) in each of the three colors, then created the top by sewing three circle-ish (almost more teardrop) shapes together and sewing them to the edges. I left an opening at the top so she could put wishes actually in it. The strap as it is on the show wouldn't fit over Em's head, so I used a button closure. The badge was cardboard and beads, and I put elastic on the back of it so it could slide over the strap and cover the button. Once the backpack was done, I cut a little "x" on each section of the backpack and pushed the fabric inward, then hot glued a wish into the opening.

I made the headband using colored beads and pom-poms, and the skirt was a simple circle skirt. I cut the bangs and styled the hair of the wig, and spray painted the boots because somehow I couldn't find yellow rainboots for under like $50 and hell no was I spending that.

Speaking of the skirt, I MADE IT THE MORNING OF HALLOWEEN. Because Emmeline, my stickler for details, decided that the skirt we had wasn't good enough. SIGH. But the backpack had turned out so well I didn't want to skimp on the skirt, so back to the sewing machine I went.

Every year we go meet at our neighbor's and go trick-or-treating with a group of neighborhood kids, and I take pics of each kiddo.

What's that? Emmeline isn't in any of these group pictures? WEIRD. WHERE DID SHE GO? That was exactly my question! And the question of the other parents as we frantically searched for her! I tried calling Chris at home to see if she'd gone back home for some reason, but he wasn't answering. OF COURSE. So I ran home - literally - and found her and Chris, curled up in a chair, watching TV. What. the. fuck. She just....was done. She didn't want to trick or treat. She didn't want to take pictures. So she just....left.  And I'm going to be honest, I was more like...I JUST SPENT THREE THOUSAND HOURS MAKING YOUR COSTUME AND YOU'RE NOT GOING TRICK OR TREATING than I was OH MY SWEET CHILD YOU COULD HAVE BEEN KIDNAPPED. Needless to say, I addressed the latter and kept the former to myself, except for bitching to my friends and of course writing it all out here so she knows in 20 years exactly how sad I was that my handiwork would go essentially unnoticed by the world.

Also look at this light. SWOON.

And they're off!

This is the house on our street that sets up a claw machine on their porch. It's so much fun. The kids go here first every year.

Carys loves trick-or-treating and is VERY insistent that everyone in the group gets their equal turns ringing doorbells. She'll get a little bossy exhibit leadership in making sure that no one is cutting in line and that the rightful person is leading the charge to the door.  It's gonna serve her well someday, the ability to take charge and the sense of justice.

So when we got around to our house, I saw Emmeline, absolutely in her element handing out candy. Now, this kid is a sugar FIEND. Addict, even. So it was shocking that she didn't want to trick-or-treat to get more candy. But we'd had other Halloween events (where she wore different costumes, because this one wasn't done yet) and we had candy at home. And she LOVES handing out candy. It was so cute that I had to forgive her, because...just look at her face.

She did not want the kids to stop coming, so she sat on the sidewalk yelling at anyone she saw passing to come get candy. I finally pulled the plug about 9:30 and made her go to bed. But this vision of her (and look at that view of the backpack!) will forever be seared in my memory. Even if I'd wanted to murder her a few hours earlier.

Emmeline's Fourth Birthday :: Halloween Party

I can't believe I'm writing about Emmeline's FOURTH birthday. And writing about it SIX MONTHS LATER. To be fair to me - I started this post in December, but you know. Life. I'm only writing this post now so that I can look back and remember it and because I have pics from Carys's seventh party to share - probably in about six months.

Em's officially out of the toddler stage and into the preschool stage and guys, I just love that kid so much. She's absolutely hilarious and one of the biggest regrets of my life is that I can't remember every single delightful thing that she's said - and they're just gone forever; I can't rewind and find them again. SOB. When she's sad, she's the saddest, most heartbreaking kid ever, with these big sad eyes welling up with tears and you can hear the despair and tears in her voice as she pleas, "Mama, don't be mad!" And the girl has a TEMPER with every single letter capitalized. She throws things and is just fiercely angry when things don't go her way. But most of the time - God, I just want to eat her up. And squeeze her and kiss her and never let her go. I can't tell you how many times I am driving with her, listening to her amusing stories, and I just have to reach back and squeeze and hold her hand because I can't pull over and take her out of her carseat and love on her.

And guys, she's so smart too. I can't believe I ever worried about her language skills or development, because she's brilliant. She loves shapes and simple addition and rhyming and reading/writing (she loves writing out a string of letters on a piece of paper and asking me what it says). She loves drawing, dressing up, and our new puppy (OMG I HAVEN'T WRITTEN ABOUT OUR NEW PUPPY and he's now 9 months old - whoops!). She loves video games and screens and I have to regulate those strictly, because she'd be totally happy lounging on the couch with no pants on, watching "Masha and Bear" or playing the Nintendo Switch allllllllllllllll day long. Luckily, she also loves her scooter and tricycle and I can usually get her to happily accompany me on a walk. She's got a sweet tooth like no other, and is a crazy picky eater (still).

Anyway. This is why I used to do the monthly/bi-yearly letters (and I can't dwell on the lack of those because I'll beat myself up for stopping them!). She's an amazing kid, I adore her, you get it.

For her fourth birthday, I was at a total loss. She liked a lot of things but I couldn't think of a theme she LOVED. And her birthday being in the dead of winter and two weeks before Christmas complicates it further. I asked her what kind of party she wanted and she kept telling me: Halloween. Halloween?!?!!?  I was 99.9% sure she wanted a Halloween party because she loved Trick-or-Treating so much and just wanted more candy. I wasn't sure if she understood that just because we were celebrating a Halloween birthday didn't mean she'd get to go trick-or-treating around the block again.  She briefly mentioned a Mario party (and I still think that would be cute) but she kept going back to Halloween. So...Halloween it was. And to her credit, she still - six months later - says that her favorite color is black because she loves Halloween.

It ended up being a really small party, and not nearly as elaborately planned as usual. Many of our usual guests couldn't attend and it was a SUPER busy time of year (did I mention that her birthday is two weeks before Christmas? And that we had just gotten a new puppy? And that Chris's birthday is the week before?). But she had a great time and was the center of attention for the day and loved it.

This was a pretty easy party to decorate - I managed to snag most of the decor on giant clearance after Halloween, and obviously we already had a bunch of Halloween decor. I did get a few things at Oriental Trading company (as I do every year) but not nearly as much as I have had to in the past. The trick with her party is always decorating around the Christmas decorations that are out. This year I just decided to cover them all with spider webs and pretend like they didn't exist.

She did not want "cute" Halloween. She wanted "creepy." I asked her if bugs crawling around a skull were creepy and she was like, "Ugh, I guess so."

I made the spider web with twine and I'm excited to bring it out next Halloween!

She asked for donuts instead of a cake, which I thought would be easy. We ended up disappointed with the vendor we used for the donuts but whatever. (I asked for a variety of Halloween colors and to have some of them decorated in orange/yellow/white stripes like a candy corn, and they ended up looking like Emmeline herself decorated them.)

HOW AMAZING ARE THOSE EYEBALL CUPS?!?!? And I love the plants and napkins I got from Target clearance after Halloween. 

The gift bags were luminaries. I don't think I took a picture of what was inside, which sucks because it was cute stuff - a little potion necklace (you can kind of see Emmeline wearing it in the first pic of her) and some tattoos and some plastic bugs and tattoos and bubbles and stuff like that. 

 

There's something so unsettling about a Christmas tree wrapped in spider webs. Maybe eerily reminiscent of an abandoned house or something? We tucked pictures of Emmeline during Halloween throughout the years into the webbing.

I got a few little foam craft kits on clearance from Target and set the kids up making little skulls and ghosts. It was a fun, easy activity and they seemed to have fun.

Obviously the direction was to come in costume. 

After they made their little crafts, they all went "trick-or-treating." I set the adults up throughout the house and gave them each a bag of candy to hand out to the kids. This was a big hit. Because candy. 

"Trick or Treat!"

Obviously the only logical thing after a bout of trick-or-treating is to separate and sort the candy. 

The cursed donuts. Like really, you don't even want to know how much I paid for these damn things that looked like someone smeared hard buttercream on them with a plastic butter knife.

OMG I love this little shy smile as everyone was singing happy birthday. 

Then we moved onto opening gifts, and the kids had a tissue paper war. 

Look at our adorable tiny puppy!!!! He's huge and annoying now but we still love him.

We took a group picture between the coats on the stairs and the Christmas garland on the railing. Really well thought out, Lara.

Poor Emmeline with her birthday so close to Christmas. I try to make it a priority every year because I never want her to feel second to Carys, but it's SO hard. When we were talking about having kids, Chris said we could have kids absolutely any time EXCEPT December - he has a December birthday and has always hated it. And we saddled this poor kid with a birthday that's a week closer to Christmas than his is! I plan on giving her the option of celebrating during her half-birthday if she'd like when she's older - but who knows? Maybe she'll grow up with winter as her favorite holiday and absolutely love it. 

Happy birthday, you spunky little spitfire. I sure do love you!