Halloween Style

 

The kids are all ready for Library Story Time Group.  This was the week before Halloween so they are all dressed up in the spirit of things.  Emmy's wearing a top that Grandma Betsy bought her and I had to cut off the selves and him it up because it's so warm here.  Lilah's shirt doesn't fit her yet, so I took a plain back tee she had and added a Frankenstein patch that we had.  I think they thought they looked pretty cute...wouldn't you agree :)

 Lilah's modeling the matching bracelets that Emmy and her have for Halloween that Mommy made them!

Here she's showing off the pretty Curly Ribbon Hair Clips that Mommy made for her.

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Farm

 

We quickly threw together a photo background at the Pumpkin Farm!  We had just come from the Halloween Party at the Library so the girls were still in costume.  Emmy was Alice and Lilah was a Chicken.

 When we got home Emmy put on her Cinderella dress and asked me to take some photo's of her with the pumpkins!  Lilah was asleep from the very busy morning we had and missed out this time.

OMG! What are we going to do with all of these pumpkins!!  I'm sure we'll come up with something though!

Our New Look

We have a new blog look!  Nice, huh?  Reminds me of the Secret Garden.  xo

Story Time at the Library - Bowen

We love our Story Time each week at the Library.  Of all the free things the kids and I have done over the past few years this one is by far the best.  The women that put it on each week put a lot of thought and energy into it.  They sing and dance around to 12-13 songs, read 2 books, and have a craft afterwards.  Their crafts are not easy ones either.  Lots of time is put into preparing them! I have made friends with one of the ladies there, Tania, and we agreed that a Halloween theme would be great to do!  For Australia this is kind of a rarity and it's not really celebrated.  The kids were all invited to dress in costume and the girls and I made goodie bags for them.  I was just going to make some cookies to bring at first, then they looked so nice that I wanted to put them in individual bags, but the bags were so large that it looked like it needed more stuff in them.  I added a chocolate bar, a row of Halloween stickers, a Halloween toy or balloon and the pumpkin sign needed for the Trick or Treat night.  I then made up quick and easy tops of the bags using Martha Stewart Halloween Paper, some stickers and staples. And Walla..........we have goodie bags!!

 Here they are all together.

 I love making up goodie bags and could have kept going and filled them up more, but didn't want to wrap up tons of money in them.

I made up two batches of sugar cookies because I knew there was no way I'd be able to bake them and be left alone to decorate them without letting the kids do their own batch.  It took me 3-4 hours to make up the doughs, icings, and loading the icings.  Then start to finish 3 hours for the kids' cookies.  It was fun and they really enjoyed it, but I was glad when I got it all cleaned up and could start on my own.

This is Lilah's cookie creations.  I helped her to roll out the dough after she selected her color and then she embellished them with other colors.

Here's Emmy's cookies. She said the orange cookie was her and did that one completely by herself.  Her favorite cookie was the bunny rabbit.  She rolled out her dough herself and selected her cutter and I helped her with decorating ideas and technical things.

And here's Mommy's cookies!  I must send a big thank you to Grandma Betsy for sending over the cookie cutters!  They made the whole process easy because they imprinted the styling lines on the cookie.  I made tons of pumpkin, ghost, spiders, and bats.

 I made ghosts in purple too but didn't get a picture of them.  I don't think I'll ever do them again in purple because they came out looking like Grimace from McDonald hhaha

 I still had some dough left and decided that I wanted to do a new design so I used the gingerbread man cutter but moved the arms and legs a bit to try and get the cookie out of the traditional shape.  I used a butter knife to indent where I wanted the icing to go before baking.

I think my Mummies turned out really cute!

 

 This is still a post about Story Time even though I have you thinking about cookies!  Here's Emmy in her Alice outfit that I made her.  I think it is absolutely adorable and I was extremely pleased with it throughout it's entire construction.  It was an older pattern from 1982.  It wasn't an "Alice" pattern so I had to modify and simplify it and make it more "Alice-like".  Lilah was in no mood to be photographed so if you look at the picture again you can just see Lilah's face in the bottom right corner.  She was wearing the Chicken Costume I made last year.  Everyone loved her outfit and commented on it.  I thought she was the cutest chicken ever!  Here's a link to the Chicken Costume Post from last year. You can click on it worry free ......it will open up in a new tab/page.

Here's a group shot of all the children at the Library.  The three ladies dressed up at the back are the ladies that put Story Time together each week.

  

 Lilah had taken off her Chicken Hat by this time and you can't blame her because it was so hot out.  In the picture she was too busy watching the other children and babies and wouldn't pay attention to smile for the camera.  Notice Emmy is cheesing it in both photo's hahahhaha.  Such a ham!!

 

At the end of the Story session the girls handed out our goodie bags to each child on their way out with their moms.  This was Emmy's favorite part of the morning and she asked me if she could do it about a million times!  They had a total blast and so did I!  Halloween is still my favorite holiday!!

Christmas Clean Out!

I rearranged the girl's snuggarie and did a big clean out since we are going to be bombarded with Christmas in a few weeks! I didn't really have too many things to get rid of, but I did put a lot of things into tubs with lids and tucked them away in the hall closet and every now and then I'll switch out the tub of ponies for the barbies or the dolls for all the kitchen stuff...ect.....

My favorite party is their dress up wall! So much fun to be had! I don't really like the rug in the room, but we have it so I use it. I might have to get rid of it though and go for one that matches the room more!

I don't know how long we'll keep the belly cast in their room or what the heck we'll do with it once we take it out. Does anyone have any suggestions?

She's playing with her microwave toy. This thing was worth every nickle. She played with it when she first got it for hours at a time.

I wish we hadn't put the initials on the wardrobe now that the girls share this space! You can see our shoe holder is full... I think I'll have to make another one to hang directly under that one. I don't know what other mom's do with all of the shoes if they don't have one of these? I do have two girls in 1 space, so it's twice as much as what one child would have, but still... it's so hard to keep it all organized.

Open Wide

Emmy had her first check up at the Dentist this month! I had no idea how it would go, but there was no pressure if she didn't want to do anything. She was very happy to pop into the chair and to see all the things the tech was showing her, but when Dr. Michael came in she was very very shy and wouldn't lay down when the chair went back.

I asked her if she wanted to see mommy do it and she said yes. Once I was on there I thought might as well have her lay down on me if that helped her to feel more secure and it sure did! He didn't even have to ask her to open her mouth. He had a look and said he was going to count her teeth, which he did out loud and then we were done. She got an A+ for her check up!

She's scheduled to go back in 9 months and if she's more confident then they'll try polishing her two front teeth just to get her use to the cleaning process. Lilah was with us and it was such good exposure for her to see sissy being a big girl at the dentist office. It will really help her when it comes time for her first visit!

The tech was showing her the "barbie mirror" it's called that because it's so tiny!

Open wide.....I'll show you how it works!

Here she is just waiting for Dr. Michael.
(she kicked off her shoes like she owned the place, hahaa)

Queens

On this day they were letting out their inner Drag Qeen! hahha

Looking good Miss Diva!

I think she was having a good time :)

Lilah was really going for the evening look!

Is it just me or is this look very Joker'sque?

Halloween Party

I took the girls up to the local flower shop who just happened to be celebrating it's 50th birthday on Halloween weekend. There was a jumping castle, face painters, and free balloons for the kids. The loved it of course and they got to wear their Halloween outfits. Emmy didn't have one that fit anymore, so I made her a skull dress out of an old t-shirt and used skull & cross bones satin material for the ruffles. I was aiming for a larger size 3, but I think it came out more like a big 4, but now it'll fit her for a long while. She's wearing a long sleeved shirt and pants under it because it's cold right now, but last year it was shorts and t-shirt warm. Because it's spring I think you can get a mixture of both.

She loved getting her face painted and sat perfectly still like a pro, but she's had it done now several times so she knows.

Lilah's had hers done before too but I had her sit on my lap this time because the ladies were a bit scary. We went for a quick and simple pumpkin to match her shirt!

Here's the material for the ruffle.

And here's the skull t-shirt print. This dress could even double as a pirate dress if I put red leggings under it! OoOOoo what a great idea!

Showing some pumpkin love!

It was sooo windy!!

I told Emmy to wave hi to Grandma Betsy! So this one is for you Mom xo!

Pumpkin Carving

This is the first Halloween that I've got into decorating the house since the girls were born. I figure Emmy can start to appreciate it and possibly remember it later on. In the stores you can find a very small section of decoration and if you're lucky you might find pumpkins for carving. Last year our local grocery store got in 5 to sell. The price was outrageous so I passed, but this year they had a much better selection but the price was still a bit hard to swallow. $22 per pumpkin! Instead of getting one for each family member I bought one for us to carve together and really at this age I would end up carving theirs anyways so one was just fine. On Halloween Day they had the pumpkins marked down to $5 and since I've never seen a carved pumpkin sitting out on anyone porches I don't think the girls will mind next year carving their pumpkins on Halloween Day. At least this way we can afford to all have pumpkins!!

Lilah wasn't scared to give it a try, but Emmy just wanted to watch.

I don't think she was too impressed with the wet gooey feeling, hahhaa!

After a while they both jumped in to help me. Lilah more than Emmy though.

Drawing the face was more up Emmy's alley and she really liked this part!

She had a good time being silly with her pumpkin smile!

Out of all the pictures we snapped trying to get a group shot this is the best one lol. Maybe next year we'll get one with us all looking at the camera, but Emmy looks great!