Halloween 2011

This year when we got home, we found that for the first time, we were successfully growing pumpkins. And that there were exactly four. By Halloween, they were all orange and we harvested them and carved them, lit them and stuck them on the front porch.

They were just as slimy as ever.

Will decided that he wanted to be a BYU quid ditch player for Halloween. We had gone to D.I. (local thrift shop) and let the kids go wild finding things for their costumes a week or so before, but by the evening of the 30th, Will still just had a navy bathrobe. Rob made his awesome Firebolt broomstick with an old broom and clippings from our fruit trees. I downloaded a new varsity font, printed everything onto iron-on paper, ironed it onto white fabric and then sewed it onto the robe.

[I'm messing around with all of the cool new effects on Picasa. This one is neon and is one of Will's favorites.] He was happy with the results. Phew!

Launching himself into the game.

Mercifully Maddie found a dress and only required a shopping trip to finish off her costume.

Here she's a princess and I've made her photo 60's style.

Sebastian decided he wanted to be a punk rocker after Mark put the song "Punk Rock Girl" onto a CD for Will. [OK, I'm really liking the pencil sketch! I was going to start drawing again, but why? This is great!]

We found a denim jacket, the guitar and the boots at D.I. Sebastian was not into the patent leather high boots, but his parents both told him that was exactly what he needed. Then we downloaded album art from punk bands and a british flag and ironed and sewed those on too.

The whole crew.

These two decided to take Joss out trick-or-treating.

Sebastian had to be talked into going out at all. He had hated the costume at school and wet down his stiff red hair in the morning. Such a shame because he looked great! Finally we called up and arranged a trick-or-treat date with Tomas and Curtis. And then he was fine with it. Apparently there are more punk conversant people up north of us.
Joss was a "scary fledermaus" and since that is one of only two German words that he says, we never did tell him what he was in English. He eventually figured it out since everyone else called him a bat. He loved this costume and even at Christmas when his siblings went to find costumes for the nativity play, he wanted to be the scary bat. I'll leave you to decide where the bat comes into the story of the first Christmas . . .
And here is a closeup of some of the bands we turned into patches and put on Sebi's jacket. His brother and sister have both worn it to school since Halloween, and Maddie claims she wants to be a punk rocker next year, so perhaps the investment of time will be worth it.