Halloween Party at Church

The kids were super excited for tonight because it was the ward Halloween party/carnival/chili cook-off/costume parade/trunk-or-treat. All squished into one incredibly long and crowded event.

But with it comes... the unveiling of costumes, and how their costumes came about:

Princess Sparkley as Pippi Longstocking
complete with freshly dyed (6-12 washes) red hair
PS wanted to be a character from a novel last year too, but picks books that only 6-8 year old girls have read and know about. This year, she actually wanted to be Annika, Pippi's best friend, and I had to explain that Annika was just a normal girl, like PS already is. She was very happy at the end of the night when she told me lots of grown-ups knew who she was. But with that comes the unspoken... not many kids did and she had to explain it a lot. Oh well, she loved it. AND, she won the "silliest costume" award, a little trophy, for her age group. Her dress is an oversized shirt from Walmart ($5) and mismatched socks from Target ($1 per pair). Everything else (other than the hair dye and wires in her hair) we already owned. I ironed on patches from scraps of fabric we had and called it good.


Buddy as an Army Guy
Buddy was almost a UPS man again this year. And almost a pizza delivery man. But he finally decided on an army guy. I chose to buy him actual camouflage clothing, rather than a costume. So after Halloween, his Old Navy shirt ($8 ish), Target pants ($9.99) and Kmart hat ($5) go into his regular wardrobe. Although I did inform him that he's not allowed to wear them all at the same time except for Halloween. He was a little disappointed that he didn't win anything, but there were a lot of great costumes there and the kid category was especially rough. I think he enjoyed that people kept pretending they couldn't see him, since he was camouflaged and all.


Little Guy as COOKIE Monster
Little Guy wouldn't agree to any costume. Finally we settled on trying to convince him to be a cookie. He turned that into, he being Cookie Monster and Daddy being the cookie. And Daddy agreed. I ordered his hat on Etsy ($8), bought Cookie colored sweat pants at Walmart ($3) and turned a Jayhawk shirt inside out and pinned a scrap fabric Cookie Monster mouth to it. Then we went to work teaching him to say, "COOOKKIIEES" in a funny deep voice. He can also sing, "C is for cookie..." I'll have to film it all. He did a great job at the trunk-or-treat and said trick-or-treat and thank you to everyone (which my older kids were always shy about doing at his age) and I even got him to tell one guy "Cccoookkiiess."


And Daddy as a COOKIE.
Two hula hoops. Tan fabric. Brown fabric. Iron on sticky stuff. Packing tape. A glue gun.





Oh, and I won "most original chili." This makes two years running my chili has won (different recipes, different categories).