Halloween 2011

What a wonderful day and night we had this year.   Despite my son's allergies and inability to eat 90% of what is handed out...it remains his favorite holiday and I'd have to agree for good reason.   It was a day filled with smiles, treats, creative costumes, good friends and a nice fall night outside!

This year my children both picked costumes that really suited their current interests.

My little guy is all about movies with mystical figures, superpowers and anything that he can act out.  He has a particular affinity towards Harry Potter because the character himself is a little boy.  I myself have never been able to sit through the entire movie...guess I don't have the same caliber of imagination as he does.  He, on the other hand, has watched the first Harry Potter movie no less than 100 times (no exaggeration either) and he has a few favorite parts.

So it was very fitting that he chose to be Harry Potter himself...

He really got into the character and even thought that he was unrecognizable with his glasses on.  He kept taking them off to his friends and saying, "it's me, it's Ryan".  Very funny.

Here are a few of him at his class parade...he was filled with pure joy!

He had a HUGE smile the entire time.   He loves costumes and loves everything about Halloween!

My daughter plays soccer 5 days a week and loves everything about the sport. So...it was very fitting when she asked to be a soccer referee...


Here she is at her parade.

Unfortunately I only got 1 picture because she was too afraid to stop for the picture for fear of falling behind.      We did take a few cute ones before trick or treating though...

If you noticed our pumpkin in the pictures...we tried a new idea this year and we used cookie cutters to carve it and I have to say it was soooo much easier than the actual carving method.

First you cut the top and do the traditional digging out part.

That's definitely not one of my favorite parts, but since we love eating the seeds...there's no way around it.

Next we choose our cookie cutters.  We went for metal stars this year.    I don't know if this would work with the plastic kind because they make break.

We then placed them where we wanted them and gave them a tap to anchor them.

Then we just hammered away...

You want to hammer them until they are pretty far in.  You then use needle nose pliers to pull out the cookie cutter.   After that, we needed to use our cutting knife to finish going all the way through the pumpkin.  I guess you may not need this step if you carve more of the inside out, but as I mentioned, I hate that step.

And.....

Voila....we had to clean it up a bit on the inside after so you couldn't see the guts through the opening, but you get the idea.  

Here is our finished product...

I loved the way it came out and it looked great at night.  Of course I forgot to get a picture of it all lit up.

Another great tip I tried that worked....I applied Vaseline to the cut edges after carving it to keep them from rotting and changing shape.  It totally helped!

I hope you all enjoyed your Halloween as much as we did...until next year!

Poshed Up