Happy Halloween!

This year I just didn't want to fork out money for new costumes. They are so cheaply made and most of the time, they aren't even cute.

Luckily, Justin wanted to be army guy again (best investment I ever made for Halloween 3 years ago!) and Jenn had matching costumes for the girls that her and Haylee wore last year that she gave them. The only kicker was that they were Little Miss Muffet costumes, which was totally cool with Ciara, but Katie thought it was a little juvenile. So we cut the apron off the dress so it was more generic looking. But then what were they? Witches maybe? I could just get some cheap witch hats, but Katie didn't want a hat. She usually isn't so picky and is so easy to please so when she gets a little difficult once in a while, it is forgivable.

Still undecided just days before Halloween, Katie saw me looking online at costume ideas and made a comment on how much she loves the Day of the Dead look. They have talked a lot about it in her class over the years because of the dual immersion and its always intrigued her.
That's it! I'll make her a Sugar Skull!

I now have two days to figure out how to do it! After really looking at the details of these beautiful skulls, I began to doubt myself. There is no way I am going to be able to pull this off.

I went to WalMart and got a costume paint pallet with your basic Halloween colors. The Sugar Skulls are either black and white with a little read or very bright and colorful. I wanted the prettier look and the pallet had purple and green so it could go either way.

The next day (Halloween Eve) I told Katie what I wanted to do. She was so excited! But I needed to make sure I could do it! So we needed a test run. Boy was I glad I did this!
A) Not only did the paint make up suck but B) It took a long time to do it!

The moment I started with the white make up I knee it would be impossible to use. The white would have to be CAKED on to get it a really white color and that just makes for itchy faces. And it was so greasy that it would literally just melt and slide off her face within minutes. So I decided to ditch the pallet. I used one thin layer of white just to pale out the face and rubbed most of it off with my finger to get the streaks out and pulled out my bag of old make up. I have collected so much make up over the years. Weird colors that I only use once and decide its awful but make up isn't cheap, so I throw it in my old make up bag and hide it away for occasions such as these. I found some beautiful blues and purples, and all waterproof and 24 hour stayproof, perfect for what I wanted.

So I went to town. As I did it, I became more and more confident. It was turning out beautifully.
Ciara liked it so much, she decided she wanted to do it too. Which game me another canvas to practice on
.
2 1/2 hours later the girls faces were done and everyone was happy with the look. Boy, was I glad I practiced the night before because I would have never guessed it would take so long.

Now we just needed to figure out hair. The Day of the Dead look is usually quite glamorous with big funky flowers. So I ran down to the basement to see if I had anything left from when I decided I wanted to make hair pretties for a day. Luckily, I had a couple of bunches of dollar store flowers but no clips or barrettes to put them on. And no hot glue to glue with. And its getting late. So I pulled out some bobby pins and jimmied a way to get the flowers on the head of the bobby pin with a little bit of crazy glue. It wasn't easy, the bobby pin would bust open the flowers but I was able to get it to work on a handful of them.

Okay, we knew what we were doing, time to take off the make up, get in the shower and wrap the girls hair in headbands so it would be curly in the morning.


I have no idea why this one is so blurry.

And before I knew it, my alarm was going off. Got up, made some coffee, put together a small breakfast for the girls and woke up Katie by 6. Everything went smoothly. The girls faces were all done up in two hours. I just needed to put on the fake lashes. Which ended up with tears and a complete panic from yours truly as I watched their make up sliding down their faces. Ok. Forget the lashes. Just stop crying so I can fix this!!

After a few moments of everyone calming down, I was able to fix the make up and everyone was all smiles again. I even begged Justin to let me do up his face as a regular old fashioned skeleton..he could be a dead army guy. But he would have nothing to do with it. I'm certain he was picturing me putting pretty blues and purples all over his face and no amount of peer pressure was going to change his mind. He was completely happy with his clean face, thank you very much!

The girls had the perfect amount of curls and I was able to rat it and pin it to get lots of volume. The flowers were the perfect addition to complete their look. I had just enough time left over to hop in the shower and make myself presentable for the school parade.  (Gotta love the blurry pics of parade pics...Haylee I was only able to capture her back.  lol)

The moment we got out of the car, the girls were getting stares and ooo's and ahh's. They LOVED the attention. The teachers were stopping them wanting to get a closer look at the details asking "who did your make up! Its beautiful!" and I was right there beaming. I not an artist. I can barely draw a stick figure so I was just as amazed as they were.


After we left the school it was time to come home and clean house. There was a but of a make up and hair whirlwind that came though that needed a good scrubbing. 

When it was time to pick the kids up, my breathing stopped as I waited to see what a mess the girls faces would be in. But to my relieve, they still looked really good! Just a little touch UPS to liven up the color again and fix the mouth but both touch UPS only took about 10 minutes so this mama was truly thankful! I believe in the power of Mabelline's 24 hour tattoo eye shadow!.

Plan for evening:
Meet up at NapNap's. She lives in an apartment complex so the kids are bound to get a lot of candy fast.
Church Trunk or Treat's Harvest Festival.
End at my place for a sleep over!

Sounds like a good plan. But like all good and they never quite go as expected.

Jakey was not too thrilled to be a spider.

The apartments didn't have a whole lot of people answering. Most likely it was just too early, it was only about 5, but with the baby, we didn't want to be trick or treating in the dark.

Next stop, the church. This was a much bigger even than I anticipated. Not only was there the trunk or treat which was presented with a car show, I felt like I was walking through a real life Hot Wheels convention, but it was a full on carnival with a mechanical bull, bounce house, and games galore. My kids were so excited!!

Sadly though, it was just too cold for NapNap and Jakey so the Bertola's decided to call it a night. I contemplated calling it quits for me too but my kids were having too much fun and none of them were complaining about the cold. So we decided to stay. I'm glad we did too. We had a lot of fun and everyone was in such a great mood.

After the Harvest Festival, we decided to go home but the kids weren't ready to call it a night yet. They still wanted to do more trick or treating so we went through our neighborhood but with little success. Our neighborhood gets very little trick or treating so there aren't many people who even bother any more.

But that's ok. I'm SUPERMOM! I have a whole crap load of candy left over from our Halloween party. Let's go trick or treat at my house!

I grabbed our candy, turned on our porch light to let other trick or treaters know we are home and happy to give you candy! Then I told the kids to trick or treat inside our house. I would run from room to room with my big bowl or candy, shutting the door behind me. The kids would knock and yell "trick or treat". I would open the door and tell them how wonderful they all looked and pass out candy. They would in turn tell me it was because of their wonderful mom and they would get extra candy. We did this for about a half hour, running from room to room, we even went outside into the clubhouse. It was so funny! We were all laughing by the end. In the meantime, we only had 3 trick or treaters.

 Time to get cleaned up. After showers and jammies, we decided to bring the air mattress out and everyone camped out in the living room watching movies!

It wasn't the night we had planned but I think it turned out even better. We had a lot of fun! And that says a lot being that I am not one who is particularly fond of Halloween!