Our Halloween Weekend.

Otherwise known as the longest post in the history of man.  :p
I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend.   Ours was extremely busy, but I think the boys had a lot of fun.

Saturday my husband did yard work while I closed myself off from the world and concentrated on homework.  Trying to keep current with my classes in this last trimester, and now trying to get ahead a tad so things will be easier after the baby has kept me insanely preoccupied.   My new motto is - It will all be worth it in the end.   Someone tell me I'm right!  LOL!

I walked outside Saturday afternoon to see my husband sacking up a million and one pine needles.  Let's just say that some of my ideas aren't always the greatest.  :p  We were officially the trashiest house on the block when we were done transforming our garbage bags full of needles into this:

I even encouraged Brodie to draw creepy ghost faces onto quarter filled bags which I then hung from the trees.

Oh yeah, I went there.   haha.

Honestly, I didn't feel too bad about our trashy look when I saw several trick-or-treaters posing with our trash bags the next evening.  Honestly though, you'll see why this is so funny to me if you could see the yards of our neighbors.  Don't worry... I took photos, they're coming up! 

Saturday evening we took the boys to pick out pumpkins.

Yes, it was the end of October and my boys are wearing shorts and summery shoes.  Gotta love Texas.

Daddy- "Rylan, come draw a scary face on your pumpkin for me."

hahahah... the smallest pumpkin face ever!

I must admit that I really do have the best husband who is the best daddy ever.  While I was busy doing more homework on Sunday afternoon, he carved pumpkins with the boys.  (I did sneak in and take a photo or two).

Sunday evening (Halloween) we took the boys to a local church for their Trunk or Treat.  I was able to get this photo of all four of us before leaving the house.

Now, can you believe these decorations?  We were afraid that moving to a neighborhood with not many kids would be a little dull on Halloween.  Man were we wrong.  These were all ON our street. 

I believe that if we want to hang with our neighbors next Halloween, we'd better started planning now.  haha.

I only hope they get this excited about Christmas!

I hope you and your families had a spookily-safe Halloween!

-Courtney

Transformers Bumblebee Costume

A stroke of laziness overcame me the other night, and I almost went to WalMart and paid $20 for the Bumblebee costume in the costume aisle.

However, I'm super glad I didn't because I love how this turned out, and Rylan couldn't be more proud.

We worked on it all day today and when it came time to pick up Brodie from school, Rylan couldn't stop telling his brother about his cool costume.

I started by gathering all of my materials.

The materials used were:  masking tape, foam, ribbon, cardboard, various colors of craft paint, an old belt of my husbands I found in the closet, and a pair of crazy looking goggles (belonging to my husband) that I also found in the closet.  :)   Oh, and a pair of charcoal long johns, which my boys already had.

For the belt portion, I cut out the desired shapes, and used scissors to remove the wavy cardboard in the center.

This allowed the belt to slip right through.

My main goal in making this costume was to make it as light weight as possible.  I knew if I created all of it, especially the helmet, out of cardboard it might be too heavy for my little boy to maneuver in.  I had some left over 1 inch foam from an attempt at making chair cushions, so I used it for a lot of the costume.

For the parts tied to his arms and legs, I did this:

The unpainted version of the chest plate looks like so (a little easier to see the construction, although I don't have step by steps because I just winged it to fit his body).

From previous life experience, I know that my son prefers to wear goggles on his head rather than on his face....

So I figured I could somehow attach the foam to the goggles to wear as head gear.

Once all of the pieces were assembled and taped together, I added a coat of yellow craft paint.

Then I just painted on the details with red, black, grey, and tan craft paint... and done!

LOL!

Autobots, Roll-Out!

:)

Thanks for looking!

-Courtney

Linking up to:

Maternity skeleton shirt

  

I'll apologize in advance for the view of the toilet in these shots.  :/

You may notice that there appears to be a white smudge on the belly part of this shirt, and you would be correct.   Funny thing- when you have a large stomach, a freshly painted wall, and you tend to bump into things, accidents happen.   haha.

To me, this was a good excuse to use this shirt for a project that would be worn once and then discarded. 

Oh, and if you're expecting, you MUST try out the BEE maternity tanks from Target.  Oh how I love them.  Getting paint on this one was just an excuse to go out and buy more.  LOL.

Back to the subject at hand!

I was inspired by this post at Someday Crafts

http://somedaycrafts.blogspot.com/2010/10/skeleton-with-fetus.html

The version featured there is actually cuter, and an iron on, but I didn't have time to wait for shipping for an iron on.

So, instead I invested 40 cents into two sheets of white felt.

I cut out the parts and just glued them on with fabric adhesive.  I'll probably go back and stitch around the shapes to ensure they stay on.   Possibly not though..  so far they're holding up pretty well.

Here's what I did. 

Start with paint ruined shirt.  Or a normal shirt.  haha, your call.

Prop feet up and start cutting felt parts out.  Use super size belly to lay out parts to determine size.

Cut out baby parts.

Spread shirt over a piece of cardboard, glue on skeleton.

After gluing on the baby skeleton, I let it dry and then tried the shirt back on.  I actually glued the adult ribcage pieces to the shirt while wearing it so that the pieces would lay right once on. 

Using the mirror for a guide, I applied glue and placed the bigger pieces where it looked appropriate.

It's not quite as lovely as the iron-on version, but it works!

I'm ready to take the kiddos out trick-or-treating!  Hopefully my white smudge won't show up in the dark!  :)

-Courtney