Hello and Halloween!

Hello world!  I finally decided to try making a blog.  I'm sure no one will read this, so it will probably be just a place to put some pictures so grandmas can see them and I can do a little "journalling."  

We had a fun halloween--starting with our ward party.  I was scrambling to get the costumes made that whole week before.  I wish I had a picture of my sewing table--I totally had ADD because I kept switching costumes and working on different ones all week, not to mention the apron I had cut out laying there as well as my stuffed nativity set in pieces.  Brayden and Drew decided to be wizards.  Abby changed her mind frequently, but ended up being a flower fairy (mostly because that's what I wanted to make!).  Maegan was a mermaid, for like 5 minutes--the time it took to put it on her and get into the church--then she was done.  So, for the rest of the activity she was in a seashell shirt and some ugly green pants that were supposed to be under the mermaid tail.  I'm determined to put it back on her this week and take some pictures.  Last year I won the chili cook-off at our activity, but this year no such luck.  The recipe had won at two previous cook-offs, so I feel bad to break it's streak.  Here is the recipe if you are interested: (still working on the link--does anyone know how to link to a PDF?)  

 

Wednesday night we carved pumpkins.  The boys did their pumpkins all by themselves this year--Andy just cut the hole in the top.  They did a great job!

Here's how they turned out--from left to right, Drew's, Brayden's, Abby's (with help from Dad)

On Halloween the kids didn't have school, so I planned to make cake pops with them.  They were very sweet, very messy and very fun!  Here is the inspiration, but ours didn't turn out quite like the pictures. ( Incidentally, I would also like to try these pumpkin pecan chocolate cookies with maple brown butter frosting from the same site--maybe she should be over on my blogroll!)  

I stayed home to hand out candy and Andy took the kids trick-or-treating.  I actually weighed the candy when they got home--not counting all the garbage I threw away--it was 8 pounds of candy!  Now I know some of you probably have way more than that, but I don't want to even imagine what 8 pounds of candy would look like on my thighs--much cuter on Abby's thighs I suppose.  I really hate candy sitting around the house while I'm home all day.  The only good part is that if I limit myself to one per day, they are actually packaged in very tiny amounts--which is the way all candy should be packaged.  I actually saw a lady at the grocery store today buying multiple king size type candy bars and I thought "Really--3 days after Halloween you already need more candy?"  Poor lady--she probably didn't have any kids to go beg candy off the neighbors for her!

The flower fairy!

I did her hair using this style with flowers on each band to look like a crown of flowers.

Poor little Maegan didn't dress up at all on Halloween!

Drew the happy wizard

Brayden the tough wizard