31 Days of Halloween, Days 25-31

Welp. Just like that Halloween is over. I hope you and your family had a great one! This year was my favorite yet and I'm sad to see it go. However I can't be too sad when we're officially in the midst of HOLIDAY SEASON! Before we move on to Thanksgiving and Christmas though it's time for one last Halloween countdown. 

Grab a button and join up with Courtney, Jamie, Liz, and I below. Looking forward to seeing all the cute costumes and trick or treating fun everyone had!

  

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I first saw Pumpkin Spice Cheerios at Target over a month ago and I made a mental note to get some next time we went but by then they had vanished. They weren't at the grocery stores either. FINALLY I found some at the Target near my mom's house and grabbed a box for these pumpkin spice cheerio treats. Just like rice krispy treats, but with cheerios. So yummy, and as Ez and I can attest, perfectly acceptable as a breakfast food ;)

On Friday evening we took the kids to a Halloween festival complete with an....EGG HUNT!! You may remember that we did our own egg hunt a week ago and Ez had a blast. I think the egg hunts have been his favorite part of Halloween. Well, that and all the candy. 

It's just not a holiday unless there are festive donuts to commemorate it. 

If it's possible to go overboard with trick or treating then I think we may have crossed that line this past weekend. We went a total of four times in four days. One day was a bust, because toddlers. (You can read more about it here.) The other three times were so much fun though, and I don't know how Ez and Declan are going to move past the fact that it's over and nobody is handing out free candy anymore. 

"I love carving pumpkins, except for the part where you carve the pumpkin." ~ kids

You may have seen this quote on my IG, but since it so perfectly sums up my kids' attitude toward pumpkin carving I figured it was worth sharing again. You'd think I specifically put seeds and stringy guts in the pumpkins just to ruin their lives. Somehow the pumpkins still got carved though, and Ez does like looking at the finished product, so I think that's as close to a "win" as we're gonna get this year. 

If you want to know the significance of Halloween balloons, just look back one post. Turns out a balloon can basically make or break a toddler's world. On Sunday we witnessed the rapid downward spiral of two toddlers with only one balloon to split between them. It was not a pretty sight. So I secretly went out and bought two balloons and had them downstairs and waiting Halloween morning. Ez was the first one up and he sat down completely unaware of the balloons for a few moments before screaming "It's a PUMPKIN BALLOON!!!" His life was made. Declan was just as happy when he woke up and found his very own balloon to pummel and drag around everywhere with him. He loved his so hard it's already popped, so now we're back to fighting over one. Sigh...

Along with the balloons I also indulged Ez and set up one last Halloween egg hunt using the same eggs and repurposed trick or treating candy. The egg hunt was actually overshadowed by the excitement of the balloons, which is saying a lot if you've been paying attention to Ez's obsession with egg hunts. Eventually though he realized there was candy in the eggs and he diligently hunted most of them down. Some of them were hidden a little too well and would randomly resurface throughout the day. That set the tone for a nice, sugary Halloween. We took the middle part of the day easy, although there was the option to do a downtown trick or treat, but I was pretty trick or treated out, and wanted to save energy for the big one in the evening. 

Last year we tried trick or treating near our house, and that was a complete bust. Thankfully the kids were too young to care. This year though there would've been no living it down if we didn't go trick or treating for real. Thankfully, after living here for over a year we have a pretty good idea of which neighborhoods are gonna have the good candy. And boy did we hit the motherload. One of the houses was basically decorated like a mini haunted mansion from Disneyland, complete with elaborately dressed Disney characters (Anna, Elsa, Captain Jack Sparrow...). Next year I'm just gonna go live in their yard for the month of October. The whole street was so festive, and the perfect length for Ez and Declan to hit up all the houses and start melting down right at the very end. 

I'm so proud of how well they did. Ez even remembered to say thank you at each of the houses, although it was usually after he was already halfway back down the walkway. Declan insisted on carrying his own bucket, even when it got so heavy that it was dragging along the sidewalk. We wound up having to empty it into Ez's bucket and between the two of them they got a little more than one full bucket of candy. Not bad for their first real trick or treating experience. Ez went as a Clippers player, his favorite costume. Considering how overpriced jerseys are I feel better knowing we definitely got our money's worth from that shirt this week. Declan went as a skeleton and when a really elaborately dressed adult skeleton stopped and told him "we're related!" Declan stopped in his tracks, gave a little nervous giggle, and then slowly backed away until big skeleton took the hint and left. He was looking over his shoulder for a long time after that.

And just like that it's all over. What do you all do with the candy overload? I'm thinking I'll just hide it all in the back of the cupboard and hope they forget about it...

Who's excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas???

An InLinkz Link-up

31 Days of Halloween, Days 19-24

I look forward to October all year long, and here we are, less than a week till Halloween! Funny how the things we look forward to the most always fly by the fastest. Why can't it be that dentist appointments fly by but the holidays go nice and slow? With the end of October means that there's only one more linkup party after this one. Then it's on to all things Thanksgiving and Christmas! 

In case you missed out on some of the Halloween fun last week, I recommend you pause reading this and head right over to check out Whitney's adorable Halloween classroom decor, Ashley's pumpkin patch fun, and all the yummy food in Courtney's post. 

And now that we're all caught up, grab a button and join in with Courtney, Jamie, Liz, and I! #cdtoHalloween16

  

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One afternoon while Declan was napping and Ez was as bored as can be I decided to dip into some of my Halloween crafting supplies from last year and throw this quick and easy activity together. I cut out a bunch of little pumpkins from construction paper and Ez stuck on faces using foam stickers and eyes. The great thing about this activity was that Ez FINALLY figured out how to do stickers by himself without me removing the paper backing. Finally. It's like a whole new world has opened up for us. And with very little help on my part he constructed the faces just as his little Picasso heart desired. 

We put together a boo package with a few of our Halloween favorites for our cousins and Ez decorated it nice and spookily before we sent it on its way. 

We combined a little bit of Eastery fun with Halloween this past weekend and the kids had the best time. Lots and lots of egg hunting until there were no eggs left to hunt. 

To go along with our egg hunt I made Ez a giant jack o'lantern surprise egg. If you're familiar with these from YouTube then you get it, and if not, just be glad your kids haven't discovered these yet.

Apparently Joe and I were hungry when we went to the grocery store because we wound up with a cart full of pumpkin spice everything. We're talking poptarts, english muffins, oatmeal, yogurt, coffee creamer...and of course cans of pumpkin puree for our smoothies and baking. Most of that is stuff that we'd never buy. Lots of breakfast treats when I'm usually more of an eggs and toast kind of gal. I have to say it's been a delicious change of pace and I don't think my pants will be happy one bit. While we're on this kick am I missing any delicious pumpkin treats that I need to try out before the season is up? 

You might have noticed a Frankenstein painting craft in Ez's surprise egg. This is something I bought at Michael's last year, but Ez wasn't as into painting then so I saved it. Turns out those little paints don't last a year. When we opened it up they were hard and crumbly and didn't resemble paint at all. But we didn't let that stop us! We used markers instead, which Ez wielded like a paint brush, so basically the same thing...

Happy last week of October!

An InLinkz Link-up

Halloween Surprise Egg

Is anyone else's kid obsessed with watching those toy videos on YouTube? The ones where people just literally unpackage toys? I have no idea how we came across those but eventually those videos led to surprise egg videos and now Ez is obsessed. Surprise eggs are giant eggs filled with random toys and covered in playdough. Not sure how these came about but my assumption is Playdough & toy companies got together and dreamt em up. Genius marketing on their part.

Anyway, fast forward to this past weekend when Joe was out of town. I wanted to save our Halloween outings for when he could join us, so instead I came up with some activities we could do at the grandparents house since they have a backyard and we don't. Cue the Halloween egg hunt. And since we were already combining some Easter fun with Halloween I figured why not just throw in the whole basket of goodies too? And then I thought, what about a pumpkin surprise egg??? Yeah, I have no idea how many cups of coffee I'd had that morning. Clearly one cup too many. But it seemed fun at the time.

I didn't feel like spending a ton of money on even more toys that they really don't need so I dug into my stash of toys and crafts that I have hidden around the house for when I feel like they need a bribe prize. I gave myself a $15 budget mostly to get some of those little surprise toy packages which are the main star of surprise eggs. I picked up three of those, some dollar bin Halloween glow sticks, a pack of candy corn M&Ms, little bath toys for Declan, and plastic pumpkin "eggs". I already had a large plastic egg leftover from Easter, some hot wheels, a monster truck, candy, a Frankenstein painting craft, a little Sully toy from Monster's Inc, some tattoos, and lots of playdough. 

I decided to get a little crafty with the Halloween theme and made a toilet paper roll mummy and Frankenstein to put some candy in. I also filled the pumpkin eggs with a few M&Ms or tattoos. Then it was time for the playdough. I had four little cans of the stuff and it wasn't quite enough. I think five would've been fine, or maybe six just to be safe. I rolled it out with a rolling pin as flat as I could get it and then I covered the egg as much as possible. Since I was short on the playdough I didn't cover the bottom but I don't think Ez noticed or cared. 

I was going for a jack o'lantern look. The result was creepy. I believe Joe's exact words when I texted him a photo were: "Good lord. Delete." Those blue triangle eyes are haunting. We'll just say that was intentional for Halloween. Yep, that's exactly the look I was going for... 

Thankfully Ez didn't find it as frightening as Joe and I. I gave it to him after our egg hunt and he couldn't contain his excitement. He was jumping up and down, exclaiming, "It's an egg! A pumpkie egg! It's covered with playdough! Let's find out what's inside!" It took him about five minutes to get all the playdough off. When he finally got the thing open he beelined straight for the monster truck. I made him wait to open it till he'd looked at everything else so he went straight for the candy in the mummy and Frankenstein. He wound up getting a little jackal in his Lion Guard surprise package, a Winnie the Pooh tsum tsum keychain, and the British Invasion Bob minion. Surprisingly he forgot about the monster truck and started racing Winnie the Pooh around the yard instead. I told him that was the fastest Winnie the Pooh I'd ever seen so every time he raced by me he'd say, "this is the fastest Winnie the Pooh!" and then zoom off. 

You didn't think I forgot about Deckles, did you? Of course not! I don't trust him with playdough, but I did give him a little basket of goodies as well. Thankfully he's as easily impressed by empty boxes and rocks at this stage, so he was perfectly content with a few bath toys and suckers. 

All in all I'd say it was a hit and worth the time and mess that the playdough caused, though maybe you should ask Grampa if he agrees since there's still playdough crumbs in his lawn ;)

Halloween Egg Hunt

Ez has been asking to color eggs every time he spots an egg carton for the past six months or so. Somehow little bits from our Easter egg coloring kit keeping popping up around the house, like the bunny stickers, or that wire dipper spoon thing, and his obsession is ignited all over again. I guess when you stop to think about it there's really no good reason that egg dyeing should be limited to once a year, so we decided we'd dye some Halloween eggs this past weekend. 

Knowing my kids we stuck with eight eggs because I knew none of them would be in edible condition once they were through with them. One bit the dust as soon as we pulled it out of the dye when Ez decided to test his Hulk strength by smashing it immediately. That was a fun experiment to put mommy's hypothesis that eggs are breakable to the test. Turns out mommy's right. Remember that one kids. 

We dyed them outside using ziplock bags to minimize the mess. My fingers were stained green for a few days, we poured orange dye all over the patio, and Declan stomped in a nice big puddle of dye with his white shoes. Not sure why I even try to avoid messes anymore. I should really know better by now...

Once the eggs were colored to our liking we let them dry and then I drew monster and jack o'lantern faces on them. It's around this point that the "we want EGGS!!" chant got pretty overwhelming. It was time for the egg hunt before a riot broke out. Uncle Avery entertained the kiddos while I scattered eggs around the backyard, then we armed the kids with buckets and let them go at it.

Declan knew the concept of collecting eggs in his bucket immediately. Along with rocks. And limes. And lemons. And then throwing the eggs out of the bucket to make more room for rocks... He's definitely improved since Easter when he just threw eggs at us.

Ez caught on to the fact that the little plastic pumpkin eggs I got from Target had crappy candy inside. Each one he found he'd immediately bring to me exclaiming "open it??!" and those little suckers were tough to pry open. That extended the egg hunt by a good twenty minutes. 

True to my predictions all the eggs were good and smashed by the time we were finished and the kids were on nice hyper sugar highs before lunch. Definitely a successful Saturday morning. Ez even gave me his unprompted super big happy smile several times and then asked to do egg hunts on repeat all through Declan's nap. Eventually the eggs disintegrated to the point that we had to discreetly sneak them away to the trash can, one by one. For the few remaining ones Ez decided to smash them and peel them and find out what exactly was inside an egg. The fun ended with egg yolk smeared everywhere, a bucketful of egg shell and bits, and baths for everyone. 

Only one weekend left before Halloween!! Any last minute Halloween activities planned for you and your family? I think I've got about ten things too many on my to do list, so we're going to be busy!