A shark, turtle, octopus, and a ghost (sort of)

Halloween was a smash success over here.  Tony was home and we were able to all go out together.

Ada dictated the costume choices for this year and I did my best to fulfill.  Hers is from Target and super cute.  When she would say "trick or treat" she would often clarify that she was a "nice shark" so people didn't have to worry ;)  Emma was a turtle - a teenage mutant ninja turtle costume from salvation army for $1 and just cut and safety pinned some pants and took off the red ribbon.  Added some google eyes and we were done.  I attempted to be an octopus with puffy paint and an old black t shirt and hoodie.  Ada wanted Tony to be a ghost but when he put it on Emma was too scared, crying and saying "Poppa off ghost" so he just carried it.

They held hands, were polite to our neighbors and had a ton of fun.

And post sugar...

More Halloween Stuff

Did I mention I love this holiday?!!??  Here are a few other things we've been up to around here...

Pumpkin waffles.  I had seen a recipe on Pinterest that looked good...and it was! The only think I did different was to use "white whole wheat" instead of ap flour.  We had cooked a pie pumpkin the night before so it would be ready for us in the morning:)  Ada speculated that when we cooked it the pumpkin would go from hard to soft and she was so excited to use the pumpkin she had cooked- she did all the scooping, I just cut it in half.  We decided to decorate their table for breakfast, which was a big hit!

Our witch.  Lately Emma has been taking long naps compared with Ada so we get a little one on one time :) Ada wanted to make a witch and we thought it might be fun to make one her size so we started out by tracing her body then just went from there looking through the art cabinet as we went to decide on materials.  She wanted her to have a broom so she trace her broom and added pipe cleaners (her idea) as the bristles.  She also wanted to make a cat so I pulled up an image on google and enlarged it.  Traced it from my screen onto a piece of white paper.  She cut it out and traced that onto a black piece of paper with chalk.  Then she cut that out.  The whole thing is taped to the front door.  Love it!

She loved cleaning up the paint from the floor and using the spray all by herself.

We saw a gourd painted at the farmer's market and Ada loved it so she got to use Sharpies all by herself and make one too.  I made an outline and she colored it in.

Pumpkin carving.  We used the same pumpkin from our hammering activity.  It was a bit moldy inside but it will do for our Jack-O-Lantern.

Water beads with some Halloween-y stuff to find inside.  These are SOOOOOOO fun!  If you need your kids to be entertained for a while and don't mind them bouncing around the house a bit- get some.  They are awesome!

The girls had so much fun with this!  And I love the "I just woke up" look that Emma is rocking in this picture. 

To make the water beads holiday appropriate I used leftovers from our treat bags.  I opted not to give out candy this year.  Mostly because I end up eating way too much of it if it's in the house and I'm also thinking some kids might not want candy... yeah right?!?! Well in any case, we'll see how it goes- either kids like it or our house is covered in tp when we wake up Thursday.

The bag has a couple pieces of black and orange paper, and Halloween themed: pencil, erasers, stickers, a temporary tattoo, and a ring.

The beginnings of my costume...can you tell what I'll be?

Finding puzzle pieces in Halloween colored rice.

Monster Hands.  This was another Pinterest find.  In the original post she uses scrapbook paper, but I didn't have anything like that so we found "icky" looking leaves and glued them down before tracing our hands and cutting them out.  Then we glued lentils and beans to the hand to make it look like a monster hand and used a Styrofoam mushroom container for fingernails.  We tried making some stamps with the leftover Styrofoam too which was pretty cool. 

Some finished work on display.  I love the spider webs!

The bird feeder

The girls and I found a great bird feeder when we were at the feed store buying supplies fo the chickens and decided to hang it up this morning.

Last summer when we were in New England, Peg taught Ada how to fill up the bird feeders at her house.  This morning Ada took delight in showing Emma how to do this chore.  Love it.

LOVE the teamwork!!

We're excited to see some birds- just have to wait for them to find the feeder!

Door County in the Autumn

If you've never been to Door County, you should know that it's an absolutely beautiful place.  It is slowly becoming one of my favorite places on Earth.  Aside from parts of North Carolina, it's the only place I've been that reminds me so much of New England, which will always feel like my "home".  I love that we will be able to visit Gramma Deb there so easily while we're in Minnesota.  A special place indeed.

We only had a couple days and we were incredibly lucky with the weather.  Mostly hanging out and some "hiking" in the park.

Found a wooly bear.

Sisters hiking together :)

Emma loves her Poppa!

Lake Michigan- thanks to Gramma Deb we finally have some family pictures.

Exploring along the shore.

Another day, another walk in the woods....

Ada ran nearly the whole way!

Taking a closer look at some moss, leaves, and speculating about fairies.

Scrunchy sun filled smiling faces.  LOVE!

The pumpkin work

I have seen this idea on Pinterest, and have been wanting to do it since last year.  I found some tees on clearance a while back and they have been waiting to find a project.  Funnily, Tony and I were at school this week for a sing-a-long in Emma's classroom and they had this work out too :)

Ada has been really enjoying it (we're on day 3 and she's still been working on it regularly).  I love that at first she needed me to hold the tee and now she has her own method of hammering it in all by herself.

Emma didn't enjoy this as much- maybe she has gotten her fill at school.  But she wanted to sit down anyhow.  Mostly she just ate her snack, but did enjoy taking some of the tees out.

Sometimes we like to be silly

I can almost never take a picture of Ada while she is looking at the camera... but sometimes if I say we are going to be silly...

Winterizing the coop

As I mentioned in an earlier post I have an awesome husband who built me a chicken coop.  I helped with a few little parts and have been doing the winterizing.  Before we moved the girls into the coop, we used caulk to seal the cracks and corners but intentionally left some gaps to allow for ventilation during the hot months.

We used some vinyl for the flooring and had to buy it in a huge roll so I had a bunch left over. I hot glued the vinyl to some foam insulation and bolted it to all three doors.  My plan is to remove it each spring and replace it in the fall.  There is a sheet of foam on the ceiling and under the floor too.  All of these will be removed come spring and saved for winters to come.  The ceiling went in first and in one night the girls made a mess of it, so I covered it with some cardboard.  The (human) girls decorated the cardboard before it went in and I love it!  The walls have layers of cardboard and a moderately insane amount of duct tape.  I hope it keeps the chickens warm this winter!!

Red Riding Hood ("Red" for short), needs a name, Goldilocks ("Goldie" for short)

This lovely lady is still looking for a good name... suggestions please!

You can see the thickness of the foam on the open door.  There is duct tape around the edges so the chickens don't peck at it.

Halloween Work

The girls have had colds this week and on the day Emma stayed home from school she "helped" me switch over the work upstairs.  I had been gathering little activities and finally just put them out and packed away the Solar System work.  I'm really trying to get myself organized ;)  I saved a few decorations from last year and we put those out too.  I think Ada really likes this sort of thing.

Jars covered in mod podge and tissue that we made last year with Gramma Deb.  At night we can put little led tea lights under them and they look cool.  Miscellaneous fall type stuff I had in our Halloween bin.

Last year's pumpkin suncatchers that I couldn't let go of.  These were fun to make- I'll have to remember to do pink/ red hearts in February.

I LOVE Halloween and Pinterest has given me all sorts of ideas of special things to do in addition to the art shelves that are out.  I'm planning to make the paper lanterns and maybe do some black and orange paper chains.     

Use tongs to sort erasers.

Patterns.  Ada did this very easily and quickly went on to making her own patterns.  She used a blank sheet and a few markers to make little quizes for us to do- making a pattern with the last space left open.  I think the next time I do this I'll print out open dot pages and have her make the patterns herself since she liked that so much.

There are a few more trays I don't have pictures of.  I put some chalk and black construction paper in a tray and we've been drawing spider webs.  I'll take some shots after we have a nice collection of artwork.

As expected, Ada's favorite is the puzzle, and Emma mostly likes the little eraser sorting.  I had bought those for like 30 cents in the post Halloween Target sale last year.

I put together a counting game from Teach Mama using printables and some mini erasers from the dolar section at Target. 

The chilly weather has left me with a serious case of nesting syndrome.  I've been rearanging furniture and had a yard sale a few weeks back that included getting rid of our old tube tv.  That left our armoire empty and ready to organize some toy clutter- hooray!  I moved a few things around in the living room and created this cozy little reading nook with a fuzzy rug I found on sale.  We are all loving it...even Books (the cat).

We have a couple Halloween books but I needed to supplement a bunch from the library.  I was late compared to most so we had slim pickings- no matter, the girls like them.  Plus I grabbed a bunch for fall and Thanksgiving (for next month's theme).  

The card on my camera filled up and cut this video short... but I wanted to include it anyway because I love it and it gives a little glimpse into just how proud I am of Ada's awesome big-sister-ness.

Spiderweb Snacks.  This was a Pinterest idea that I've seen over and over, but we saw the stick pretzels this morning at the store and finally we could make them.  I didn't actually read any instructions and just did what I thought would work...and it sort of did.  I used white chocolate because I had some and I don't like it so in theory I won't eat them.  I had some red licorice that I gave them as the "spider".  Then Ada said, "Mama, the spider needs a bug to eat."  Since I couldn't refuse such a great request, I gave them some chocolate chips to put in.  Overall I think they are great little first attempts, but next time I'll pay more attention to getting a more liquid consistency before trying to make the web.  Ours was a little thick so they're not very delicate, but the girls will find them thoroughly delicious as their afternoon snack I'm sure :)