More Costumes anyone?

I'm posting more pictures that I finally managed to take out from my phone.  This was taken at Madison's Halloween Parade at school.  Just want to show what a big deal Halloween is for American kids.

How cute are these girls? esp that rainbow monster costume of her friend?

Madison with her classmates from school getting ready for their Halloween parade...she is the tallest among them!

Here they are waiting to take their turn to go around and show off their costume...it was one sunny day!

Everyone is on their best behavior so far

Until Madison spots her mom and her brother in the crowd!hehehe

In the end, it was well worth it for Mommy calling in sick from work to witness all the festivities of Halloween.  It was great to be able to be there for my little girl.  Times like these fly by fast and I don't think I will get to enjoy this as long as I want to.  Ten years from now, I will never see my little girl be goofy and excited for Halloween.  They just grow up so fast and I try to enjoy every moment of it no matter how life gets so crazy.

Happy Fall Back!

I thought I was going to get an extra hour of sleep today since it was officially Fall in California with the time moving back an hour for daylight savings time, I guess not.  My little boy has no concept of time whatsoever and decides 6:30 AM is no different than 7:30.  Anyway, I did promise to post our Halloween photos and blog about it but silly me, I got so busy preparing dinner and getting the kids ready for trick or treating that I forgot to take my camera and take pictures! Oh well.  We had a great time and that's all that matters right? Here's whatever pictures we managed to take during our fun Hallow's eve.

Our house number decked out in goofy pumpkin stickers

Our front screen door with a fuzzy tarantula

My daughter and I also made some arts and crafts of witch's hats, bats, a mummy and scared pumpkins to adorn our windows.

Pumpkins we carved and painted and glittered, we have one each for each member of our family :)

We were dressed as a skeleton family...here's two of the cutest skeletons in the planet!

We had some friends over that we invited for dinner and game night, we ended playing Junior Taboo with them and the kids had a blast!

Here with her best friend Isabel dressed as a spider

And of course the main treat for the kids, a pot full of goodies that they collected from our neighbors, this is just for one kid! Craziness....

I feel bad I didn't take all the pictures I could have taken.  I took out all the Halloween decorations we put up today and got ready for Thanksgiving....

One of the two scarecrows we left out that can stay until Thanksgiving

I hope everybody had a great Halloween! 

Halloween 2013

Hello everybody and Hello November!
But  before we can truly welcome November let us not first forget Halloween.
I must admit I wasn't  prepared for this year's Halloween. As mentioned  in my previous post, I had the week before with my hand's full on the DIY bedroom makeover. To make it even busier,  I had to do the necessary catching up with my house chores and laundry (ironing as well) that piled up during the DIY days.
But of course, we just could not let Halloween go by just because of my DIY.

What Halloween wouldn't be complete without some pumpkins!
Carved the night before in a  such a haste but was still a very surprising and pleasant turn out and made my Little Girl  very happy and excited.

Which graced our front door along with my friend pretending to be the vampire!

Left with not much time to decorate but just to have a quick Halloween atmosphere in the house (apart from the front door decor) buntings helped achieved the easy trick.

Living Room Halloween bunting 

Another thing about the Halloween excitement is the dressing up (which I just leave that part only to my little girl ). Every year I make it a point that she gets to dress in a new outfit different from the previous ones.
Here she is in her past Halloween outfits!

A pretty witch in pink at 10 months old for her first Halloween (left)
A very cutie spider the year after (middle)
And a sulking little white lady last year (right)

As my little girl is already old enough this year to understand Halloween I let her choose her outfit.
Her outfit choice didn't surprise me at all as she was into pirates lately.
Here is  my very lovely, naughty pirate!

My darling Captain Emilia!

I  mentioned in one of my recent posts about my plan of hosting an afternoon tea to my friends at my newly finished dining room before we do the trick or treating.

Here are a few pictures of our Halloween afternoon tea.

One happy occasion to bring out my chinawares
Small pumpkins and Halloween printed paper napkins as placemats set the tone for a Halloween table setting

Biscuits, chocolate cake, scones, tart jams, sandwiches, cupcakes, sausage rolls served with a very warm cup of tea made up our Halloween afternoon tea at home

Once full and ready to venture the cold outside we proceeded with the trick or treating part of the afternoon.
I'm glad we started it early and got back home just before the rain started pouring again and were able to marvel  and enjoy the other trick or treaters who kept our door bell very busy that night.

My little trick or treater was more into the fun of going round different houses and knocking doors than the sweets she gets to have. Her friend was more than happy to take home her bucketful of Halloween treats.

Until next Halloween and a very good night everyone!