Sweet Life

Miss Willow, inspired by all the Bunnicula books that a little girl could ever dream on, is dressed as...

a VAMPIRE!!!

I sewed her voluminous black cape, complete with epic hood, out of a big piece of stash stretchy velvet that I bought at Goodwill sometime or other.

And her fangs, can you tell?

Yep, plastic fork.

Sydney wanted to be a "leaf mermaid," whatever that is. I sewed her a pillowcase skirt, she decorated the skirt with Tee Juice fabric marker leaves (and a sun and sky and raindrops and clouds, etc.), and then I safety-pinned one of her no-sew tutus to the bottom to flutter out like a mermaid's tail. The rest of her outfit (what little there is, yes, I am aware) is made from our hand-dyed play silks tied around her:

We have a FABULOUS neighborhood for trick-or-treating--lots of families, LOTS of houses with porch lights lit, lots of undergrad rentals in which, if they're girls, they give out enormous amounts of really good candy, and if they're dudes, they come to the door half-dressed, look surprised to see you, then shuffle around in their cabinets before handing over sweet stuff like powerbars and cans of soda and money.

LOVE our neighborhood:

We always head out at sunset, and I always force everyone to arm themselves amply with glowsticks, and Matt always looks about like this about his glowstick necklace--

--but I swear, that article that they run in the newspaper on Halloween every year, advising drivers to be especially cautious because kids will be running around like idiots? They write that article on account of my kids, who ran around and dashed back and forth across the street and fell down porch stairs and walked right into people's houses while I ran after them and shouted a lot:

Yep, I'm the unwary mom who lets my girls accept cups of apple cider from total strangers, the lax mom who does not pay my kids to take their candy or hand it off to the candy fairy or stuff it in the freezer to dish out a piece a day or whatever the cool parents are doing this year, the neglectful mom who, when a kid looked up from her haul later that night, her mouth full of candy, and asked, "Hey, did we have dinner?", replied, "Candy. That's your dinner."

And yet somehow I HAVE managed to get the children to keep their candy wrappers picked up (so far) this year, and they keep coming up to me, unbidden, and offering me pieces of chocolate, which they know is my favorite, and this year my shy girl went up to every single house with her little sister, and said, "Trick-or-treat!" and "Thank you!" AND "Happy Halloween!" at every. Single. House!

See? Sweet life, with Reese's cups and all.