Crafts & Fun

At the end of October I decided to take a break from the hum-drum of everyday life and have a little fun with my kids. Ella had a couple of days off for parent-teacher conferences (her lowest grade is a 92% by the way, and she is one grade level up for both math and reading) so we took advantage and did some crafts together.
First, we made a Halloween chain to tell us how many days left until Halloween. Trevor had been pestering me about wanting to go trick-or-treating so I thought that being able to rip a link off each day would stop him from the incessant whining about when it would be Halloween. I let the kids draw on the strips and we glued them together. They did get really excited to get to rip a link off.

This was Kat's participation in the project. Still in her PJ's talking to her friends on the bouncer.

For our next project we invited our neighbors over to paint pumpkins. Carving pumpkins is one of my favorite things to do, but it can get really tedious and long with kids. We have always liked to have at least one pumpkin decorated for each person in the family but that takes a really, really long time to do because the kids can't really do it themselves. So, this year I thought we would try painting pumpkins.

Grandma Ladwig brought us little gourd pumpkins from her garden and the Hall's brought over some pie pumpkins. Each kid got a bigger pumpkin and a little pumpkin to paint. This was the result of my kids' artistic vision.

I wish that I would have taken pictures of the kids actually painting but I was really busy supervising and doing a project of my own....

Kayleen and I made these. They are supposed to be pumpkins, although my big one looks more like a squash. They turned out totally cute and were a fun, fast project for the Mamas.

Our third crafty, although not so crafty, but fun activity was the annual Spooky Pop making. Spooky pops are a tradition that we got from the Dixon clan and have turned into one of our own as well. We have been invited to the Dixon family spooky pop making every year since Ella was born and have been able to attend most of them. This year we had to strike it out separately from Dixons because of the whole living in Utah now thing.

Because Spooky Pops are much more fun to do with a crowd we invited the neighbors over again to share in the fun.

We had a total of 9 kids participating in making the funny candy faces on the caramel suckers. While they were waiting for the caramel to be ready to put on their faces they entertained themselves with our new favorite Wii game, Just Dance 2. This has proven to be a favorite of all the neighborhood kids and whenever we get together they all request it.

Along with the Bybee's and Hall's we were lucky enough to have Papa and Grandma Kunz visiting us on their way to the Grand Canyon. Earlier that day the kids had their primary program that Grandma really wanted to be there for and I was sure glad she did. Since I have never made the spooky pops on my own before I was glad to have a more experienced caramel maker helping us out. She also was great help with Kat.

And again, the result of my children's artistic vision....this time in candy form.

After the Spooky pops were done and the friends went home we had a little bit of time to enjoy our Baby Kat together. She had just started smiling A LOT and I have to admit, I still can't get enough of it.

We had so much fun spending time together doing projects and celebrating the fall season. It was a continuation of some old traditions with a new twist. Things that just might have to be repeated again next year.