Halloween... (the extended version)

We are not big into Halloween. We do not decorate. We (aside from Eliana) do not dress up. We do not do scary. I don't even make costumes. I am usually happy to leave that up to someone else, like Robert. =D (He can spoil his niece with fabulous costumes if he wants!) Ellie, however, has been very excited about Halloween this year. She got a $5 set of kitty ears, tail, and collar at Target a few weeks ago, and has been wearing them everywhere. She decided she wanted that to be her Halloween costume. Okay. Easy enough. =D

I suppose you could say that our Halloween festivities began at the pumpkin patch, with this crazy girl:

I'll have to do another post about the pumpkin patch, but we'll save that for later. =D

We got a pumpkin... I normally just process any pumpkin patch pumpkins for pie and whatnot, but this year Ellie wanted to carve a jack-o-lantern. Okay... I've never carved one, so we just kind of figured it out as we went, with the help of one of those cheep-o pumpkin carving tool kits. The tools actually made it pretty easy!

It was supposed to be Ellie's job to scrape out the guts. This is about as far as she got before she decided that was gross and didn't want to do it.

So, it was my job. Fuuuun.

I made a mess of the pumpkin in the gutting process, so it became Ellie's job to clean the outside of the pumpkin so we could carve it. That job she did. =D

She wanted a kitty jack-o-lantern, so we went online for templates to print and trace. Then the printer was out of ink and I was too lazy to deal with it, so we just freehanded a kitty design. I really wasn't sure how it would work, but I think it turned out fine. =D We used a dry-erase crayon for the design, which was neat because it just wiped right off when we were done carving. I'd do that again. Here is the kitty after we carved...

And, of course, no kitty is complete without whiskers...

Or ears, a tail, and a hair bow, apparently... =D

All that was left was to put a tealight in and light her up!

We enjoyed the kitty-o-lantern for a couple days before Halloween - then it was time to dress up and go trick-or-treating! Because I don't do costumes, we pulled what we could find that was cheetah print (or close to it), added the ears, tail, and bow, and then I painted Ellie's face a mottled brown with kitty features to complete the look. Voila!

A cheetah! Make that a FEROCIOUS cheetah!

Leif took Eliana trick-or-treating around the neighborhood while I stayed home and did door duty. Among the things Leif had to say when he came home were the following...

She talked to everybody at every house we stopped at.

She asked politely to pet any dogs inside.

She got invited inside two houses to look at fish tanks.

Most people thought she was a leopard.

She didn't meow nearly was much as I was afraid she would.

She did get cold and wanted to stop after about 1.5 hours and .75 miles of Trick or Treating, but I made her walk the rest of the way home.

Once home, we dumped out the candy and sorted all the milk-containing pieces from the purely sugar ones. =D Then Ellie proceeded to answer the door and pass out candy to all the trick-or-treaters that came by. She talked to them all. She commented on their costumes. She was the hostess with the mostess, and she took f.o.r.e.v.e.r to pass out the candy. =D I'm glad we had some very patient trick-or-treaters at our house!

So, there you have it. The extended version of Halloween at our house this year. It's not my favorite holiday, but I'm glad Eliana had a good time.