Spooky

Yesterday was the Halloween, which according to my children is the most important day of the year. We were woken up to declarations of . . . "I can't believe it's actually Halloween . . . T O D A Y!"

The morning was full of costume dramas. Firstly Pia decided she wanted to be a flamingo. This one stumped me a bit, until I found this incredible outfit on a blog. Sadly I was so totally last minute, my dreams of making her a proper hat with feathers and a beautiful winged cape ended up instead in a last-minute panic-fuelled stuffed flamingo headband, using left-over linen and fabric pens and attached to a sequin headband.

Middle wanted to be a spooky doll, so we scoured her drawers for the spookiest skirt and top, found some orange hair that matched her huge skirt (both given to her by my sister last Christmas) and finished it off with an apron I'd sewed from an old pillow case ages ago. I painted her face with orange cheeks, purple eyes, black stitches and heart lips.  

Nearly-Teen isn't always enthusiastic about dressing up, and spent most of the morning shrugging his shoulders at all our suggestions, until he decided on Sherlock Holmes. We didn't have a cape or a hat though, so while he went on a mission to the fancy dress shop to find a hat, I sewed him a cape.

He came back with a trilby.

So then I had to quickly sew him a hat too, which turned out to be a bit too small. The deerstalker pattern I used was great though, and I'd definitely make him another one, I think I'd just enlarge all the pieces by about 20%. I used this pattern for the cape, but as I only had a bit of grey fabric left, I had to adjust it quite a bit and make it much smaller.

It was all a total manic rush because I am tragically far too last-minute, but we managed to get to the party only forty minutes after it started. (The party was brilliant by the way, and the fabulous Monique had even made delicious homemade veggie burgers especially for us non-meat-eaters, and lots of warming mulled wine.)

This was our kiddie's second Halloween party in a week. For the last one (which had a crazy, crazy number of children running wild) we made these ghosty cupcakes. The cake bit is basically a chocolate fairycake mix and the top is made from vegetarian marshmallow. A few ghosts suffered in transit, falling victim to Pia's hat swinging in the back of the car, but most arrived unharmed.

Back to yesterday though, which ended with trick or treating in the rain followed by Witch Zelda's Birthday Cake as a bedtime story. If you haven't seen this book, it's incredible. It's shaped like a pumpkin, and has pop-out, pull-out, lift-up flaps galore. And Eva Tatcheva's illustrations are utterly fabulous.

So that was Halloween. Spooky, a bit manic, but wonderful.