Happy Halloween!

It stinks when Halloween lands on a school day. There is so much less time to do all the fun Halloweeny things. If you do happen to go out and about today you can bring your kiddos in their costumes to a LEGO store for a special mini build offer!

A tad off topic but speaking of LEGO we already bought our LEGO Star Wars and City advent calendars! These have become a holiday tradition for us and since the Star Wars version sold out one year I always get them when I see them at a good price! (you can add them to your LEGO.com order to reach the free shipping if you're already getting holiday gifts!)

 Back to Halloween - I wanted to share their costumes and pumpkins today but didn't finish them last night so you'll have to wait until tomorrow.

In the meantime I'd LOVE to see all of your costumes! You can post them on the Facebook page - tweet them to me on Twitter or email them here. I'd love to share some of our favorites on the blog! (you can also follow along with us on Instagram)

Or if you don't want to send photos I'd love to HEAR what you're dressing up as in the comments! Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Patching

I think our "Pumpkin Patch" looks quite a bit different than a lot of yours and was thinking maybe you'd like to see how we do it here in Phoenix/Scottsdale. Last weekend we visited McDonalds Ranch. They have some ranch activities and you take a hayride out to the "pumpkin patch" (I use that term lightly lol!). The boys had a great time!

Happy Fall from Phoenix (where it's still in the 90's)!

Halloween Printables

Here's a little roundup of some fun Halloween Printables for you!

Puppets from Make and Takes

Masks from Mr. Printables

Halloween countdown from Kiki and Company on Eighteen 25

Halloween Fortune cookies from Kind Over Matter

Last year we put flying bats all over - template from Country Living

Homemade Costumes

My mom used to make all of our costumes. We had the BEST costumes. It was either homemade or those horrible plastic shirts with a mask. I was very thankful for my homemade costumes. Store bought costumes are SO much better now but I still love a good homemade costume. Here are some that I've seen and loved from around the internet!

A perfect army man from Wild Ink Press

Scuba accessories from Real Simple

DIY Skeletons from Finley and Oliver

and airplane/pilot at Oh Happy Day

or a good old LEGO from Country Living

DIY Weatherproof Halloween Decorations

I'm over at Modern Parents Messy Kids today showing you how to make an easy outdoor Halloween garland. Weatherproof and homemade - awesome!

Glowing Eyes Halloween Craft

Have you ever had an idea you thought made you so smart and then discovered you weren't the first one to have that idea? That's what happened with these for me lol! I had been wanting to do these for a while and about a week ago I was flipping through a magazine at the store (Family Fun maybe?) and saw the same thing - of course executed cuter for a magazine. Oh well, not going to stop me from sharing it with you!

You'll need ping pong (table tennis) balls, LED tealights (the cheapest I found them was at Walmart 6 for $2.50 regular price or you could get a 12 pack at Michaels or Joan with your weekly coupon), a small knife for the parents, and whatever materials you'd like to decorate them with.

Start by cutting an "x" on the bottom of the ping pong and sticking the fake flame of the tealight through the x. This will let your child know right where to draw the eye.

Next just decorate! You could get creative and make eyebrows, eyelashes, a body etc but my boys just wanted eyes. And wanted none of them to match. Whatever floats their boat!

They loved finding places to stick them. Most were on the mantle.

Linking up with the Eighteen25 Halloween Link Up Party

Fall Crafts for the Younger Set

We have a craft to share tomorrow but I wanted to share some I've seen for younger kiddos too. 

First I think this Carve-a-pumpkin app is fun for all ages

Who doesn't love stepping in paint to make these ghost footprint plaques (or you could just do it on paper) from 2pawsdesigns

A Halloween sensory bin from Nuturing Naters

They could make their own blocky Frank, Ghost, Pumpkin, Bat from Roberts Crafts

Love this little felt Autumn tree (especially because we don't have them here) from rajovilla

Or these little felt mix and match pumpkins from Mer Mag

Do you have a Halloween/Fall craft or a favorite craft for younger kids?

Halloween Fun

Since we STILL haven't finished our Halloween projects (I should have never admitted we were working on them in the first place!) I thought I'd share some that caught my eye.

Scout Creative has made some fun Trick or Treat Monitor Monster paper printable toys! You can download your own on the hp site

Spinning gohts from Parents

Make a bat puppet from Made by Joel

and I can't help but share some LEGO Halloween fun

Spooky pops from Sugar Swings!

And I just love this picture from kennymatic on Flickr