Happy Halloween! I love Halloween. It's my favorite holiday. Not the traditional answer of Christmas, but I'm not your traditional girl. Anywho, we had a great time. Bubba was Harry Potter, though I only got one picture that turned out blurry of him actually wearing the glasses. We forgot the scar and glasses until it was time to go out and we were across the street and Aunt Alicia reminded me.
JP was Commander Cody. I'm not sure which Star Wars movie he's from, but he looks like a storm trooper. I have a feeling he's a good guy though if I'm remembering right. I haven't watched the movies 2,000 times like they have. He could only wear the mask for pictures because it squashed his nose. It looked pretty funny how it made his nose completely flat.
Peanut was "Dark" Vader, which was kind of surprising for a 4 yr. old to be someone bad. He had to give up his mask halfway through trick-or-treating because it was bugging him.
Baby Jo Jo was Mickey Mouse. He totally loved the gloves and left those on the whole time unless he was eating candy. The ears he kept pulling off. He was really digging the candy.
I decided at the last minute to dress up. I do ever year, but I wasn't feeling it this year. Peanut was begging me to dress up so I got out the old costumes. I was thinking of being a witch again, but the wig was really tangled. I tried the pink rocker wig, but it looked funny, so I thought quick on my feet and improvised with my jeans, black boots, a somewhat rockstar t-shirt, and teased hair and rockstar make-up. The kids got a kick out of that.
We started the afternoon by making chocolate suckers for all of our friends and a few left over for us. Mom did the pouring, but JP and Peanut chose the colors that they wanted each sucker to be. Then we went over to our neighborhood clubhouse where with 3 other families we had a small potluck and games for the kids and Halloween house making out of chocolate graham crackers and candy. Then we came home to meet my sister and her husband. B opted to stay home to pass out candy because he's the official Halloween humbug at our house. Plus, the 3rd game of the World Series was on. AJ decided he'd stay too even though he dressed up. He works for the forestry service so he wore his uniform and Alicia was a lumberjack. She went trick-or-treating with us. We had the perfect weather. We actually didn't need long underwear and parkas this year. It got a bit colder as the sun went down, but I still didn't need a jacket. With the nice weather we were able to hit all but about 3 houses in our neighborhood this year. We dropped baby off about half way through and kept going. Then we came home to get AJ to go to the bishop's spook alley. Oh my gosh it was amazing. They really put a lot of work into it. It was really fun (although not too scary for big boys). Peanut had opted to stay home with dad and Jo Jo which I realized after going that he had made a good decision. Then on the way home, we stopped at several houses along the way. There weren't many in their neighborhood since the houses are all on 2 acre lots and you have to walk quite a ways to each house. So we drove to each one that was lit up. We hit the neighborhood behind ours on the way back home, which a lot of our ward members said was a good thing because they hadn't had many trick-or-treaters. I found that odd since we got a gazillion this year. Way more than last year. I saw families parking their cars in front of our house and then going through the neighborhood. We also have a fire station in our neighborhood and we went there as well. All in all, they cleaned up. Excuse the expression, but they got a butt load of candy. They've never gotten that much. Probably because we've never been able to stay out that long due to sub-zero temperatures.
Peanut's spider and web sucker already being eaten before mom got the picture.
Bubba made a sad face house, hence the sad face in the picture.
Peanut got a little help from dad on the construction, but did the candy himself.
JP and I worked on the construction together and got our roof to stand together.
We had carved pumpkins on Thurs. so they wouldn't rot before Halloween. The boys opted to do their own this year rather than having me carve one of those intricate designs from a book. I liked this since I usually spend hours carving and my hands cramping. All I had to do was gut them. This wasn't fun, though because they had been sitting outside in the cold and the pumpkin guts were freezing. I forgot to take pictures of the momentous occasion, but got some the next day with them all carved.
Bubba pumpkin head. He thought it would be cool for me to take this picture.
Peanut colored both his pumpkins with faces by himself.
JP was very proud of his big pumpkin, almost too heavy for him to lift.
Then on Fri. we went to B's office to trick-or-treat. Our car was in the shop and Jo Jo's costume was in the car. Fortunately, we still had Bubba's clown costume from when he was that age. He wouldn't wear the wig, but I figured his hair was curly enough, so I just added a lipstick nose. Silly me forgot to take any pictures :(
If anyone has advice on taking better pictures or on a good camera please help. I love my SIL's and would love to know how to do that.
2 comments:
What a fun Halloween! You've given me some good ideas for next year. The boys did such a good job on their pumpkins! Maybe next year we'll actually find our carving tools and the kids can do their own--I like that idea!
Your costume rocks Nicole! Excuse the pun. :) I love that little Darth Vader costume. Owen asked to be Evil Zurg (a bad guy too...these boys have so much in common I wish we lived closer) from Toy Story but I am pretty sure they don't make those by the dozens so he chose Spiderman instead. Wasn't the weather perfect for Halloween! It was beautiful!
And about pictures. The camera - get an SLR and then take a class or read a book on your camera - I read the book from the "Dummies" series for our specific camera. We have a Canon Rebel Xsi. It has taken months to understand how to use it properly and I still don't use all the features I could. Slowly but surely. BUT...you can take good ones with a regular point and shoot digital camera plus it is way easier to schlep around with you and not freak out if you drop it or the kids grab at it.
Experiment with angles and getting closer. Get really low and shoot up, get them looking down, get them from above, get them from the side. Experiment.
Consider the lighting. Natural sunlight at the right angle makes all the difference. I often make my kids stand by a sunny window if they will let me. On the same token...too much sun does the opposite and ruins the picture pretty much. I try to avoid flash at ALL costs. If your camera has a manual setting. Try using that and playing around with the ISO feature. That increases or decreases the camera's sensitivity to light. So if it's cloudy outside, just bump up the ISO a bit so you don't have to turn on your flash and put an unnatural glow on everyone's face. Hope that wasn't too much info. I could talk about photography...at least what I know so far...for a really long time.
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