Halloween quick fix :: goggling eyeballs

To be honest - Halloween hasn't really been on top of my priority list. It used to be our favorite event of the year. We'd put days (weeks) of preparation in it. But not anymore. A lack of exposure, I guess, ...

Anyway, there must be something left, though, as I came up with this - true: totally miminimalist - craft yesterday. I can't remember what triggered it. Was it one of the girls rolling their eyes when being told to clean up their rooms?  Or was it my recent encounter with eye doctors, laser beams and dilated pupils. Not sure...




This craft is easy, fast, totally silly and totally last minute. All you need is two (wooden) beads (varnished/ glossy works best to get the real eyeball look), a piece of fat string, and permanent markers.



Slip the beads onto the string, tie a (double) knot on both ends and slip the beads over the knot to hide it (use a dab of glue if you're worried about losing an eye), cut off excess string and finally draw the eyes, with scary pupils, lots of bloody veins, ... Slip the eyeballs between your fingers and scare the crap out of everyone! For a better effect, you might actually want to use some face paint on your hand to make it look like a really scary face. Use your imagination!
Note: Due to choking hazard this item is not intended for young children.

Wishing you a happy and safe Halloween, everyone!

Cheers,

Pascale

DIY :: Last minute Halloween fix - a witch's cloak

The Toussaint vacation has started here and as always on the last school day before the break, they celebrated Halloween at little H's school. For weeks she'd been debating about what to wear and then on Thursday she finally made a decision. She wanted to be a witch. Only problem: her witch hat was nowhere to be found! On Thursday afternoon, 5:00 p.m., I promised I would fix her something for the next day and off I ran to the mercerie around the corner. Their selection of fabric is limited but they had black lining - just what I needed for a quick fix, last minute witch's cloak! 45 minutes later, I had a happy little witch running around the house. A black shirt and skirt and matching tights and she was all set! I also promised her I would put on some face painting in the morning, so she would look like a real witch.
She was too excited to sleep and woke up in the middle of the night a couple of times. In the morning, too excited for being tired, she got dressed in no time, even thought of brushing her teeth without me having to remind her, and had a final look at the wrinkles and witch's warts I drew on her face. She looked like a real witch, she said approvingly.
As we walked to school she kept on rattling about how great this day would be and about all the candy they would get and what everybody else would be wearing. Right before we reached school, she took off her winter coat, I messed up her hair a bit with my fingers so it would look a bit more witch like, we adjusted her cape and off she went... as happy as could be, my little witch...!
Though they do this every year at school, and you'd expect I got used to it by now, it gets me all sentimental over and over again. Seeing that little girl, who still likes to dress up, her sérieux when doing so, disappear in the crowd, swallowed by the other monsters, witch's, sons and daughters of Frankenstein, gave me a warm feeling inside.
Her Halloween day at school went really well - she got plenty of candy, even got some for her sister, and at night, that little witch of mine, fell asleep on my lap before we could even take care of the wrinkles and warts still on her little face...



If you are as desperate as we were last Thursday about finding a real witch's outfit, below there's a rough sketch of how you could make a witch's cloak in no time. I hope you don't mind my rather poor drawing skills. Since I had to rush it a little bit, there was no time for the usual step-by-step pictures ...

I'm wishing you all a happy Halloween!

Halloween at the beach...

it took forever to get those candles lighted... The Halloween drawings in the sand are M. and daddy's creations...

As I wrote last year, Halloween isn't the same anymore... but this time we did have some real Halloween fun again.

No, we didn't go trick-or-treating, since hardly anyone does so around here and we didn't want to get doors slammed into our faces like two years ago, but we did everything else. We got our pumpkins in time, carved them and even roasted the seeds, the kids made decorations and taped them to the windows, they dressed up (I didn't, but next year I will, I promised...), they got their little faces painted by me, and in the evening I took them to a Halloween parade in the neighboring beach town.

So Halloween was maybe a bit different but, yes, it was great too!

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween as well!

Halloween isn't the same anymore...

... now we live in Europe again. Neither my husband, nor I grew up with Halloween, as we both are Belgian. But when we moved from Belgium to California in 2002 we adopted the whole Halloween-craze fairly quickly and it soon became our family's favorite holiday.

Last year we tried really hard to have a real Halloween. We'd just moved back from California to Europe and had the real thing still fresh in our minds. A lot of stores and supermarkets carried plenty of Halloween-related stuff. Also, at school, the kids celebrated Halloween the last Friday before Fall break. The girls went to school all dressed-up and at the elementary school the kids were even welcomed by mom-witches aligned along an orange carpet leading them to the school building. They went trick-or-treating in the other classrooms and came home with quite some candy and fun stories. That was one week before Halloween, so we had high hopes for the actual Halloween-night. But gosh, what a disappointment it was! It made us miss California even more, as we were thinking of our friends going out for trick-or-treat that night - without us - the traditional Halloween parade, the decorated houses... The girls did dress up as witches and got their faces painted, only to find people looking kind of puzzled at us when we walked down the road. We had to explain to not just a few people that it was HALLOWEEN - they didn't get it! True, there was a pumpkin carving contest in the neighboring town of where we were staying for our Fall break. But we didn't make it in time as I managed to get off at the wrong tram stop with my two little witches, so we only had a tiny little pumpkin and five minutes left to decorate it. No need to tell we didn't win the contest... At night we went trick-or-treating, with the girls' twin-cousins, who we had invited for the occasion, and that too ended in a huge disappointment. Either people didn't have any candy or simply didn't open their doors, with only a few exceptions. Eventually, my husband came up with the idea of hiding at our house the candy we had bought earlier that day, so the kids could have a "Halloween-goes-Easter"-Egg-Hunt, which was, I must admit, really fun and saved the evening.

This year we prepared the girls. We wouldn't go for trick-or-treating, though they could dress-up if they wanted to and we would carve a pumpkin. But once again we thought too late of getting a pumpkin, so we ended up buying two little pumpkins. Luckily, Oma Lea, my mother-in-law, was into a little pumpkin-carving contest! And I must say, she did a wonderful job!


I added this picture of the T-shirt M. decorated and wore to school to celebrate Halloween. Nice, isn't it? I like the Verlaine-tombstone she drew... Result of the many poems she learns in school...

Gelukkige Verjaardag, Papa!

Herinner je je dit kleine meisje nog? Ik heb dit filmpje voor de gelegenheid nog eens opgevist.
Twee jaartjes jong was ons grootste meisje toen. Er was nog geen klein zusje bij. Zij kwam pas de volgende zomer. Het was onze eerste herfst in Californië. Onze eerste kennismaking met Halloween ook, in een clownspakje dat ik voor haar genaaid had.

“En wat doen de kalkoentjes?”. “Ule-ule!”.

Ik vind dit nog altijd een geweldig schattig filmpje.
Gelukkige verjaardag, papa!




This one's for my dad.
Do you remember that little girl, in the little clown's outfit I made? She was two then. Her little sister wasn't born yet. It was our first Fall - and Halloween - in California. Isn't she adorable?

Happy birthday, Dad!