THIS is HALLOWEEN.. this IS halloween.. halloween HALLOWEEN hallowEEN HALLOWEEN

I LOOOOOOOOOVE Halloween. It's fun, it's exciting, it's creepy, it's scary, it's full of CANDY!! It's a chance to go out on a school night! My kids love it too. They are soooooo excited to wake up tomorrow.

I like to think that I put a lot of effort into Halloween. I really hate the way it's become so 'commercial' with blow up everythings and aisles and aisles of costumes in every store. When I was a kid people were creative with their decorating and there were TONS of haunted houses. Decorations were creepy. My mom made our costumes and I try my very very best to make our costumes too.

Here's what I came up with this year.

If you remember last year my husband and I won best couple at our friend's Halloween party. This year we only won runner up although I think we should have taken first. That's not to say the winners weren't good, they had great costumes too... but ours really turned out amazing. AND I made them. I sewed pieces of material together to make the dress and strung every piece of yarn into that wig. I ran out of time to paint stripes on one of my husband's black suits so I did have to go out and find a pin stripe suite... but I did make the bow tie. The makeup was all me and might I add a REAL pain in the ass.

The party was great and the hosts REALLY go all out. The decor is incredible and they go as far as changing every light bulb in the house to either black or orange. Here are some photos from the night.... followed by some (mostly) unfortunate costumes...

Did I mention that most of the party go-ers work in some form of law enforcement? Pretty awesome.

It was a bit of a mad rush tonight to get everything finished up for the big day tomorrow. The kids are wearing their costumes to school and then I won't see them again until I dash outta work early to hit the trick or treating hay ride. This year Juliet is going as a vampire/princess and Sam has now specifically requested to be Kai... the red ninja from Lego Ninjago.

I managed to find a pair of red jeans at Walmart and a red shirt that I painted the flames onto...

I finished it off by painting some flames on the red balaclava we found for his Ninja mask and got him a ninja sword. For Juliet I finished sewing her dress down to a size that will fit her and sealed her hat with Modge Podge. I sent them off to bed before I finished so hopefully everything will come together in the morning.

We also tackled our pumpkins tonight. The kids each gutted their pumpkin & drew faces that I carved out. They turned out great!