Summer and Company: Happy Halloween!

I know I've been posting about Halloween for an entire month already, but last night it was actually, finally Halloween! (Warning: this post is LONG, but we had a very full holiday month.)

We started decorating at the beginning of the month. Pretty much every flat surface had a gargoyle, a skull, or a pumpkin on it.

Inside the terrariums

Then it was time to get costumes. Beatrice was Olivia for Halloween:

Arthur was Dev:

And then later, another incarnation of Dev:

I was the Lady in the Lake, from King Arthur:

Dev was a wizard (and later, a guy in a tracksuit):

And Shackleton and Cromwell were Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson*:

We decorated the front of the house as we usually do, though I made a few additional decorations: a second silhouette curtain of a lurking man, a ghost, a lot of crows, and a bone wreath for the front gate (made by spray-painting bones from the dollar store and holding them together with hot glue and wire).

The best thing about this silhouette is that it's positioned exactly such that I see it at over my shoulder in the bathroom mirror when I'm brushing my teeth at night. Happy Halloween, indeed.

We spent the entire month going to Halloween events. Perhaps the most fun was the Boo Bash at Burbank Adult School, where Arthur and I also do a Wednesday morning class. The Boo Bash is an annual fundraising carnival with games, face painting, a cake walk, a costume parade, book fair, and bake sale.

Beatrice enters the spooky maze.

Arthur and I also went to Halloween Pajama Storytime at night at the library. Beatrice wore her costume to a special edition of her ballet class where they danced to songs like "The Monster Mash" and the "Ghostbusters" theme. We even went to an after-dark flashlight tour of the spider pavillion at the Natural History Museum.

This month we've also been doing Halloween crafts in the afternoons:

The topmost ghost is Arthur's, the others are B's.

"Sensory bags" with plastic snakes

We also hosted a small pumpkin painting party for B and her friends a few weeks before Halloween:

And of course, we had the big party on Saturday, October 27.

After that, we worked on carving pumpkins.

Like last year, I asked Beatrice to draw on the pumpkin and then I carved the pattern that she drew:

Then on Halloween morning, Beatrice's school hosted their class costume parade and party (see last year's here).

Ivy as Tinkerbell

Superheroes on the playground

Lesley and Ivy

Beatrice with Ms. Aiysha and Mr. Richard

Miller as Peter Pan

And finally, at last, after a whole month of waiting, Beatrice and Arthur got to go trick or treating. It was great to see the same houses and families and decorations as last year and to feel like a part of the neighborhood.