A Semi-Decorated Halloween

I'm not one to decorate for holidays other than Christmas. Don't know why.  Just never really made the effort or wanted the expense. But this year I signed up to decorate a door at the church for trick or treating in the hallways.  Never done that before.  (In past years we just stood by others who had decorated their trunk for 'trunk-or-treating' and passed out candy with them. No one was the wiser.)
But we couldn't fake it this year, so I decided I would buy some Halloween props to decorate, and then afterward I put them up in our door for actual trick-or-treaters we were told actually come through our neighborhood.

No. Nothing spectacular. But it's a start. Holiday decorations are things that grow a little each year. Buy at the after-holiday super sales or adapt something else to make it "theme-y." Thinking I went from one little stuffed witch my mom sent to my college dorms to a few bats and skeletons, I've made good beginnings.
I cut out a little colony of bats...

...and a little family of mice...

...and made a black feather wreath... (Aaron saw me making that and secretly prayed that wasn't for the house.  Super relieved when I told him it was just for Halloween. :)

... added a few glittery spiders Jonah couldn't keep his hands off of...

...and a few hanging skeletons.  Cute and simple.

As for costumes, Jonah was a gnome again this year.  My costume-creativity just wasn't flowing and since I had most of everything on hand from last year, why make it difficult?

I did look for black rubber boots to wear but had a hard time finding ones without flames or dogs or dragons.   I ran to Walmart and found blacks boots perfect for a garden gnome.  But when we put them on Saturday for our ward party, they disintegrated in 20 minutes.

Literally. They just fell apart.  In 20 minutes.

Have you ever seen anything like that?!?

Anyway, I took those back for a refund and bought some great reds ones at Fred Meyer.  They're big so they should last a year or two.

Jonah was NOT pleased about the beard.  Everything else was great, but the beard had to go.  So I took a few pictures and then it was retired for the rest of the night.

A picture of all our group, minus the purple princess, Sarah.

Lucas has always loved to dress up.  He lived in costume from age 3 to 6. So he decided last Thursday he wanted to make a ranger costume, as in a huntsman from the Ranger's Apprentice books he is reading right now.  This boy has quite the imagination and knew exactly what he wanted.  And since he didn't have school on Friday due to conferences and I really only had him to dress, we made it our project.  I l.o.v.e. working with him on stuff like this.  It was quite the collaborative effort and he loved the end results so I was happy.

We took a grey sheet and sewed a hooded cloak, cut out vinyl for a tunic, boot covers and archery arm protectors, snagged some old black gloves and cut off the fingers, and added a Jedi belt we got from years ago.  He looked fierce and we got to make together. Love it!

Hope your had a Happy Halloween!