Whoo? Whoo?

Way after the fact (but really only a few days, if you consider that our town postponed Halloween by a week after a snowstorm left us powerless for several days...), but I just had to share some (terrible) pictures of Lucy in her owl costume.

(No glamor shots here. Random cooler? Peeling paint? Pile of farm totes? You get it all...)

It's not shown to its best advantage here, but I was really pleased with how this costume came out. I was inspired by this wonderful costume, by Lucy's love of birds, and by a recent visit to "see the hurt owls" (Lucy's summary) at a bird sanctuary. I used a felted adult sweater as the base (the sleeves long ago turned into longies), and sewed on lots of feathers from free-from-the-thrift-store pants. I tried four different hat styles before I made one I loved (thrifted sweater with more pants-feathers). The glasses were my mom's idea; she had a pair of Groucho Marx glasses and told us we could rip the nose off, so we added a beak cut from a plastic lid and we were all set.

At home, Lucy was the cutest owl, whooing all over the place (thus the face in the first picture). Out and about, she was more shy, but we still got a ton of compliments. Makes all the late-night sewing sessions worth it!

(I love the felted-sweater base for a costume, by the way, and will have to remember that for future costumes. She had several layers of clothes on under it with room to spare, and she was toasty warm all night.)

Pumpkin play

There's been a lot of playing with pumpkins around here lately. Here's an invitation to play that I set up last week on the coffee table (with our autumn table in the background):

Last year around this time, the kids were really into clay, and we were using it on a daily basis. So it was a natural extension to create pumpkin-and-clay faces. This year, they remembered, and moved the pumpkins to the studio to do it again:

This year, I was super inspired by this pumpkin head we found at the pumpkin patch:

See his red-pepper mouth and gourd eyes? They're nailed on! Genius! Kids can do that, and make a very satisfying jack-o-lantern (ok, maybe not the lantern part...) all by themselves. I couldn't wait to try it. I introduced the idea to the kids yesterday by showing them the picture and asking them to look closely at how the parts were held on. Then I set up labeled baskets for eyes, noses, and mouths, and we went on a treasure hunt through the studio, looking for parts that would lend themselves to nailing. They came up with some good ones! This morning, we began assembling our pumpkin heads:

(She nailed her pieces on, but I couldn't hold the nail and take photos at the same time!)

Here are some of the kids' creations:

(by a 2-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 3-year-old).

It turned out to be a great way to decorate a pumpkin. I'd love to know if you give it a try!

Happy Halloween!

Don't know when I became the mama who dresses her baby to match the holiday, but here I am. She does make a mighty cute pumpkin, though, doesn't she?