Halloween: Baby Astronaut and Big Boy Astronaut

This year Noah was a Big Boy Astronaut and Maya was a Baby Astronaut for Halloween:

Noah got a lot of usage out of his costume as he celebrated Halloween four - yes you read correctly, 4 times this year (he will probably still have candy left a year from now!). It started two weeks before the actual date (!) He had a Halloween day at school (he was on vacation the week before and the week of Halloween). Below, Noah the Big Boy astronaut at the school Halloween party.

A week before Halloween, friends at our new condo held a toddler and pre-schooler trick-or-treat. The kids played in the decorated function hall, listened to scary stories and paraded around the playground where various dressed up volunteers distributed candy every few meters (I will try to get pictures from my friend as we did not take any - but Noah was big boy astronaut and Maya baby astronaut). 

We also had signed up to be a trick-or-treat home in our condo for the actual day celebration which meant 50 or so kids would come by our apartment to see our scary decorations and to get candy of course. We started our decorations early (unfortunately, we did not take that many pictures but below are a few). This year, we made a papier mache pumpkin. 

Noah and Seth putting on the first strip 

First layer done!

After two layers of orange and two layers of yellow, we cut out the eyes, nose and mouth of the pumpkin.

Unfortunately, we did not take any pictures of the finished product but this is what it looked like made by Martha Stewart (from whom we got the idea: Martha Stewart Papier Mache Pumpkin ):

It actually turned out pretty well for us too and Noah very much enjoyed cutting the strips of paper and pasting them onto the balloon (though by the end of the third layer he had had enough.... and there was still one more to go). 

I had been meaning to make these "flowers" I had seen on the internet for a while now and Noah decided that they would make good "Halloween flowers" if colored in orange/red instead of blue/green like in the website.  First Noah cut some Q-tips with his new big boys scissors (he LOVES cutting things). Then after making some holes in a styrofoam ball, we stuck the halved Q-tips into the ball.

Our three balls ready for the next step (though in retrospect, we should have colored the Q-tips before sticking them into the ball)

Orange and red food coloring (well orange with more or less water)

The flowers after their coloring job drying...

and the finished product - "Halloween Flowers"

We also made glow stick balloon ghosts - so easy to make and yet pretty cool-looking in the dark (I did not take any pictures of ours but below are sort of what they looked like).

Put a lit glow stick in a balloon - blow up - make a scary face 

with a sharpie pen and voila - glow in the dark ghosts!

And we had our haunted house from last year in which I put my phone with an app playing Halloween scary sounds on loop - and many glow sticks  (pic from last year):

you can see it in the back there

and we reused our spider decorations (pic from last year)

 and pumpkins and spiders (also pic from last year)

The third Halloween celebration was at our old condo with old friends and new friends. 

Unlike a "normal" trick-or-treat, the kids actual enter each apartment and play there for a while before getting some candy and moving on to the next apartment. Below, Maya in her friend Millie's apartment (also Noah's friend Gretel's apartment).

Baby astronaut playing with a witch's hat

 A happy baby astronaut

A laughing Baby Astronaut

An inquisitive Baby Astronaut

Noah, Luna and Bink playing in one of the apartments

And finally, the fourth and actual day celebration at our condo. We all dressed up - the astronauts, the witch and the cat in the hat...

the one picture we have of all of us...

Big Boy Astronaut taking off

Big Boy Astronaut pretending to be Maya and holding on to the pole

the kiddos

Noah had a great time at this final celebration ringing door bells and collecting candy and I had a great time greeting surprised trick-or-treaters (the loud scary sounds emanating from the haunted house were a big hit!).

Happy belated Halloween everyone!