Halloween 2014

It's about time I share our Halloween celebrations, right?  I was originally going to break this down into several different blog posts, but let's face it, that would take a month in itself, and I have plenty more I want to blog, so let's just cram this all into one, right?!

On Halloween night, we had all our parents over for dinner/snacks, to hang out while we handed out candy, and to enjoy entertainment (and costume changes) by Maple. 

Halloween is Matt's favorite holiday, so he's mostly in charge of decorating.  I'm sure I mentioned this last year, but he made those ghosts and tombstones last year for us.

Here is some of our food spread: chocolate and caramel dipped apple bar, pumpkin dip, and spinach dip (not pictured, because I took pictures before Mom got there with it).  We also had hot dogs and Matt made chili! Oh, and also yummy hot apple cider :)

I found this awesome recipe for pumpkin dip that you have to try yourselves! It's great served with ginger snaps! :)

For toppings for the apple bar, I used crushed graham crackers, a mixture of 2 types of Halloween sprinkles, and a mixture of brown sugar and a little bit of cinnamon.

I love my fall chalkboard! I'll be sad to take it down, but also excited to put a Christmas one up! :)

Wonder Woman loves her deddy!

Wonder Maple!

Matt wanted to light up the driveway to make it easier for people to see to get to our house....and we were honestly the only ones on our street with any kinds of light outside, and one of the few with decorations. It was kind of sad!

 He bought these orange bags, and we each decorated half of them.

 Maple loved seeing trick-or-treaters coming up to the house! And they loved her just as much! When she'd jump up with excitement, some of the kids would clap for her and cheer her on! haha.

Time for a costume change!

Now, y'all probably think we spoil our dog rotten, which isn't a complete lie, but we really didn't plan on her having so many Halloween outfits.  She originally only had the Wonder Woman costume.  When we went into Petsmart another time, the last outfit (you'll see in a second), was on sale for about $4 I think, and it was too cute not to buy.  Then, Matt went into Petsmart the week of Halloween and this next costume, Tigger, was on sale for $6, and I've been in love with it since we first saw it. So, it just all kind of happened on a whim.  But Maple loves Tigger...she tried wearing it to bed one night, haha.

And the last one...her little Halloween tutu.

What kind of doggy parents would we be if we didn't get Maple a special Halloween treat?? And boy, did she love it!!

She took that one bite of it and took it to her little blanket corner where no one else could get it!

Now, we didn't get a chance to carve our pumpkins before Halloween this year, but we were still celebrating the next day anyway, so we carved them on November 1st!

Here is Matt's:

Here's Maple's:

and here's mine:

That night, we headed out to a Halloween party that Matt's parents were helping in hosting.  Here we are in our costumes that we have been excited about for a long time now!!

Mary Poppins and Bert! And we went all out...would you expect anything less?

We searched high and low in Goodwill stores for several accessories for our costumes, and found most of them, including my bag.

I also carried around this note in my pocket--the advertisement for the perfect nanny, written by Jane and Michael Banks.

And my suitcase definitely wasn't empty.

Since Goodwill was sold out of the magical bags, I had to find items that would just fit in this standard size bag, but it worked! I had all the items Mary Poppins pulled out when she first arrived in the nursery: a mirror, lamp, and small house plant? Well, I definitely made this one more "Mallory Poppins" because I couldn't find a small enough house plant to fit...and I couldn't ask around too much without giving away our costume! haha.  So I used a small Christmas tree! haha.

I also carried around a spoonful of sugar (not pictured) and a measuring tape to show everyone how I measured up that night.  This was, in fact, my height for the night -in heels-. Don't be confused, I'm not really that tall, haha.

 Matt's costume was also detailed to his character, as he carried around his red rag, and a bag of chalk to work on his sidewalk drawings.  Unfortunately, I didn't have any tuppence on hand, so I couldn't tip Bert and throw it in his hat.

Here's the topper of Matt's chimney sweep broom and my hat that I bought and decorated for our costumes. We're going to display them somehow, we just haven't decided how and where just yet!