My confession is this: I've been feeling more than alittle depressed the past month or so. And while I have certainly managed to stay afloat, I would much rather be swimming happily rather than working so hard at keeping my head above water. However despite my crappy moods, I feel that much was accomplished during the month of October. So in an attempt to acknowledge my achievements I'm going to post about our October activities that I lacked energy to post about at the time. And cause it feels right to do so I'm going to work backwards from Halloween.
Halloween Part 1: The costumes
When asked what he wanted to be for Halloween Ian finally decided on The Cat in the Hat. My reaction was Perfect! I can do that, I thought. I then thought it would look really cute if Cai and Aiden went as Thing 1 and Thing 2. So I was off to make costumes.
For Ian I purchased black fleece sweater and pants. After looking everywhere in town, included the Halloween costume store, Mark and I decided to purchase a child's Cat in the Hat hat off
Amazon.com. While I had contemplated making him a hat, I'm now very glad we purchased one. I was pressed enough making the other costumes. To finish off the outfit Ian wore my old cat tail from a cat costume that I held on to. It's amazing how much use the black cat ears and tail have gotten over the years.
For Cai and Aiden I decided to sew their costumes.
I bought adult red sweatshirts and created rompers out of them.
First I traced around rompers I had for each boy. Then cut along my lines.
The boys had lots of fun using the sleeves as hats.
I then sewed around the outside, leaving the inner legs separated. I did make a seam on the inner legs to prevent raveling. While I would love an industral snap press, it's just not going to happen right now. (First on my list is a Kitchen Aid). So I found snap pliers at Walmart that make the hammer snaps pretty easy to place.
I couldn't find simple snaps so I used pearl ones, alittle weird looking but they function. Then I panted the circles and writing using fabric pant.
I'm pretty proud of them i must say. They boys had to wear shirts underneath cause the necks were too big, but it worked b/c it was added warmth to keep them warm as we walked outside for trick-or-treating.
Now Thing 1 & 2 have bright blue hair. So for their hair I bought knit hats and blue yarn.
I than spent 3 days sewing loops of blue yarn into those knit hats. I must say I'm very, very, very proud of my work.
Don't be surprised if next years costumes have blue hair cause after all my hard work these wigs are going to get used again ;)
It felt good to create again. Reminding me why I love sewing, knitting and other such crafts. And now that the sewing machine is set again I think it's about time to sew some new wool longies for Aiden. (I did mention that we moved were our office is and thus my machine got moved, didn't I? ) Aiden is growing faster than I would like. What I won't give to keep him in babyhood just alittle longer.
Well until the boys were done and I had to rake them to the curb to be picked up by the city. We've gone out several time to rake leaves
. And each time the boys enjoy jumping, hiding and throwing balls into the big pile I/we create. And while Mark is probably beyond down with raking, I've enjoyed the time I got to spend outside with the boys raking and playing. 
That being said, Mark worked much harder than I did this last outing working on getting as many to the curb as possible.
There were alot too, as we are talking care of our neighbor/landlady's yard as well as our own. Left raking parties are the best. And their will be more at our family's houses as we repay their kindness for helping us.
Some of the leaf games my boys came up with this last month are hiding and go seek with shoes, 
throw a football into the pile, turning our bodies and/or feet into diggers
and of course jumping in ourselves. 
