Welcome to the First Week of Halloween Month...the cram all the spooky into the first week edition

Anyone else feel that when October 1st rolls around that you will not be able to fit in all the Halloween/Fall goodness that you have planned. Just me?!

I'm that crazy person that plans mad early and then puts everything in my planner to assure that everything can get done. I plan everything from outfits, to snacks, to food, to Halloween activities, etc. As I am sure you saw from the previous blog, my theory with Halloween is the same as Top Chef (have I mentioned I have been watching a lot of Top Chef), go big or go home!

I planned for the first day of October to be an homage to Sleeping Beauty. Often with these types of dresses, it comes with a lot of preemptive negotiations of snacks in the form of gummies and watching a show of her choosing prior to nap, and "all I want is one picture of you smiling and you can wear whatever you want" discussions. EV had a short stint of loving these types of dress-up dresses in the beginning of the pandemic, and by short I mean a week. However, that time has passed and now anything that involves tulle or glitter is "too sparkly" and results in "noooo, don't touch me" and "leave me alone." So obviously, she will not be wearing these in Disney anytime soon as phrases such as "don't touch me" and "leave me alone" are kind of frowned upon in a family-oriented theme park and I don't need to be side-eyed by judgy parents and followed by security while wrangling two toddlers.

Honestly, sometimes in these moments, it is just best to let EV go and do her thing rather than having her sit in the tulle that she would rather set on fire and be miserable in the whole time. I hate to admit it (mostly because it makes Hubs right), but more often than not, they result in the best pictures. She loved the idea of a Sleeping Beauty photoshoot and the dress until she realized that the dress would actually have to go on and then when it came to the actual photoshoot all she really cared about was Maleficent's sceptor (who could blame her though...that's my villain loving girl...mama couldn't be more proud).

National Mad Hatter Day falls on October 6th and I couldn't have been more excited as I had been dying to put EV's Alice costume to use and I let EV choose between the Cheshire Cat for me or the Queen of Hearts...anyone wanna side eye me that my kid actually had a choice of Alice in Wonderland Costumes for me than go ahead...cause we are those kind of multiple costume people. See those pictures? Side eye away as they are perfection.

We bought THIS $10 Boo blanket from Target and I absolutely love it! It is perfect for Halloween movie nights with the kids and to use to take Halloween pictures with.

We also bought THIS star projector from Amazon so that we could project stars onto our living room ceiling during said movie nights and to say the least, both EV and Hubs have been REALLY enjoying it.

I love Nightmare Before Christmas and I am always torn whether to consider it a Christmas movie or Halloween, but in the famous words of my 'ride or die', the answer is ALWAYS both. When we did our first Disney Halloween Cruise we watched the live action NBC show and EV loved it, so I was pretty excited to show it to her again as she loves music and things a little more spooky. Well...turns out she loves the music part, but not so much the kidnapping of 'Sandy Claws' part (cue shrugging emoji). I will admit that she gave it the college try where she would creep back to the tv, kind of zone out. enjoy the song and then snap back and yell "new show please." I guess when you are used to watching Vampirina where the Vampires and Werewolves are loving and brightly colored, this can be quite the shellshock. I was however, able to get in all my love of NBC in picture and outfit form, so win-win kinda...

My fingers are crossed that EV likes Hocus Pocus as I have a theme planned for this coming week and it is one heck of a doozy and she is REALLY fond of her "girls" that Grandma ordered her from ShopDisney. If everyone can say a Halloween prayer for me, that would be great....

Nothing says Halloween movies quite like having all the Halloween snacks. I have mentioned that we are more of a savory loving family than sweet, but there is something magical about Halloween that has me wanting to make all the magical Halloween snacks and then having to throw over half of them away since we do not end up eating them. It a vicious but satisfying cycle. I have also talked about how EV is a lover of making cupcakes, but really is a only eating a half a cupcake (maybe) kind of kid. In the last post I had showed that we had purchased Skeleton "cupcake" molds as well as all the Halloween sprinkles so I grabbed one of the many coveted cake mixes and put EV to work on making spooky snacks.

We used a strawberry cake mix with funfetti sprinkles in case you were concerned lol

check out the "rocking out" for cupcakes fingers

One of my favorite Halloween snacks from Disney is the Pumpkin Mickey Waffles with Ice Cream that you can get in the Magic Kingdom. I ordered THESE little ice cream bowls from Target and they are only $.59 each and are the perfect size for a scoop of ice cream and some Mickey waffles. We had already bought pumpkin waffle mix from Golden Malted and had Halloween sprinkles, so this was a no brainer.

And lastly to round out the first week of Halloween goodies, I had seen a lot of people on Instagram using their Dash Skeleton waffle maker to make a charcuterie pumpkin waffle board and I couldn't help but jump on the band wagon. EV is a big fan of waffles and fruit so this was definitely her most favorite dinner of life.

The attempt of watching Nightmare Before Christmas

EV is obviously overcome with joy here...there is always next year I suppose. She actually loved Halloweentown, so I guess I can consider that a solid win.

Moving on....

You know what I am jealous of?! All the flipping pumpkin patch pictures I am seeing. We have an amazing pumpkin patch at Flamingo Gardens Nursery and they do an incredible showing every year of hayrides, pumpkin patches, photo-op areas and everything else you could want in a pumpkin patch. This is something that as a family we look forward to every year.

October 2019:

However, this year due to the pandemic and everything being "no touchy" (I will find any reason I can to quote Emperors New Groove) they canceled the Fall Festival. We did find another one by us which is supposedly good, but I am concerned that if one place canceled theirs due to the pandemic how safe is it to go to another?! While I have been ruminating on this, Hubs was awesome and drove to Lowe's to pick up pumpkins (which were wiped down both in store and when he got home) so that we could create our own little punkin patch to take pictures with. I also bought a massive Trick or Treat Pumpkin bucket that I had planned to take pictures of the kids with and it turned out quite well if I do say so myself. Six dollar large pumpkin for the picture taking backyard win!

And just because I find these funny...

I think finding creative ways to recreate traditions in the new normal will help you from feeling anxious that you are not able to do what once you did. I can already tell you that I am feeling dread as we encroach on the season of meeting Santa and doing our tradition of Thanksgiving in Disney, so finding some normalcy with pumpkin pictures have made things a little easier. If you are going to the pumpkin patches, know that I am seething in jealousy and hope you are having the very best time.

With that being said, I will just leave you with the cutest Minnie witch that you ever did see and hope that you are indulging and having all the fun this spooky season.