All-Day Halloween Fun

I mentioned last week that Ryan really wanted this full-coverage Darth Vader helmet, right?  We decided to come up with a list of chores that would help him earn the money (details on that later) but that wasn't getting him the cash fast enough, so he had a lemonade stand (with Kaylin and his neighbor friend) on Monday night. $.50 per cup and he earned the final $6 that he needed for his Darth Vader helmet.

On Tuesday night, we ventured out to buy his beloved helmet. After dumping mostly change on the counter, I was shocked that he had exactly $.40 leftover after tax.  He used it to buy a piece of candy.

Then, on Wednesday, we spent the whole day doing crafts, science experiments and making Halloween treats...

We made Frankenstein pudding cups

and Jack-o-Lantern peach cups

We created a lava lamp/chemical reaction with oil, water and Alka-Seltzer

We made spider handprints, Q-tip skeletons and resist painting over crayons (Ryan creatively drew a skeleton with a crayon, then painted clothes on top)

Our morning snack consisted of popcorn and candy corn gloves

...while the afternoon snack was candy corn shaped Rice Krispie treats (Next time, I'll add more food coloring, but in the proper light, they were white, yellow and orange stripes.  There's a how-to video if you follow the link!)

We made fake blood with gelatin, water and food coloring

We whipped up some clearanced $.99 Nestle sugar cookies from Target to bring to our neighbors' front yard BBQ

Then it was finally time to trick or treat!

Curious Jason George 

Ryan Vader (PS - this mask didn't last 1 minute after dark...he couldn't see a thing.  What a waste!)

My butterfly fairy (with the matching hot pink treat bucket)

Jason spent most of the night in the wagon, licking a lollipop. Come to find out later that his shoes were too small and gave him huge blisters.  Poor little monkey!

After sorting the kids' candy, Ryan proceeded to form his into a perfect square, grouping like candies together. Is he my kid or what?!?

We got so much candy that I wanted to just throw it all away. Seriously. Instead, I pulled all of the M&Ms and Hershey bars for baking, the Whoppers and candy corns for Oreo turkeys, rainbow colored candy (Skittles, Smarties, DOTS, Nerds, Mike & Ikes) for our Christmas gingerbread houses, plus I pulled all of Mike's favorites to stick in his lunch every day. Once all of that was gone, the buckets weren't overflowing quite so much. Bring on the month-long sugar rush!