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There She Grows

We had a great halloween this year, with plenty of excitement and participation from Lilah. Its so fun to experience my long-time favorite holiday from this new perspective, to see it through the eyes of a young kid. She was gearing up for it all month; telling everyone about her costume, making decorations, becoming obsessed with books about halloween and the concept of trick or treating.

It felt like our halloween fun went on for weeks, which was pretty awesome. And when the day finally came, Lil really had a great time with it. And then we ‘grown-ups’ even managed to do some partying of our own. Here’s my long picture-post.

Earlier in the month, Terri & Jo brought us out to a great fall festival in Culver City. It was everything we were looking for and more. Lilah was able to run through a hay-maze, chase mini-alpacas around in a ridiculously adorable petting zoo, ride a train and some ponies and of course, choose from rows upon rows of pumpkins in every shape and size. We ended up bringing several pumpkins home. It was a lovely day, complete with almost-fall weather which is such a rarity here in LA.

Lil really enjoyed the idea of decorations. She was thrilled to see them up wherever we went and eagerly helped do some for our own house. I showed some of her work in a previous post, and we added some more as the month went on. I helped her make a big ghost out of a white garbage bag stuffed with newspaper. She pasted the “eyes” on with glitter glue and we hung it from the palo verde tree. I have some old paper skeletons we hang in our tall front windows, and a ghost windsock from the dollar store which Lilah loved (”Look mom he’s dancing! He’s going crazy!!!” when the wind blew through it). She made some spider web and pumpkin patch artwork at school which went up in the windows too, and we hung some pumpkin lanterns from our front tree.

And at some point, we made halloween cookies which Lil decorated.

Our friend Eileen was visiting on Halloween weekend with Tom. She and I carved up some jack-o-lanterns. Lil helped a little, but wasn’t quite sure how she felt about the slimy pumpkin guts. We saved most of the seeds and I later roasted them with seasoning salt… a yummy snack.

We used Mr. Potato-Head-like pieces on our smaller pumpkins, a fun find from CVS. What a great idea these things are! Lil really enjoyed doing them.

The night before Halloween, I went to a party donning my Plan A costume: A human in Zombieland. Yes, I was inspired when I saw that very fun movie and knew it would somehow infiltrate my costume plans. I figured there would be too many zombies about so i’d just be myself fighting for survival. Can you dig it? Marie Antoinette has very little to do with that of course.

And the next day was finally halloween. Lilah was psyched pretty much all day, saying “happy halloween” to everyone and delighting in the fact that our waitress at Astro was a witch. Eileen & Tom had arrived and so we spent the day hanging with them and getting a few last minute necessities for the evening before it was time for Trick or Treating in Atwater – which is an insane spectacle. Trish came to hang with us for this as well.

I love our neighborhood for Trick or Treating! Our street was so packed that there were short lines to go up to each house. We took Lilah just a few blocks on our street and she got tons of candy and had a great time. She was a duckling… specifically Ming Ming of the Wonder Pets. I actually found a vintage-style aviator helmet with goggles when I had almost given up on it. I even made her a green cape from an old tee shirt, but then I couldn’t find it that night (sigh!). Not surprisingly, the parents of toddlers were the ones who knew who she was.

I was a witch just for trick-or-treating purposes, and Lilah was really getting into it. She was calling me a witch all night and when she got tired of walking she ordered, “Pick me up, witch!” with a huge laugh. Here’s also a pic of Lilah holding hands with her sudden trick-or-treat buddy Daniel. The two had never met before but started holding hands and going up to the houses together. How cute!

When she tired of trick-or-treating, we all chilled on our front stairs to give out candy to the droves and droves of kids still coming. Lilah was very into seeing all the costumes and handing out the candy. “Hey, you forgot one more!” She would call as they walked away. It was her very important job!

Check out our buddy Roman, he did all his awesome makeup for Two Face. Lil is impressed.

Needless to say Lil was up past her bedtime with all this excitement. When she was finally in bed it was time for us to get ready for our party times. We had a babysitter from 10 til the wee hours of the night so we could go to our friends’ big shindig. I was pretty much over my previous evenings’ attire so I changed it up and went as a demented doll. I have stitches and stuff, you just can’t see them so well here. I’m with Adrienne the hostess cupcake and Trish the flapper.

Mike was one of those Teabag Party wackjobs, and did a hilariously awesome job I might add. Check out all those “villians” on his sign, LOL! Chicagoans take note: even Steve Bartman is on there.

Eileen was a truly fabulous Joan Holloway with Sexy Nurse Tom (lol).

More pics from all these festivities can be found HERE!

I wonder what Lil will want to be for halloween next year! (As for Mike and I, we were joking about Princess Buttercup and the Dread Pirate Roberts unless something topical comes along. Good idea huh?)