Halloween in '13

I thought I should post this before I'm all backed up with birthday/Thanksgiving and Christmas photos!
In short, Halloween was great. Although I am not a huge fan of the candy my girls bring home, I do love the dress up/make up creativity part of the holiday.
This year Hannah was a vampire zombie. Technically that can't exist anywhere but in the mind of a 10-year-old (since a vampire is already dead they are also already undead but not in the way zombies are....)
Lizzie actually wanted to be a centaur. Seriously, just let that sit in your brain for a little while. I explained to her that 1) it was a terrible idea; 2) there are no centaur costumes at Walmart; 3) It would be impossible to create a centaur; and 4) it was a terrible idea. So from centaur we moved on to EVERY. OTHER. COSTUME. IN. THE. FREE. WORLD. First it was vampire, then princess, then spy, then horse, then squirrel, then Elf on the Shelf (which was my idea and actually quite brilliant, but ultimately rejected) and then finally after we had looked online at EVERY. SINGLE. COSTUME. IN. THE. FREE. WORLD. Lizzie decided on being a spy, except that all the spy costumes were modeled by boys which meant a girl could not be a spy.
Eventually, about 15 minutes after I had poked my eyes out with a stick for comic relief, she decided she wanted to be a gangster. She had no idea what a gangster was, but she liked the costume so we went with it. I ordered the costume for 2-day delivery which was good because I had to alter it. And then I made her a huge money bag out of a pillow case.
The end result was that they were both adorable and I was exhausted. Here are some pictures of the day:
This is Hannah as the zombie vampire carrying the train of her friend Analisa AKA the evil queen from "The Huntsman."

And Lizzie the happy gangster:

I don't know how Hannah's hair held up all day, but it really did. I re-teased it and did more makeup when she got home from school (the school forbids blood, gore or any guns).  Lizzie was really pretty easy as all I had to do was turn her hat around the right way! So here's how they looked just before going out to Trick or Treat, especially scary in black and white:

Lizzie in living color:

 Hannah in undead color:

Oh, and while I was uploading these I noticed that I hadn't posted pictures of our pumpkin carving this year. Rob was visiting his mom at the shore, so the girls and I went out and picked out a couple (actually several more that we didn't carve!) and we made them into jack-o-lanterns and ate the delicious pumpkin seeds the next day. Here they are getting all the guts out. I carved and cooked, but I do not like the slime. I also had them give me a rough pencil drawing on the pumpkin of what they wanted it to look like and I took it from there.

 

This is Hannah's pumpkin that she named Frank. I have no idea why and find it best in these situations to just go with it. So here is Frank and his big smile:

And here is Lizzie's nameless pumpkin. It's a cat, which should surprise no one who knows her as she is regularly and loudly begging for a cat. So I made her one: