"H" is for Homeschool and for Halloween

well, we decided back at the beginning of the summer we were not going to send them to MDO this year. there are so many reasons to send them, and so many to not. emily has a late september birthday so she really should be in a pre-k, so i'm homeschooling her. emily wanted to make it as close to her old MDO as we could, so i let her help me with setting the schedule. it's going okay. it's a little hard because we have to do it around elliot's nap schedules, but that's okay. they both are very excited about the school in the gameroom. :)


i have a friend who works in a photography studio. a couple of months ago she asked me if she could shoot them in their costumes for an upcoming halloweeen/fall mailer they were doing. i told her sure, because i thought my mom was going to help me make emily's dorothy costume. it did not work out that way, i had to sew it myself. so, for two solid (almost) days i sewed a dorothy costume...i've only sewed one other dress (and it was super simple) for her. this dress was HARD!!! it had so many pieces! but, i was determined to do it, and i did. :) i think i did a pretty good job seeing as i'd never sewn anything that complicated before. i'd never done a hem before, i had no idea what some of the sewing terms were..so many firsts!! one thing that made it so hard was the bodice. the dress is all one piece! but one thing i do know now, i can sew anything!!

so anyway, today we took them in and dawn took their pictures. emily was super excited to be dorothy (mostly, i think, for the shoes), ethan was the scarecrow and elliot was the lion. ethan did ask me before we left where his stick was. he wanted to hang on a stick instead of stand up. silly boy. elliot is not pictured because he was napping, but he was the cutest lion. we borrowed a children's place lion from a friend, i want to keep it!!

i did not get elaborate AT ALL with ethan's scarecrow..but he did have some straw hanging out of his arms at the studio, and he did have some face paint on.
proud dorothy (don't tell her, but a part of her hem fell out!)

we told emily she'd have to put her dress up until it was time to trick-or-treat. it's going to be a looong month. i did tell her she could play with her shoes until then. i'll be vacuuming up red sparkles for years. :0