Tips for Mickey's Halloween Party

For the second year in a row we took our four kids to Mickey's Halloween Party at Disneyland.  We purchased our tickets for a Tuesday night.  With your tickets you are able to enter the park at 3:00 p.m..  Guests that don't have tickets to the party must leave at 6:00 when the party officially begins.

My little Evie was Tinker Bell.

Here are some things that have worked for us at the party:  

When you get in the park they give you trick-or-treat bags, but they fill up quickly.  We brought a fabric grocery bag to combine our candy in.  

Bring a stroller.  They give out so much candy so have something to hang your candy bags on.  They get sooo heavy!

The areas that candy is given out are called candy trails.  They are everywhere in the park. 

The less busy the part of the park the less busy the trails are.

Don't just go through the candy trails.  The lines for rides are almost all shorter than usual.

If you want to see the characters get in their lines early.  There are lots of characters to see.  Some are at dance parties you can dance with.  The Disney Villains all do a closing act together at the end of the night by the main entrance.

Besides the normal fall/Halloween decorations they add even more during the party.

The best view for the Fireworks is in the area to the right of the castle.  

They do two Halloween parades and the second one is much less crowded.

It's at the end of the night so you can get good seats close to the entrance and easily head out after.

Our 1 year old fell asleep in her stroller by the end.  It goes until 11:00 on Tuesday night.  We came home with so much candy our trick-or-treaters will be getting treats imported from Disneyland!

Trick-or-Treat Bag DiY's

We are so excited to share Halloween bag ideas from Taryn today.  Taryn contributed a darling Valentines DIY back in February.

Here is Taryn:

last minute halloween bags with a twist...

Every year we like to have a theme for our Halloween.  This year it has evolved as we've gone along.  At first I was thinking we could do tall tale characters that way they would be school character parade ready.  But of course my 1st grader couldn't figure out something that fit into that he was interested in.  My 3rd grader was planning to be a Paul Bunyan for school- easy lumber jack, my pre-schooler Davy Crocket- easier had everything on hand for that one.  So when my 1st grader decide he wanted to be a scout for school, but something scary for halloween night. We had to figure out how to fit everything in and without having to come up with more than one costume for everyone.  So here is what we ended on.  My 2 year old dressed as a genius for our first Halloween party.  The story goes that he decided to experiment on himself since he had all these manly brothers: a lumber jack, a scout, and an explorer.  He ended up turning himself into an evil genius and decided to turn his brothers into monsters.  So for Halloween night we will have an evil genius and his big brothers.  A lumber jack-werewolf, zombie-scout, and vampire-explorer.  Yes its a bit of a stretch I know but everyone around my house is happy about it so I call it a win-win.

 

So then all we needed were some new Halloween bags.  The old halloween bags I made for my boys were totally worn out.  I needed something simple and quick, but that i still loved.  I decided to buy pre-made canvas bags (at wal-mart) that way I wouldn't have to do any sewing this time around.  I wanted something Halloween-y but also something that was a little different.  I came up with a moon - werewolf, brains - zombie, red cross - vampire, equations - evil genius.  

moon bag- I just used items around my kitchen to trace one large circle and a few smaller circles onto my bag and then mixed black and white paint to paint in my moon.

zombie bag- I had some stamp making supplies at my house, they were a gift from my boys one christmas and they have really come in handy for all sorts of projects.  So for my zombie bag a made a brain stamp.  I then traced some evenly spaced circles on the bag and then used black paint to stamp the brain stamp i made into each one.  I them painted over my traced circles with black paint.

vampire bag- This one was simple.  i just used painters tape to make the outline of the cross, to make it easier and make sure my lines were crisp I did the vertical line and then the horizontal line making sure i pressed tight on my edges before applying the red paint.

evil genius bag- I put down some painters take to make a square to give me guide lines to stay in. I actually searched for images of equations on google. I found an image I liked and first copied it down in pencil and then traced it with a fine tipped pen.

Halloween: Duck Dynasty costume DiY

We ended up dressing up as Willie and his wife Korie from Duck Dynasty for our Halloween party.  If you watch the show my hair looks more like Jessica's, but Korie is blonde too.  

My husband normally looks nothing like this photo.  He glued the beard on so well he had a hard time eating;).  

Here is what he used for his Willie costume:

The bandana was part of a generic duck hunter costume I found at a costume store.

I also found his beard at a different costume store.  His beard/hair was harder to find than I would have thought.  We checked out a Duck Dynasty costume kit, but the beard wasn't full at all.  I even bought doll hair thinking I could try to make one.  Fortunately for him I found this beard and hair in a set.  He was getting worried when I brought home the doll hair.  We used spirit glue to apply the beard/mustache.  The Aviator style sunglasses he already had and he borrowed the hunting shirt from one of his friends.  Willie often wears jeans, so my husband wore some he had and brown shoes.

For the Duck Dynasty wife look here's what I wore:

I found two blonde hair extensions for $3 each.  They look like a mess in this picture, but they were really close to my hair color and looked better in person.

I wore fake eyelashes for the first time and LOVED them.  The lipstick I wore is Mac Ruby Woo.  

The Duck Dynasty shirt I found at Scheels.  I had the belt and sweater in my closet.

I found these pants at Gap for 40% off.  I really like how they fit and plan to wear them again.

I wore brown suede bootie heels I had that are a similar color to the ones shown in the photo above.

Friday Favorites: New recipes

For Today's Friday Favorite I'm sharing my favorite new recipe.  It is so so good and my whole family loved it!  Huge bonus that almost all the ingredients were in my pantry.

Get the recipe at I Heart Nap Time for this yummy Sweet and Sour Chicken.

DiY Thursday: Puppet Witch and Trick-or-treat bag Monster

A few easy Halloween DiY's to make with your kids, grandkids, or school classes.  I have loved getting e-mails from room moms who are using some of our Halloween ideas.  I'm all for using easy and inexpensive items for little projects.  The first DiY is a paper bag witch puppet.

Paper Bag Puppet Witch

Supplies:Black, green, white, and purple paper if you want a bow.

Paper straw (I used a stripe green and white one).

Brown paper bag (these are sold in bunches near the sandwich bags at most grocery stores).

Crayon or google eyes.

Scissors and glue.

Step 1:  Cut out a witch nose out of the green paper.  Then two circles out of the white paper.  A witch shaped hat out of the black paper and if you want a bow cut it out of the purple paper.

Step 2: Cut the straw down to the width of the hat.

Step 3:  Now you are ready to glue.  Glue the hat to the top of the flap.  Then glue the straw across the hat and a purple 

hair bow above it.  Glue the green nose just below the bottom of the hat and then glue the eyes on top of it.  Choose a color to color your eyes and witch will look like the picture below.

Trick or Treat Bag Monster

Supplies: You will need a colored gift bag with handle. ( I found a 12 pack of bright colors at Hobby Lobby for $5.99)

Paper: Black, white, and two different patterned or colored papers.  

Scissors and glue.

Step 1: Cut a large circle out of the white paper and a smaller circle out of the black paper.  Cut arms with hands out of one of the patterned papers.  Out of the other patterned paper cut teeth.

Step 2:  Glue the large white circle in the middle of the two bag handles and glue the black circle on top.

Glue the teeth a little below the eye.

 Step 3: Glue the arms to each side of the bag.    

Finished!  Some of the kids I did this with wanted to off center their eye and draw red lines on the white part of the eye too.

Couples Costume Ideas.

My husband and I are going to an adult only Halloween party where dressing up is required.  I'm all for dressing up at Halloween, but my husband has somehow avoided it for years.  I can remember multiple parties planned with friends where he convinced all the other guys at the party to not dress up so he wouldn't have to.  One year one of the husbands didn't get the memo and he came in a Shaggy costume, complete with fake chest hair.  I have been working on getting our costumes together for the past few days.  Here are two themes I am loving this year for couples costumes.  Next week I'll share photos of what we end up going as.

Candle Holders

Our concrete candle holders are on P.S. i adore you through Tuesday.  If you haven't heard of P.S. i adore you a portion of the sales from products on their site go to cancer fighting kids.  Love being a part of this cause.

To purchase go here.

Leaf Wreath

Just a few more wreaths left for our fall wreath week.  I'll be doing a roundup of them all soon in case you missed any.

Step 1: Purchase a straw wreath and leave the plastic on.

Step 2: You will need one yard of a brown or natural colored burlap.  I like the brown.  Cut the yard into strips of burlap.

Step 3: Wrap the strips around the entire wreath.  You can hot glue the end of each strip to keep it more secure.

Step 4: Glue the last strip to the back.

Step 5: Purchase Decorative leaves.  We purchased ours at Hobby Lobby for half off.

Step 6: Grab your glue gun and start gluing.

 Step 7: Place the leaves in groupings to add more dimension to the wreath.

 Step 8: After you have all your leaves on your wreath it is ready to hang.  I used ribbon and tulle to hang my wreath.

 My finished leaves look like this.

Your fall wreath is finished.  You can trim the stray strings on the wreath or leave some of them frayed.  I left most of mine for a more rustic fall look.

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Fall Wreath Week: TBT DiY

*I originally posted this Burlap spider wreath DiY a few years ago.  Since it's still one of my favorites here it again for fall wreath week.

Step 1: Purchase a straw wreath wrapped in plastic like this.

I still had some lying around from a yarn wreath kick my neighborhood went on in the spring.

Step 2: Purchase a yard of orange burlap.  I found mine at Hobby Lobby.

Step 3: Cut the burlap into 3 inch. wide strips.

Step 4: Grab a glue gun and start wrapping.  Glue when needed to keep the burlap wrapped tightly.

The wreath should look like this when you are finished wrapping the burlap.

Burlap is a little tricky and will fray.  Cut loose strings with scissors.

Step 5: Purchase web placemat from Target.

Step 6: Put placemat on the back of the wreath and cut it from a rectangle to the shape of the wreath.

 Step 7: Glue placemat to back of wreath.

Step 8: Use black tulle and coordinating ribbon to hang your wreath.

It will look like this.

Step 9: Find some decorative spiders.  I purchased a four pack from Target for $1.00.

 Step 10: Use a glue gun to place them on the wreath.

 I ended up using three spiders.  Here is the finished wreath.

Oh and I almost forgot.  You can add a mommy spider too.