Dailies | Halloween 2015

Note to our family: I know a few of you have asked for Halloween photos.  If you click on any of the photos in this post, you’ll be taken to the slightly bigger (and sharper) versions.  You can then right-click and save the photos!

Halloween is my favorite holiday!  I’ve blogged quite a bit about the fun we’ve had on this day over the years.  I thought it would be fun to post some links to old Halloween posts, even back when Brownie Bites was little more than a place to dump some personal photos that our family could see:

Halloween 2013 (with a snack mix recipe that’ll change your life)

Halloween 2011 (pumpkin carving with friends, and our zombie costumes!)

Halloween 2010 (redneck Twilight, ’nuff said)

Halloween 2009 (Michael Jackson before and after)

Halloween 2008 (gypsies and pirates, oh my!)

Decorating our house is so fun!  It may look like we put some serious effort into this, but it’s really quite easy.  Halloween decorating is more forgiving than Christmas.  It’s okay for things to look wonky and off-kilter and willy nilly.  That is the nature of the holiday, after all!

The best part of decorating is hearing the comments from the neighborhood kids, especially the ones that remember our house year after year.  If we add a little extra fun into a child’s Halloween night, then every second we put into decorating is worth it.

For dinner this year we made The Pioneer Woman’s orange chicken from her new Dinnertime cookbook.  My mom gave me the book as a gift and we were excited to try one of the recipes!  The book is full of beautiful full-color photos and step-by-step directions, but I gotta be honest about this particular recipe – it wasn’t my favorite orange chicken.  It wasn’t bad, but the sauce needs some tweaking – we found it to be a little too sour and bitter.

I love P-dub and use so many of her wonderful recipes, so I’m not giving up on this book yet!  We’re going to pick another recipe next weekend to try, so follow me on Instagram if you want to see what we choose and how it turns out!

Part of celebrating Halloween as parents has been taking advantage of an excuse to take 100 baby photos, so we might as well get to it!

I’m sure every parent knows the little tricks to get their baby to crack a smile in photos.

The things that amuse Jasper seem to change every couple of months.

Right now, he’s completely tickled at his new skill – arms up!  He’s so proud of himself for understanding what we’re asking him to do.

This little pumpkin costume was just an easy purchase from Target – 25% off using the Cartwheel app!

My mom gave us a Halloween onesie that had cute black and white striped sleeves, so I put it on underneath the costume to keep his arms warm.

Then I found a pair of black baby tights so his legs wouldn’t get cold!

He started walking a couple of weeks ago.  He started out with tentative, wobbly steps and lots of falls, but his confidence and balance improved quickly.

Now he’s teedle-toddling all over the place.  I can’t believe we have a walker!

He hates sitting in grass.  I’m not sure why.  Is it too itchy?  Too green?  Who knows.

He’ll stand in the grass without complaint!

Arms up!

He doesn’t like pacifiers, throws his teething rings on the floor, but he’ll chew his little fingers off if we let him.

This is probably the only year I’ll get away with dressing him in a costume solely for the cute factor.  Next year he’ll probably want to be something like Darth Vader or Iron Man.  And when that day comes, his daddy will spend a month beforehand carefully crafting his costume.  This boy has Matt wrapped around his tiny baby-sized little finger.

Last Halloween he was only 10 days old.  Seeing this photo versus what he looks like today blows my mind.  Where did my tiny newborn go?!

For part of the evening Jasper plastered his face against the side windows next to the front door.  He chuckled big belly laughs when kids in costume came to the front door.  Eventually he got bored with watching the Trick or Treaters and returned to his favorite activity – unloading the DVD shelves!

What did you do for Halloween?  Did you blog about it?  Link me in the comments!