Happy Halloween! {Our Bo on the Go Costumes and How We Do Halloween}

Happy Halloween!

Whether you celebrate Halloween, Reformation Day, Dia de los Muertoes, Samhein, All Saints Day or Harvest...I hope your celebration was (or will be) fun and safe.

Costumes
My little guy dressed up like a dragon and I dressed up as Bo from Bo on the Go to complement him. For the uninitiated, Bo on the Go is a Canadian television show which is available in the US through Netflix (and maybe other places....we watch on Netflix). My son really likes it and as a mom I like it because it encourages kids to move while watching TV. When he's not watching TV, Bo-like scenarios fuel his imagination and he frequently tells me he needs to "crawl like a critter" or "jump like a kangaroo" to accomplish an everyday mission while playing at home. I recommend it for kids age 2-5.

Desadore "Dezzy" Dragon {$12}: While I LOVE homemade costumes, sometimes there is something to be said for efficiency. I bought my son's costume on sale at an Old Navy outlet store for $12. I'm sure I could have spent $12 (or easily more!) and several hours to make a costume but this one was darn cute and the right price and did not require any extra work from me. His belly isn't pink like Dezzy so it's not quite perfect. If I was really motivated, I could have added some pink fabric over the top of the dark green to make his belly the right color.

Bo (on the Go) {$17}: Bo's distinguishing features are her blue pig tails and her big eyes. For my hair, I made pigtails that I folded over to make them look shorter and then colored my hair blue with Beyond the Zone brand Color Bombz spray on temporary hair color that I picked up from Sally Beauty supply for about $7 a bottle (bought 2. Used 1.15). I have pretty dark brown hair and it did a great job actually looking blue (if you've ever tried to color dark brown hair, you know what I mean!). I also put some glow bracelets around my pigtails (i bought 3 packs at the dollar store to get the right combo of colors).

For my eyes, I watched a few video tutorials on you tube for how to make your eyes look bigger with make-up. I also colored my eyebrows blue with hairspray (spray on finger, apply to eye brow) and blue eye shaddow.

Then I just wore a t-shirt, yoga pants and some more glow bracelet "power bands" and I was all set. Overall, the costume was easy to put together. The most time-consuming part was doing my hair.


Trick or Treating
We try and emphasize friends and fun on Halloween more than candy. We had two other families with kids who are similar age over for a potluck dinner, trick or treating and games. We didn't do too much trick or treating - just a walk around the block, which ended up being about 12 participating houses.

We handed out little boxes of organic raisins. Most kids seemed plenty happy with this option although one kid looked confused (and then unhappy) when he learned he got raisins instead of "real" candy. Sorry kid. We're anti-GMO in our house and I'm sure these were what you were looking for:

The Candy Fairy
Every year parents wonder what to do with their kids candy. Our house follows the tradition of the Candy Fairy. The Candy Fairy is the Tooth Fairy's cousin. The Candy Fairy is the Tooth Fairy's cousin and since everyone knows that the better conditioned teeth are worth more in Tooth Fairy-landia so she helps by trading candy for presents.

On Halloween night, my son got to pick out 2 pieces of candy he wanted to keep (you get 1 piece for every year old you are) and the rest was left on the dining room table for the Candy Fairy. In the morning when he wakes up, he'll find presents from the Candy Fairy in his bucket instead.


Do you have other healthy Halloween traditions? I'd love to hear about them!

The Candy Fairy

 Halloween can be a funny holiday. I have never enjoyed the creepy, gross-you-out, super scary things that some people like to do for Halloween. But I do love pumpkins, leaves and costumes (non-scary ones of course).  As mom to a little guy, though, Halloween brings a whole new dynamic....what to do with all that candy?!

Last year, we didn't go trick or treating. I made K a Yoda costume, Joe was a Jedi and I was Princess Leia. We went to a Halloween party and K was so little we just wore him around in the sling all night. We had a blast but because we didn't go trick or treating, there was no need to worry about piles of candy when we got home.

Halloween 2010 - K is 5 months old

This year was a little different because K can walk and could actually go trick-or-treating. K's friend Evie came over and we took them out trick-or-treating. Evie was a cheerleader and K was a monk (You can even check out my monk costume tutorial), although he was also frequently mistaken for being a Jedi. We just went around our block but still came home with a nice little bag of candy.

Halloween 2011 - K is almost 18 months old

So now, what to do? We have a bag of candy and we don't really eat candy. K, especially, doesn't eat candy. I got a lot of "let him have one piece a day" advice (and a lot of looks from people who thought I was nuts for wanting to avoid giving my 1 year old candy), but I just didn't feel comfortable going from one piece of candy or a bite of a cookie about once every 10 days or so to once a day. Why? Primarily because most candy has high fructose corn syrup as a main ingredient - which is made almost exclusively from genetically modified corn. Most candies also include artificial food dyes, which studies are starting to show can cause behavior problems in some children, especially those with an intolerance to food dye, like my nephew. So, uh, no thanks.  

But back to my original question....what are we going to do with the candy?  Enter...

The Candy Fairy!

I read about the Candy Fairy online and thought it was such a genius idea that we decided to adopt it. The Candy Fairy, you see, is a cousin of the tooth fairy. Her job is to help her cousin's mission of pristine teeth by removing excess candy from homes post-Halloween. Once you are done trick-or-treating, you can pick out one thing from your bucket for every year old you are. Everything else gets left for the candy fairy. She comes overnight and takes the candy away and leaves a cool toy in it's place!

The Candy Fairy is also industrious enough to wrap presents in a blankie and  ribbon from Mommy's studio

Whoa! Cool alphabet toy!

What do you do with all your Halloween candy? Does the Candy Fairy visit your house? Do you bake it into cupcakes? Do you give it away?  I'd love to hear about it!