Halloween 2014

I've been a little absent here on Little Hiccups of late.

I've been so busy with visitors from home, Halloween, school field trips and all that regular day to day stuff that steals away my time. I had grand plans to catch up and share all the latest fun with you this week now that it's a little quieter around here but I've spent most of my spare time filling out police reports and dealing with insurance after the recent theft of our beloved cargo bike. Bike thieves suck!

I have so many fun posts to share with you so let's start with a look at Halloween...

This year we had our friends Kylie and Joel visiting from Australia with their little boy Sebastian over Halloween. This was their first time celebrating Halloween and Mathilde's too so it was extra special.

We had a real mish-mash of costumes this year: Ava was a fancy ghost (although everyone thought she was an old lady!), Lola was a werewolf, Mathilde was a chicken, I was a spider and Kim was, you guessed it, the class nerd! We're making him recycle the same costume every year as it suits him so well! Kylie and Joel dressed as vampires with Sebastian dressed as a bat. A little more cohesion in their family costumes than ours!

Boo! It's Halloween 2013

Well, Halloween is done and dusted for another year.

The girls had so much fun dressing up and going trick or treating with their friends. This year both of the girls decided to go for slightly scarier costumes than they have in the past. Ava dressed as a vampire and Lola was a bat; a vampire bat, of course!

Boo!

Halloween Cards

This year Ava and I made Halloween cards to send to her friends.

I thought we'd go for a printing technique that I haven't used in a really long time, so rather than printing the cards from our computer I made a linoleum block print from one of Ava's drawing.

We started with Ava's drawing of herself as a vampire from Hotel Transylvania. You can see the original drawing below. I resized it a little in photoshop and then traced over the print out to transfer it onto the linoleum block. Then it was time for the fun part: the carving. Ava was really keen to help out with this part but she had to give it a miss given how sharp the carving tools are and how easy it could be for her to a) cut herself, b) mess up the printing block or c) all of the above.

I hadn't done any linoleum block carving for about 15 years so I was a little concerned that it might take a really long time for me to get through it but in actual fact it was all done within a few hours. Much easier than I had expected and I found it quite a relaxing way to spend an evening.

Carving Pumpkins

It is now officially Halloween!

Ok, so it's 1am and the kids are tucked up fast asleep in bed so there won't be any celebrating Halloween for quite a few hours yet.

I've been meaning to share some of our Halloween preparations here on Little Hiccups but I've been so busy with said preparations that I haven't had the chance. Even as I'm typing this I still have to finish off my costume. Let's hope the sewing machine going in the early hours of the morning doesn't wake the kids in the next room!

So while I take a little break from the sewing machine, let's have a look at the jack-o'lanterns that we carved this year...

One of my jack-o'lanterns