Spiders and bats. Bats and spiders.

For any of you who have ever endured Little Einsteins around Halloween, you probably understand the title of this post!  Each year, it gets stuck in my head and I should probably turn it into some kind of meditation mantra.

Holidays are a HUGE deal in our home.  We decorate our house both inside and out, and we are generally known as the Griswolds of our neighborhood.  But this year, I was concerned about the beginning of the Fall holiday season for many reasons.

1) The sheer amount of time, rigging, and even the ability to find and/or locate the decorations in our attic presented an issue.  I have always been in charge of indoor decorations and the porch.  Lights, inflatables, signs, flying pumpkins and Santas in airplanes have always been Colin's job.  I spent 2 hours in our attic and couldn't even locate the Halloween stuff.  The Christmas stuff was so abundant and so pristinely and deeply stacked, there was no way I was finding the spooky decor.  Much less climbing down the ladder with it.

2) Our house is going on the market next Wednesday.  Considering the realtor told me to remove all family pictures and make the home as neutral as possible, I'm pretty sure she is NOT going to be happy about the Haunted House (both indoors and out) that we have created.  I must say, I scaled back A LOT.  Many of our neighbors came by on Monday night and asked what happened to our usual decorations.  I explained that I was trying to limit them for listing reasons, but after seeing the disappointment on the neighborhood kids' faces and hearing the whining from my own, I gave in and decorated more.  It's still at about 60%.  But it looks pathetic to me.

3) I tried to limit our indoor decorations to the playroom only.  Usually, each room in our house is spookified, but with the exception of a kicka** glass candy bowl in our kitchen, we have kept the eery candelbras and bloody handprints to the kiddo's area.

Regardless, my newfound love of handprint art is prominently displayed in my living room and will not be going anywhere.  The boys and I had SUCH a good time creating these bats and I wanted to share!

I loved seeing the differences in how they painted the canvas.  Crews' strokes were always vertical and Teague's were horizontal.

I measured their hands from the center to determine where the bat body should be.

I looked away for 5 seconds and Crews had given his bat feet.  It then began to look like a chicken.  I was like, "NO, no, no!  No feet!"  Then he cried and I realized I was being ridiculous.  If he wanted his bat to have feet, it should.  It made it his own.  It was very "Crews."

Teague is a good head taller than everyone else his age.  He also has ginormous hands.  His bat needed a special "waistline" to make his hands fit on the canvas.

I was absolutely shocked that they not only wanted to stay inside the outlines I made, but they did a fantastic job!  Anyone who has boys knows what a struggle this is...

So proud of his "bat-chicken."

I'm so proud that all those months of physical therapy for not being double-jointed, but triple-jointed paid off!

Crews

Teague

My adorable pair of bats.

 

I can't believe they painted these faces!