Well, that was fun. 

I seriously cannot believe how fast this year is blowing by! It doesn't seem possible that it's already November. And yet it is. 

Halloween was a howling good time. We stretched it out for as long as possible. 

First things first. The house has to be decorated. 

This is might be my favorite part. It's like the house gets to wear a fun costume for a month! Actually, I began spooking ours when September appeared on the calendar. 

I feel like Homer Simpson. I completely left out the best part of Halloween 2010. Doh.

Yes, Reagan was Captain Hook at the Disney party that year. And she was seriously SO cute. The photo above is her trying on the outfit at the Contemporary gift shop a few weeks prior. 

But what I failed to include in my last post was the amount of costume changes Reagan had that Halloween. 

The first is Captain Hook - obviously. She wore this costume to Mickey's party at the Magic Kingdom. 

Our neighborhood had a Halloween costume block party a few days before the 31st. For this party, Reagan was a red crayon. 

Today we picked up the kids 2017 Halloween costumes. I know, we are "way early". Both kids knew what they wanted to be, so I figured we get that shopping out of the way. I don't want a repeat of the 2015 Halloween fiasco. And I wanted to get out of the house...

Both Stu monsters have assured me that they will NOT change their minds before October 31. And since we arrived home, they have been in total character. I will be waiting to reveal their costume choices (sorry). 

We took last year off. But I really missed throwing this party. 

The neighborhood we currently live in is not trick-or-treat friendly and Halloween is on a Monday (boo, hiss), so we had to come up with alternatives to the norm. We decided this year's Halloween festivities would be the Halloween party at the Magic Kingdom and our party. 

First up, the decorations. There's a very good chance that my mom and I (and probably my sister's too) have a serious Halloween addiction. I cannot even begin to detail how many decorations we have... to list them would take days. But, whenever I throw a party, I am sure happy we have so much stuff to choose from. 

The kids had a great time helping us set up the house - both inside and out. 

This past week I was feeling crafty. I took to Pinterest for the inspiration. 

Sometimes I really dislike living in Florida. It is still a million degrees outside, yet all the stores have Halloween decorations out and pumpkin spice everything is everywhere. 

My sisters assured me that it is not too early to pull out the Halloween decorations. 

We have not gone overboard (yet). Give it time. But a few little touches have popped up around the house. 

I love the holidays... this one in particular. I feel like Halloween is the kick off of the season. 

This year I thought it would be fun to decorate cookies. My mom makes amazing sugar cookies. I don't. I went the skill-less-mom route and bought Pillsbury sugar cookie batter. The one that comes in the plastic tube. I had high aspirations for my little project. I envisioned us rolling out the dough. And the kids using cookie cutters to make awesome shapes. Then we would decorate them with icing and candies. 

Well, you can't use that kind of dough with a rolling pin and cookie cutters. It falls apart and isn't strong enough to handle such mutilation. 

After several frustrating minutes and a few attempts in the freezer, I gave up. I just rolled them into balls and stuck them in the oven. 

15 minutes later, we had lovely discs to decorate. 

After the initial disappointment of the failed cookie cutters, the kids had a total blast decorating their discs. The monsters they created were adorable and delicious. 

Maybe next year we will enlist Grammie's help to create professional looking sugar cookies.