the ghosts of '09
just moments after pulling off their bat costumes last year, the girls decided that for the next halloween they wanted to be ghosts.. or witches.. or mermaids. when october rolled around there were several rounds of deliberation, but they finally, officially, decided on being ghosts. because in addition to being the one and only day of the year that the girls like the color black, it is also the one day they like to be "just a liiiittle tiny bit scary." i love their choices- so traditional, so simple, and so reminiscent of my own childhood.
old sheets were pulled from the give-away pile, the edges cut and ripped, a hood made from excess sheeting was attached and a slit cut for the head to pop through. layer the hooded sheet over white shoes, white tights, white leotard, some sticky paint on their faces and we were ready to go. charlie's ghost costume was even simpler, taking no more than three minutes to put together. white leggings, white hooded sweatshirt, black circles around the eyes and a squarish piece of fabric with a hole cut out to put over his head.
watching the girls float among the brownstones, shouting a giddy "boo" at many fellow trick-or-treaters, and smiling in wonder as their buckets filled was wonderful. and watching charlie walk the streets with them, in his little ghost costume, getting ready to play peek-a-boo each time the girls tried to surprise with their shouts was insanely adorable. barely taller than people's knees, the little ghost smiled and laughed as he toddled alongside the adults and big kids. candy in hand and a dribble of chocolate running down his chin, he was so happy and so awesome.
after a few exciting blocks we made our way home, past the plaza, past the library, through the few drops of rain and into our little apartment where we washed faces, chose two (more) candies to eat, cozied together to watch a show and called it a good halloween night.
the girls have been having some discussions about next year's costumes. a witch is the top of eve's list, but ruth is pulling hard for gingerbread (not a gingerbread man, or girl, just gingerbread..). they've got a year to hash it out. either way, i think we're starting in a good place.
++photos will (hopefully) be added/changed later today. after downloading all our pictures halloween night. i checked them, looked through them with the girls and went to sleep. next day i went to the computer and, poof! most of the pictures were gone forever. only a few remain that i downloaded. and, of course, since it seemed the download was successful, i wiped my memory card clean. bummer. here's hoping image recovery from the memory card works!
Monday, November 2, 2009 at 01:05PM
Reader Comments (26)
Those are some great costumes. They seem simple to construct, but your kids really loved them. Great photos, great idea.
http://oliveobserver.blogspot.com
LOVE the last photo.
absolutly devine.
precious darlings you have, I love their halloween costumes, so traditional yet completely admirable. well done.
Great ghostly costumes! Looks like your girls had fun! So sorry about the lost photos. That really is a bummer! Good luck getting them back...
Oh, and thanks for visiting my blog!
Jenny
It must have been some ghostly interference that stole your images
Well-done! I love traditional costumes, like ghosts, and bats, and vampires. I love the way your's were put together! In the top photo, what are all of the black and whte stripes from?
I would love to experience trick-or-treating in a setting such as your's, too. :)
perfect. classic. just like you and your girls! and your boy too!
This happened to me very recently (losing photos) and I somehow came across Glary Undelete. I was able to retrieve all my pics off my camera and was so relieved. If you google it you will find their site. It's a free download. Hope it helps!
Looks and sounds like you had a perfect little halloween night.
That's so upsetting about the photos! But the little ghosts seem very charming- and I absolutely love their shoes!
Katie,
What wonderful ghosts!
Please let us know if the image recovery works. We lost the pictures the exact same way last fall when my Isaac was born. The upload seemed successful, the images were erased, and then disappeared from the iPhoto library. The tragedy is that they were the pictures of the older two boys meeting their baby at the hospital. We have tried a few routes to recover them. I sure hope it works for you!
Can I use that as the excuse why I never delete the photos from my camera?? I think Bobby curses my name when he goes to upload photos because I still have Oregon images on there and it is quite the pain to select only the newbies.... Here's to forgetting to erase them..
next year maybe hansel and gretel? witches and gingerbread!
I've admired your blog/sewing/adorable kids for a little while now. I was in Brooklyn (2nd trip back east ever!) on Halloween and it occurred to me that that's where the lovely Katiedid lives! Maybe I passed three sweet (I mean scary) little ghosts and didn't even realize it!
So cute and classic- I hope you can recover the photos- I was inspired to create a costume for my own little one-(boy 9 months) this year and keeping it simple made it manageable since I am only beginning to sew. Thanks for all of the inspiration.
www.poulsompark.blogspot.com
so cute! am happy to see some scary trick or treaters. we don't really celebrate halloween in australia (although the last few years shops are really pushing it) so i never really understood why people dress up as anything and everything... and do kids really have tricks ready? one time kids said "trick or treat?" here and i said trick (was unprepared!) but they stared at me with blank faces, mumbled something about having no trick and walked on. guess they were unprepared too!
oh and understand annoyance of lost pics. only i have my son to blame who apparently thought the camera card was edible and bit onto the chip and damaged its insides. all gone. grr
these look wonderful katie. yet another great reminder that simple can be stunning!
Love it! My kids are already debating next year's costumes as well, hehe. If you shoot in jpg, with a digital point and shoot, and you erased the images, you should be able to recover all of them. Lexar Image Rescue is great. If you shoot with a digital SLR you can recover any file type, as long as you erased the memory card, and did not "format" it. Feel free to email me if you need any assistance. Aside from mommy and blogger, I'm also a photographer. :)
Katie,
We love how you dress up your kids.
We are not yet over the stage of dressing up ourselves - but I do hope that when I have a flock of my own I will be just as good a mother as you!
Check out our 2 nights of Halloween Fancy Dress here in London at :
www.alteregodiaries.blogspot.com
best best wishes
Alter Egos
I love these photos! Hope you were able to recover the rest. Beautiful pics, beautiful costumes.
it's nice to see simple cotumes ! love the red converse sneakers on the little one !
this is off-post but...I'm wondering how you deal with 3 children and making things. I'm a designer and with my first daughter I sewed a ton, made all our food, baked bread and in general was high on the beauty and bliss of motherhood. I just had our 2nd baby (she is almost 3 months) and I'm going...nuts. I have no time to make anything without fretting that I'm neglecting both children and I'm finding age 3 (my oldest just turned 3) so hard. I know this sounds nuts but I love the tone of your posts and am looking for a little advice.
Love these. I love picturing your little one keeping up with his big sisters! Hope it works out with your pictures.
I love your blog and have been so inspired. I mentioned you on my blog. Maybe you saw? I made a reversible cape :)
The costumes look like they took forever! They are GREAT!!!
The costumes look like they took hours! They are GREAT!