Halloween '13

I'm sitting at the computer on the night of my least favorite holiday of the year while Michael takes the children door to door to beg our neighbors for candy. Over the next few weeks, I will gather up candy wrappers every time I sweep the floor, and it doesn't matter how many times I threaten to take away their candy hoard "if I find one more wrapper on the floor!!!!" because the boys know that in this case, I am the boy who cried wolf.

My problem with Halloween (besides all of my other problems with Halloween) is that it is a holiday celebrating cheap candy. If my kids came home from trick-or-treating with a jack-o-lantern full of Ghiradelli chocolates, I would lobby to make Halloween a four-times-a-year holiday. Instead, they bring home a two-month supply of Smarties and Hubba Bubba and can't even pay the chocolate tax to Mom and Dad for taking them trick-or-treating.

Halloween's one redeeming quality is the chance it offers my children to shine as super creative costume designers. Eli and Cole went as Origami Yoda and Darth Paper respectively, and their costumes are giant origami finger puppets. Unfortunately, no one knows who Origami Yoda and Darth Paper are, so Eli looks like a giant tree and Cole is a black fire hydrant.


These are great costumes for children of The Conscious Shopper because they are 100% recyclable.

Rylan's costume is not creative, but he makes a very cute zombie.

"Braaaaiiiinnnnsss!!!"
For school today, Rylan had to dress up as a Letterland character, and he chose Impy Ink.