The Mighty Abbotts: Fall Crafts

We had quite a few projects we worked on this fall. Some we chose, others were thrust upon us by over-zealous tomato plants. What do you do with 25 lbs of tomatoes? Make spaghetti sauce. What do you do when it happens again? Make salsa. And the third time? Try to ignore them, they will go away, right?

25 lbs of tomatoes on my counter. The bucket on the right was our picking bucket.

Tomato peels on the left, peeled tomatoes on the right. This is the hardest part of canning tomatoes

My 8 quart pan full of tomato sauce. I also got a few pints of tomato juice from the process.

All that work and it was gone so quickly. Delicious and short-lived, like summer itself.

The other big project this fall was Halloween costumes. Katrina's was my favorite costume. I did nothing for it. I didn't even have to buy it, my Mom picked it up for me at Costco.

Katrina as Elsa. We went trick-or-treating with her two cousins who were also Elsa.

Caleb has told me that his costume was the best. He wanted to be a Jedi knight. He already had the awesome sword and my sister found the cloak at the DI. I made his outfit. It was pretty easy as it required no fasteners, just an elastic in the waist.

Caleb is so good at posing.

Sophie said that because airline stewardesses are scary, she wanted to be one for Halloween. I was worried about this costume because I really didn't want to make the jacket for it. So, we went to the DI in hopes of finding something suitable. Amazingly, we found a jacket and skirt combo that fit. On another shopping trip to the DI, I found a Boeing, Boeing stewardess bag for her to use for candy. We made the hat from an online tutorial. And the best finishing touch was my mom's wings that she got when she was ten on her flight to Holland.

I know she said stewardesses are scary, but she's just cute.

All of us love Studio C, and watch countless hours of it online or on TV. Maggie decided to be the shoulder angel. She printed out a picture and we went from that. I found great wings and a halo and Maggie fixed up a skirt and shirt for her outfit. She did almost all the sewing for it.

Aww, angelic.

Probably the hardest and best costume was Hannah's. After we saw Maleficent sometime in early September, Hannah knew she wanted to be Maleficent. She found some horns online. I have a cape pattern that we thought we could modify for her cape. We found some great material on a major shopping trip with Barbara. Hannah drew the shape she wanted for the collar. After some trial and error, I sewed wire into the collar and, lo and behold, it stood up and could be molded any way we wanted. My dad, a whiz at making things, took my idea for her staff and made it a reality. It's hard to see in this picture, but he made a wire cage that looked like fire for the ball, painted everything black and put lights in the ball. She looked AMAZING!

In heels and with the horns, she's got to be 7 feet tall, scary!

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I spent several days and multiple evenings working on these costumes, to the neglect of the rest of my house. I finished the costumes about a week before Halloween and spent the next two days cleaning up. Whew, Halloween is exhausting. Good thing you get all that candy to keep you going. (The following are pictures of some of the dirty rooms. I was too exhausted to even look in the toy room.)