Riot and Frolic

Monday

Books for the week: hey, big surprise – a lot of parents plan ahead and like, check out holiday themed books before the actual holiday.  

Therefore, those of us who are just getting the hang of this planning-ahead-and-taking-care-of-our-children thing and are looking for ghost books the week of Halloween are screwed.  

Or have to be creative.  

Whatevs.

The adorable There's No Such Things as Ghosts by Emmanuelle Eekhout and the classic What Was I Scared Of? by Dr. Seuss suited us.

We had some cute wall and window decals, so two books and pasting things on the wall?  DONE.

I'm not going to say anything about this skeleton except that maybe the girls don't have a great grasp of anatomy yet. 

Tuesday

For my own benefit (not the benefit of my young, impressionable children), I kept this week real cute and NOT SCARY. 

I'm not sure why I even picked ghosts as a theme… because I'm scared of ghosts.  

Every time.

Except for our activity for today, which scared the crap out of 50% of the participants.

Balloon ghosts: a cute science experiment GONE WRONG.

Baking soda, vinegar, a plastic bottle, and a balloon.  It all started out so innocently… but there was a tiny hole in Mae Cake's balloon.  

[Is it terrible that I was laughing this whole time, and still do when I look at these pictures?]

AS LONG AS THERE'S NO HOLES IN YOUR BALLOONS, this is a really cool experiment/activity.  We might have done it twice this week.  The balloons stay inflated for a day or two and the liquid in the bottle fizzes for an unexpected amount of time.  It's neato.

Time at the table: 2 minutes.  Effects (both traumatic and fun): two days.

Wednesday

Mini ghost cards: from the amazing Craft a Day, the girls each made a card for one of their sisters.  

just go buy this, okay?

It gave us a reason to use my swanky white gel pens.  While V was more than happy to give Zoo a card, I think she might have been a little off center of "nice" and I quote:

Zoo, You are crazy sometimes.  I think you are crazy and crabby.  Love, V

Mae Cake drew happy ghosts and a picture of V that looks an AWFUL LOT like Hyperbole and Half's alter ego.  She won.

Time at the table: 10 minutes.

Thursday

Ghost "cake": this might be considered a Pinterest fail, if I cared or it wasn't food.  I found this totally cute and simple-looking pull-apart cake (a bunch of cupcakes placed really close together to look like a legit shaped cake) on Dollhouse Bake Shoppe.

the inspiration

the result

Come on, they're almost exactly the same.
 

Friday

Ghost decorations: repurposing the cupcake liner separators (it's totally a thing) from yesterday's project, we made these CRAZY EASY ghost decorations.  

Bonus points: we talked about fractions because FOLDING and used some wicked hand-eye coordination with the folding and the hole punching and the stringing.  

Note: we still don't have them hanging off anything BECAUSE THAT'S HOW OUR WEEKEND GOES. 

How was your week?  GHOSTLY?  More importantly, do you believe in ghosts (either actively or in denial, like I do)?  Do you run up the stairs every time?