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Nigel's First Halloween

Every time we tell someone about something special that we're planning to do for Nigel's First "insert holiday or special occasion here," they tell us "He won't even remember it, why bother?"  Because we will!  He may not remember it, but we want to remember these special firsts.  He won't remember his saying his first word, or the day that his first tooth came in, but we will (We're kind of hoping that he'll give us his first words of "mommy" and "daddy" for Christmas this year, the way that he gave Nic the first kick that you could feel on the outside last year for Christmas), so we make a big deal out of it... How is a first tooth any different from a first Halloween or Christmas?  The answer you're looking for is:  It's not! :)  Alright, enough of that rant!  So for Nigel's first Halloween we wanted to do something special.  Nic and I hadn't done anything for Halloween (besides handing out candy to the 2 trick-or-treaters that we would get each year) since our first Halloween together in 2004, for which we dressed up using old stuff that we already had for the Fall Festival at my church.  So we were quite excited to get in to the spirit this year. 

Since we'd decorated Baby Nigel's nursery with a Mario theme we decided to dress up as Mario characters.  Nigel was going to be Baby Mario, Nic was going to be Luigi, and I was going to be Princess Daisy (since she's a brunette and is Luigi's girlfriend).  Well, Nic was already going to have to be in his wheelchair anyways, and Nigel in his stroller, so we figured that we might as well incorporate their rides into their costumes.

Nigel's costume was fairly easy to come up with.  We just got a pair of overalls and a red shirt at Kids Market, and a red hat at Wal-mart, put an "M" on it, and you've got Baby Mario...

He had to have a candy bag for all of the treats that he was going to get... Cause was 6-month old doesn't need a ton of candy?  So we went with the "Toad" look for his accessory...

Nic's was also pretty easy.  We did have to do some searching for the perfect green shirt, and he ended up with one that he had to wear backwards, but still.  We just borrowed some overalls from his dad, and got him a hat at Academy.  Put an "L" on it, and just like that you've got Luigi...

Mine was slightly more complicated.  We had to find a workable yellow dress, something for a tiara, and orange shoes... Then the yellow dress had to be customized.  Yellow dress was found and Ross' (on clearance I might add), orange flip-flops from Old Navy (also on clearance, cha-ching!), and then Hobby Lobby hooked us up for the rest.  I was very pleased to find a yellow glitter visor.  Just cut it to look like a tiara, flip it upside down, and ba-da-bing.  Add some felt for the gem, and some orange tuile to the dress, and all of a sudden, you've got Princess Daisy...

Luckily, we had saved the big boxes that Nigel's stroller and glider came in for VBS, and then hadn't used them for VBS, so we were set with boxes for their "Karts."  I forgot to take pictures of the before, during, and after of the kart making, but we got some of the after.  They were actually a lot easier than I had feared.  We just had to cut holes in the top and bottom of each box so that they could fit over the stroller and wheelchair, paint them, and we were good to go...

All in all we had a great Halloween.  We went up to the Trunk-or-treat at the church in Hoover Sunday night and then to the Monster Walk in town Monday afternoon.  We spent the evening at home watching old episodes of "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" and handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters (we were very excited to get lots of them this year, because we usually hadn't gotten many... We went through 2 1/2 bags of candy!).  For dinner we had Mummy Dogs...



Yummy Mummies!

Oh yeah!  Our pumpkins!  Since Nigel couldn't carve his pumpkin he opted to just go with the Mr. Potato Head look...

Last year Nic and I tried to carve our pumpkin to look like Darth Vader, but since Nic chose the most complicated stencil known to man, it didn't work very well so we just made it into the outline of Darth's helmet... Turns out that that just looks like a bell.  This year we decided to try something slightly less complicated, so we opted for the Autobot symbol... This would have been much easier, but we were trying to do it with a less than sharp kitchen knife, so it looked kind of ragged.  After the first night with a candle in it, it got cooked and looked more like a battle worn autobot.  Luckily I got a picture before that happened...



Freedom is the right of all sentient pumpkins!

We're prepared for next year, though.  We've already purchased our pumpkin carving kit (yet again, on clearance), so we're good to go!  I wonder what our costumes will be....

And so it began...

I guess the best place to start would be the beginning... Or at least where it was that we discovered how much we truly enjoy being crafty.  Nic has always been a big Nintendo fan, and I grew up playing Super Mario World, so when we decided to start "trying" to have a baby we decided that we wanted some sort of Mario themed room.  If we had a boy we would do the room blue with all of the boy characters, if we had a girl we would do it pink with Princess Peach and Daisy as the main characters.  Last December we had the ultrasound, saw the "meat & potatoes" and got to planning.  Given that it was a nursery, we wanted a more subdued "Baby Mario" type theme, so we were going to have to do most of it ourselves... We wanted to do paintings to hang over the crib, so we got a bunch of brushes, acrylic paints, and cheap canvases to practice our techniques on.  Those all sat in the closet for a while until we actually had time and energy to start working on the room, at which point we pulled them out and did a real quick "This is what I was picturing, what do you think" kind of practice run, and then we moved on to doing the real thing.  We had a blue color that we wanted to use as the background in the pictures, and we wanted the walls to match that blue color (it was called "pool blue").  Unfortunately we couldn't find a paint chip with a matching color, but thanks to the good men down at Lowe's we were able to get a custom paint color made and get the show on the road...

First we had to clean out the room... That was quite daunting considering we are self-proclaimed hoarders and when we moved into our house we knew that we were trying to have a baby so we never really did anything with the spare bedroom because we knew that if we made it in to an office, it wouldn't be an office for long... Thus creating quite the junk room that you almost needed a flying trapeze to get through!

(These were taken after the majority of the junk had already been removed... and it was still this bad!)

Then we decided to give my mom the wonderful birthday present of allowing her and my step-dad to come paint the room (isn't that a nice way of spinning it?)

Ah... Finally making some progress... Now let the crafting begin!!

We thought that a cube shelf would be a nice storage solution.

The cubes are cute and all, but somewhat bland and unthematical... Must do something about that!



Ahh... That's better!

I bet this kid is going to have a lot of laundry... Hmm... What could we put his laundry in that would go with the theme of the room and still be useful?  A warp pipe!!



Now if only the Warp Pipe would send the laundry directly into the washing machine!

 Now about those paintings... So far we've got a little bit of the Mario theme going on in here, but we need something to really bring it all together...



It took one full day to draw everything on the canvases...





... And another full day to paint them.  It was at this point that we decided that if we were going to do this room right, we were going to need a laser level!




We were looking around on the internet for ideas for something else, when we stumbled upon some pictures of a lamp... We needed a lamp...  



And voila!  We have a Bob-omb!

The curtains were proving to be a little difficult.  We knew that we wanted to do curtains.  We knew that we wanted to use the curtains to bring a little more color in to the room.  We knew that we wanted to use the curtains to bring Toad in somehow... So we knew that we needed polka dotted fabric.  Turns out that that's not so easy to find.  All of the red and white or white and red polka doted fabric that we could find had small dots which just really looked feminine.  Before we settled for something that we weren't so sure about, we decided to look on the internet. Jackpot!  Found the perfect fabric in no time flat, and turns out that place we ordered it from was even in Alabama!



Baby Nigel's windows are no longer naked!

Originally I had thought that for the mobile we would just hang some "coins" from the ceiling and call it a day... Well if we did that they would block the paintings that we worked so hard on and it wouldn't have music.  What are we going to do for a mobile, They don't just sell Mario mobiles on Amazon.  How about we just deconstruct the cheapest one that we can find and make it our own?

Alrighty then... We're almost finished!  Good thing cause I was getting pretty huge by this point!  We only needed one more thing!  What nursery is complete without the baby's name on the wall?

Complete with Mario font and everything!

That's pretty much it!  Throw in a few accessories.  The clock that we ordered from Hong Kong.  A fuzzy green rug.  Furniture (most of which we assembled ourselves prompting me to declare that if we ever decorate another room we will use only pre-assembled furniture).

Now we just needed a baby to put in it!




And there he is!