Baby Angels Blog

What you’ll need

• 2 sheets of 68cm (27in) x 45cm (18in) gold paper
• White glue
• 8 strips of brown craft paper, 7cm (3in) x 45cm (18in)
• Cone formed from cardboard
• 8 lengths - 25cm (10in) - of gold yarn
• 4 sheets of 45cm (18 in) x 23cm (9in) yellow paper
• 4 large paper fasteners
• Wire

Background
The whole neighbourhood will be buzzing about this bee costume. Wear black clothing or leotard and tights beneath this costume.

What to do

1. Cover one side of each sheet of thick cardboard with gold paper. Round off all edges with scissors. Glue the strips of brown paper to the sheets of cardboard.
2. Cover the cone with gold paper and attach it to the bottom of the costume with wire.
3. Punch a hole at each shoulder and on each side. Tie a length of yarn through each hole.
4. Cut four wing shapes from yellow paper at one time. Glue the wings together in pairs.
5. Fold back the flaps and punch two holes in each flap. Punch four holes in the back of the costume where the wings will go.
6. Attach the wings with paper fasteners.

Saw this on ivillage, great stuff.

Halloween treats: How much is too much?

My kids eat so much junk food at Halloween when they’re trick or treating. How can I make sure they have a good time but don’t eat too much sugar?

That’s a difficult question to answer. Halloween is a fun time of year, but you need to prevent your kids from going overboard. Here are a few simple tips to help keep your children on track, from Lyndel Costain, SRD, an independent dietitian based in Birmingham.
Feed them first: Make sure your kids eat a nutritious dinner before trick or treating so they won’t be ravenous while they’re out and when they get home. This will help naturally limit how many sweets they eat. If they’re really excited about the night’s festivities, they may not be in the mood to sit down for a super nutritious meal like fish and broccoli, so think about treating them to one of their favourites instead.
Set guidelines: Decide before trick or treating how many goodies your kids will eat that evening and each day after. Try to make sure your kids consume no more than two sweets or chocolates a day, and check that they are eaten with meals to reduce the risk of tooth decay. Eating sweets with meals will also help regulate your children’s blood sugar, therefore limiting the ‘buzz’ associated with the typical sugar high. Also, if your kids are full after a meal they’ll want fewer sweets than if they are hungry.
Ration the spoils: Limit the number of homes or flats your children visit while trick or treating to cut down on the amount of sweets they get.
Prioritise the loot: After your child goes trick or treating, go through his or her bag of sweets together. Get rid of all the sweets your child doesn’t like, then divide the rest into three piles: foods that will spoil in a few days (fruit, etc.); sugary sweets and chocolate; and a miscellaneous pile for chewing gum, money, etc. Let your child eat the treats that will spoil first, as those are likely to be healthiest, and save the others for later.
Set a precedent: If you know children will be coming around to your house, consider giving them a combination of sweets, dried fruits or mini flapjacks.

A couple of things I’ve read today, All Hallow’s Eve, have really stuck with me and made me really wonder about the state of our society.

First, I was reading through a local guide to Halloween events and was struck by the fact that each of those listed had the word “safe” in its title. But why do we need to know that the event is safe in the first place? Because, of course, there’s much about Halloween celebrations that is no longer safe.

Even before that, my 5yo and I were walking together down on the Pearl Street Mall, a major pedestrian and tourist center in town, and were startled by two men dressed in costume. Not any old costumes, but quite elaborate and grotesque nightmare outfits, one as a horrific Orc or similar, carrying two bloody and dismembered heads on chains, the other as, well, I don’t know, but it was phantasmagorical and quite frightening. G-, unsurprisingly, was fascinated by the pair and insisted we follow them for quite some time. Luckily a few minutes after we first saw them, one had to pull off his full-head mask and we got to see it was just a regular guy in a fancy outfit.

But even with that sneak view of the man underneath the outfit, G- was totally obsessed with them and kept asking me questions as the day went on, and doubly so at bedtime.

Perhaps it’s because we haven’t desensitized our kids through frequent exposure to modern media, but why should we have to? I hate feeling like a prude or old fogey or something, but I feel like we constantly have to worry about the culture around us.And I haven’t even mentioned the depressingly frequent use of obscenities in almost all settings…

Oh, and the third data point: Hundreds arrested during Halloween bash at a college party in Madison, Wisconsin. This follows a similar experience here in Boulder last year when locals set cars on fire, got into fights and even ended up in hospital.

What the heck is wrong with these people, one and all? What happened to having fun, to being silly but playful regarding Halloween and partying as a way to meet folk and maybe “get lucky”?

It’s days like this that make me quite sympathetic to folk who want to abolish Halloween entirely. And yet, I know that my kids love dress up and enjoy Halloween.

So how can we throw out the proverbial bathwater, but keep the baby?

Bah, humbug.