Happy Mamas Halloween Happiness.

*Disclosure: I am a part of Hallmark’s, Life is a Special Occasion campaign and am compensated for posts I write on behalf of the brand. All opinions, last minute costume choices, and furry costume clad humans are my own.

DudeDad took it upon himself to climb up into the attic and haul down the Halloween decorations last weekend.

I appreciate the initiative there although, personally, I was perfectly okay with just leaving them there until next year. Because so much to do. And also, the squirrels.

They’ve been living la vida loca in my attic for weeks now and my general fear of rodents combined with my overall desire to never have my face creature clawed or my belly inoculated with the rabies vaccine sort of turned me off to the idea of going in there to collect the Halloween décor.

That’s the nice thing about having a spouse though; when you are busy sucking at things he can go ahead and pick up the slack for you and sacrifice his face so you don’t have to.

Or just bring the boxes down and set them in your dining room to guilt you into putting the decoration up.

Either way, my children are now enjoying a partially Halloween ready house that will probably be so adorned right up until Christmas.

Thankfully I got the costumes all sewn up.

Sort of.

In an odd twist of fate, two of my children decided that they are officially too cool for Halloween. Or, at least too cool for the costumes I tried to make them. They are planning to dress in all black and hit a few houses as shadows before abandoning the task entirely to go to a football game.

Because high school homecoming games are way more fun than walking around the hood collecting candy your mom won’t let you anyway.

Thankfully my baby Dude 3 is still committed to enjoying this holiday as it is meant to be enjoyed. He went ahead and did his pumpkin on his own this past weekend.  I was way too slow and the cool lighted eyes and pumpkin decorating decals from Hallmark were easy enough  to use that he didn’t need me anyway…

Last night, during our bed time chat, he described, in detail, what his face paint for the school parade should look like.

I didn’t realize we were going the face painting route this year.

I am heading to the store tomorrow to secure a mask. Or hire a makeup artist. Because whoa, his imagination is well beyond my makeup skill set.

I lost focus when he started giving me a list of things we needed buy in order to complete his look so all I heard was something about a green face, and lightening bolts by his eyes.

What I do know is that it didn’t sound easy like in past years when he was happy being the Russell Brand to my Katy Perry…

Or when I could just jam his chunky cuteness into something furry and all would be right with the world..

Or when being a little bit super was more than enough (or, dare I say, too much?)…

This year he wants something scary (but not too scary), and something cool (really, really cool), and something that all of his friends are gonna like, but not be because he can’t have the same costume as everyone else (yeah, I don’t know about that), and I really wish I could share a photo of it but I had it overnighted from Amazon and it’s still not here it’s, er, a surprise.

Want to share your Halloween costume stylings with me & the other Happy Mama’s this week? We would love to see! Go ahead and tag #happymamasHalloween (& @thedudemom) on Instagram (tagging means you’re cool with me sharing there AND on the Happy Mama’s Facebook page, m’kay?).