happy halloween 2013!

As promised, here's Dulcie in her spidery Halloween costume, complete with those hand-drawn flies*.  This picture was taken on the way into her nursery Halloween party on Monday and, as you can see, she was chuffed to bits with her outfit and with the general party atmosphere.

Since I am still off work (just for a few more days now!) I was able to go along to the party and, despite it being my basic idea of a social nightmare, I'm so glad I could.  It was so sweet to see Dulcie enjoying herself and mucking in with everything, not fazed at all by the strange outfits, noise and general hullaballoo.

Here she is "dooking" for apples (can you still call it "dooking" when you're using a fork?) and loving every minute.  She did, with a bit of assistance, get an apple eventually.

Dulcie kept me close most of the time, but it was more like she was excited to have me there than that she needed me for reassurance.  When it was time to read a story (Room On The Broom, naturally!) she charged off to bag the prime spot at the front of the group, leaving me far behind.

When I picked her up on Monday evening, she was (as usual) full of beans and chatting about her day.  Apparently she had helped to repaint her key worker's face in the afternoon and was exclaiming, "Kelly Anne's face blue!" all the way home.  Gawd bless 'er!

I am seriously loving Dulcie's nursery.  My mum stayed at home until I started school (although I did go to playgroup a couple of mornings a week, I think) and my sister is a full-time stay-at-home mum, so it can be hard to have to do something different in the way I'm bringing up Dulcie, but when I see how much she gets from the experience, I'm so glad things have turned out this way.  I'm even starting to think nursery may just be worth every one of those millions of pennies!

Hope you have a suitably spooky Halloween tomorrow.  Enjoy :)

* I feel I need to add a disclaimer regarding these flies and let you know that their colour did not hold in the wash and they've turned blue rather than black - not a major issue in this case (they'll do for one more party) but it would have been annoying if I'd been decorating a longer-term garment.  I don't know if this is because I used pens rather than a computer printer or whether it would have happened anyway.  I've never washed anything that I've used transfer paper on before (I usually use it for lavender bags etc.) but one day I will experiment further - try it with computer-printed images, permanent markers etc.  I would like to be able to draw things for Dulcie to wear, but there's not much point if I can't wash the clothes afterwards.  Do let me know if you have any insights!