This is a picture I took of myself in 2008. I may have shared it before…I don’t remember! It’s hard to keep track of things when you have a pumpkin for a head.
Tag: Halloween
Boo.
We made the time tonight for the kids to carve their pumpkins. (I still haven’t found time to carve mine.)
a little batty
A couple months back, Phoebe and I discussed what she wanted to be for Halloween this year. I was determined that we’d get things worked out well in advance, and that I wouldn’t turn into a costume-crazed working on things last-minute. (Not that anything like that would ever happen. Nope.)
Anyhow, Phoebe said she wanted to be a bat, a plan both John and I heartily endorsed. She also wanted to make her costume, and I figured we could swing it.
A couple of weeks ago, I stopped by a fabric store to get some black cloth. The store also had a selection of costumes, including, as it turned out, a bat costume: a black cape with a zig-zag bottom, and a hood with ears. It beckoned. (It was, after all, a finished costume. Also 60% off, as it was getting close to Halloween.) I was so very tempted. (Last year, Phoebe wanted to design her own witch costume. But when I found a finished witch costume in the second hand store, complete with sparkly, fluffy embellishments, Phoebe was more than happy to give up her own design plans.)
I eyed that finished bat costume, hanging there in all its $5.99-sale-price polyester glory.
And I moved on.
After all, making such a thing from fleece would be a snap. Possibly a stitch or two needed here and there, but no major sewing or engineering.
Come last week, we still hadn’t found a chance to work on it. Our schedule is rather packed what with school, work and after-school activities. But there was a Halloween party coming up on Friday, and a Halloween-themed birthday party on Saturday, so on Thursday night, it was well time to tackle the bat.
I got out the fabric, held it up to Phoebe, and described what I imagined: wings draping down from her arms, much like a cape. Phoebe was not happy. This wasn’t what she imagined. After various rounds of her trying to explain what she wanted, and even a trial version of making a mini bat costume for a doll with some stapled rags, I finally got Phoebe to draw for me how she envisioned the wings. Here’s what she drew:
Not draped. She wanted her arm to go through some straps on a wing shape, which would extend up above the arm.
There was much back and forth that followed, with me saying we couldn’t do it with fleece, at least not without something stiff to hold the shape. She wanted to make something much more complicated than I felt was necessary. (I have no idea where she gets this. No idea.)
Happily, I remembered that I had some bits of upholstery foam left from when I made a spider costume back before Phoebe was born. More remarkably, I was able to find them.
The result was that I managed to make something that was in between our two original visions, with the wings extending up over her arms, and then with the fleece draping down behind.
Wings down.
Wings extended.
The ears are just cat ears, but they worked well enough for a bat. The rest of the costume is just various articles of black clothing she had.
Here is Phoebe swinging at her friend’s party on Saturday. (I don’t know how I managed to get photos with just Phoebe, as it seemed like the swingset was swarming with costumed first-graders.) The foam and fleece combination was flexible enough that she could still easily play in her costume.
This photo shows a bit of the foam peaking through. I had it sandwiched between layers of fleece. If I’d had more time, I probably would have fixed this. But it only showed when her arms were in certain positions.
You can’t see the costume especially well here, but Phoebe is so dang cute. This was during the parade at her school gym Halloween morning. Wow, that was only yestereday. It’s been a crazy stretch.
So, there it is. The bat costume that was going to be simple, but ended up more complicated than expected. (Yes, I should have expected that.)
our pumpkins
Happy Halloween!
As I’ve said before, I love Halloween. It is quite possibly my favorite holiday. I wish I’d had time to post more Halloween-themed things, but so be it. But here, at least, are a few photos featuring our pumpkins. (Carving pumpkins early in the evening on Halloween seems to have become a household tradition. )
Theo drawing a the face for his jack-o-lantern.
Phoebe at work.
Two finished pumpkins.
4 finished pumpkins.
In other news, we came through the storm almost entirely unscathed. (Sorry if I left anyone worried or wondering. Parts of New England were indeed hit hard by Sandy, but we live quite far inland, so we got off easy.)
In other other news, I have once more committed to daily blogging for the month of November. So you will be hearing more from me soon.
the ghosts of Halloween costumes past
Halloween is probably my favorite holiday. I have always loved costumes, plus the goth in me¹ loves the dark and creepy trappings of the holiday. While I may not be able to tell you every costume I’ve ever worn for Halloween, I can sure remember a lot of them. What’s more, I’m a big fan of making my own costumes. While I do like to see so many people get fired up about getting into the holiday spirit, all those cheaply made polyester costumes you see in stores these days make me a little sad. Part of the joy for me is in the creation, or at least the assembly, of the costume.
You may well be wondering what great schemes I have devised for this year’s costumes. The sad answer is “not much.” I have been very focused on work and other life things. Having perhaps gone a bit overboard with last year (cf. last Halloween’s post: “Quiz: How compulsive are you? (Halloween costume edition“), I decided that I would try to meet Halloween with a better attempt at sanity.
Phoebe had decide a few months ago that she wanted to be a witch, and I heartily approved. I thought I might be able to make her a dress. But then I was shopping at the second hand children’s store (and no, they don’t sell second hand children), I found a witch’s dress and hat on the rack. In Phoebe’s size. Since I had made a point of not asking Theo about what he wanted to be (in part so that I could have a chance to run with a theme, and in part because I didn’t want to get stuck committing to something tricky when he’s not likely to even remember this costume by the time he’s 6), I didn’t have anything particular in mind for him. I thought I could go with another traditional Halloweeny costume (ghost, mummy, frankenstein, bat…), but didn’t find any such costumes on the rack in his size. I did, however, find a rather cute green frog. Theo likes frogs. And green. I bought it.
So, while one might be able to relate the witch and the frog in a more narrative way, I’m not really working with a theme. And I don’t have any schemes for a costume for myself that would tie things together. So be it.
Instead, I will have to console myself by looking back at some of the fun costume themes I have put together in the past:
- butterfly (Phoebe), caterpillar (Theo) and munched-looking plant (me) (2010)
- firefighter (Phoebe), dalmatian (Theo) and fire (me) (2009)
- bunny (Phoebe) and carrot (Theo) (2008)
- squirrel (Phoebe) and tree (me) (2007)
Other Halloween costumes that I have worn as an adult have included:
- a witch
- a spider
- Morticia Addams
- a ghost
- a mummy
- half man/half woman
At some point, I’ll have to dig up descriptions and/or photos of some of these. (Well, I already wrote about the mummy.) For the record, none of these were pre-fab or packaged costumes, though I did buy and assemble occasional pre-made parts. I’m rather pleased that some of my descriptions of past costume creations have been of use to others out there. I even once heard from someone who modelled her daughter’s squirrel costume after the one I made, and she and her husband were trees following my tree costume.²
I’m going to declare this post to be among the posts on Things I Like: I like costumes. This is only number 4 of the proposed 40 posts on things I like. I’ve realized that my slowness is in part due to my wanting to give each of the Things I Like its due attention, and in part to my having trouble deciding how to sort out the things I like into individual posts. (There is often overlap. I mean, I like costumes, and Halloween, and Halloween costumes, and themes, and themed Halloween costumes.) There is also this desire to have them presented in some sort of logical order. I need to get over that. (Screw logic!)
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¹ The goth in me shares space with the hippy in me, the uptight schoolmarm, the curious 12-year-old, and a variety of other characters, including a short balding guy named Ned who won’t share his Cheetos with any of the others.
² If a tree costume falls in the closet, and nobody hears it, do you still have to pick it up? ³
³ No. But you may later need to rake.
Quiz: How compulsive are you? (Halloween costume edition)
Halloween is coming, and you want to get costumes for your 2 kids. How do you go about getting their costumes?
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A: Don’t stress about it. You’ll figure something out from things you have around the house.
B: Pick up something at the store that will fit. There are plenty of inexpensive new or used costumes, and your kids are so young that they probably could be talked into liking just about any of them. If you wait till a day or two before Halloween, you can find something really cheap.
C: Find out what your kids want to be several weeks in advance, and order something online.
D: Decide on a theme for your kids’ costumes months before Halloween based on some accessory you’d gotten on sale a couple of years before, and plant the seed of the idea in your kids’ heads so that they think they want to be those things. Decide that you want to make as much of their costumes as you can. Less than a week before Halloween, buy a sewing machine, even though you haven’t used one since junior high. Figure out how to use it, including doing types of things that you’d never even done in home ec. classes. Spend a bit of time each night working out the design of a costume. The night before you plan to use the costumes, stay up past 2 in the morning. Work for a couple more hours the next day getting ready for your afternoon departure to a place where the kids will be in costume, including stitching on some proper straps to the accessory you’d bought a couple years ago because the glue is coming apart and one of the cheap plastic straps has already come loose. Continue to work on the other costume in the passenger seat on your way to the Halloween event, sewing on embellishments until your fingers are so sore and tired that you drop a needle in your lap while trying to thread it just one more time, and then spend the rest of the ride trying to find the damn needle, and convincing yourself that you will either be sitting on it, or poking a small child with it in the near future. Spend even more time finishing up the costume the next day, and then make a costume for yourself while your youngest child is napping. In the end, you are still vaguely unsatisfied, because there are a few details you never found time for, and getting kids to cooperate for photos is really tricky, so none of it looks quite how you imagined it anyhow.
How did you answer? Please match your answers to the evaluations below.
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A: While some may call you lazy, others envy your ability to keep things in perspective, be laid back, and not spend crazy amounts of time on something that will only be worn for a couple of hours.
B: You are both sane and prepared. You probably get all of your work done on time, and still have time to relax in the evenings. Others probably resent you for this.
C: You are moderately compulsive, but as long as you don’t spend countless hours or insane amounts of money to find “just the right thing,” you are not certifiable.
D: You are freakin’ insane. Don’t you know you have an abstract due in just a few weeks? Put down the needle and thread and get back to your research.
The beautiful butterfly.
Caterpillar and butterfly. (Photo by John.)
Caterpillar and plant. (Photo by John.)
So over it.
John has posted a few more photos on Flickr, too, if you want to see more. (See, for example this, this, this, this and this.)
make like a tree (and squirrel)
We took Phoebe out trick-or-treating for the first time tonight. Phoebe was dressed as a squirrel, and I was dressed as a tree.¹
I love getting dressed up, and devising costumes.
My tree costume (which you can see a bit of over at John’s) was an old standby of mine, a creation I’m quite proud of. I wear all brown, wear a twig wreath on my head with a few leaves, and drape some fall leaf garlands around my shoulders. The costume was not only easy to put together, but since I happen to have various plain dark brown clothing items to disguise my body as the tree trunk, it was cheap. It only cost me about $10.00 to buy the leaves and wreath at a craft store.
I was quite happy with how Phoebe’s costume turned out, too. The squirrel to climb on my tree. It was another assembled piece of work. (I don’t really sew.) I found a grey onesie, on sale for about $3.00, and stitched a white oval on the tummy from a robe that had long since been retired to the rag pile. The tail was put together from an old fuzzy snake dog toy, and I used a Toober toy to give it shape. The ears/hat I made from an old too-small pair of Phoebe’s tights. The biggest expense was to buy a new pair of gray tights, which cost about $7.00. What’s more, the way I put it together, it can all be salvaged again, and the clothes worn as normal clothes.
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¹ John was not in costume. Or perhaps he was just a big nut.
collecting tokens 
