Happy Halloween

Another Festive Fall Evening has come and gone. Last minute, we added exterior lights and garden fencing with 'spider webs' along our walk way. We also brought one of our 'porch' swings and tiki torches from the back yard. We really like to hang out in our yard together and greet the Trick R Treaters. The Mr. downloaded some festive music to have as background. Old favorites like Monster Mash, horror movie theme songs, Thriller and the theme from Disneyland's Haunted Mansion.

If you've read my blog for any amount of time, you know I like to be crafty...OR perhaps you've randomly clicked on posts in October--then you'd know I prefer us all to dress as a *theme* and we (which means primarily ME) make our own costumes. THIS year my children decided to thoroughly REBEL & choose individual, unrelated characters. I am impressed by their creative choices though. I like to think they get that from MOI'!

This is a pic of oldest. He fashioned his costume, this year. after the DJ's in the TRON movie, Daft Punk. (his friend also created a similar costume so there were two of them) He created the helmet from scratch, using the interior of a bicycle helmet as the base, adding cardboard and paper mache to create the shape. He & his friend heated, shaped and added the plexi-glass visor then battery powered lights on the interior. I hand sewed another strand of lights around the collar.

Sammy chose to be a MIME, inspired by an old fashioned circus style act we saw at the County Fair. It was convenient that we were able to find the shirt, newsboy style cap and "suspenders" at the thrift store. The suspenders were actually two different elastic belts. The bowtie is a hair tie. I already had the theatrical make-up. People passing out candy would tease him by forcing him to talk, to which he kept replying, "Mimes don't talk!"

Birdy made her costume at a sewing class she took at the art studio the past six weeks. The dress was originally a men's long sleeve shirt. She altered it to fit and added a couple stripes. We found the wings at Dollar Tree and spray painted them black. We created antennae from jumbo size pipe-cleaners and pom-poms hot glued to a head band. I also did her hair in a make-shift 'bee hive' do. We also added a few little bees glued onto the dress for extra emphasis. We purchased yellow & black striped tights that she wore with her black chucks. She crocheted yellow chains as shoelaces to match.

We purchased this crocheted Angry Bird (a video game that involves shooting birds at obstacles and pigs) beanie for Kurtis from our trip to San Fransisco a couple weeks ago. We used it as inspiration for his costume. We kept it fairly simple by purchasing a pair of red sweats and red shirt from Walmart. I used yellow felt over his shoes as bird feet. I especially like his treat bag.

Again, I used felt and created the pig character from the video game. I did something different and hand sewed it together. It was fairly simple. Of course we all thought he looked fantastic--everyone else thought he was Elmo. <eye roll>

A friend and his son came by as did my brother and his family. We made chili and hot dogs and brownies. No one was too interested in the brownies since they had all that candy. More for me!

My nephews costumes were; "Smalls" from the movie the SandLot and a "shrunken adult". Well, my brother, the good sport that he is, dressed up too. He was a "giant kid" and insisted on playing the part all evening. He had a back pack, skate board and Nintendo DS he kept pretending to play as we walked the kids around the neighborhood. (I thought he looked like many of the college students I see every day. LOL) I could NOT stop laughing when I saw my brother. He's such a crack up. His wife was a good sport too--she doesn't usually dress up at all--dressing up as a little girl.

The neighborhood had a passive-aggressive vibe this year. A bunch of homes were decorated BUT had all their lights off when dusk arrived, the undeclared but universally understood time to start Trick R Treating. Many blocks only had a couple homes passing out candy. It was weird. You'd have one friendly home welcoming children, then three dark then another friendly one. We had to walk blocks and blocks just for a decent handful of goodies.

A few homes went all out with "Haunted Houses" which were really horror-ific displays of gore. We avoided those, of course but they attracted large crowds. There were plenty of 'drive-in' families this year too. (families that drive into the neighborhood, park & go Trick R Treating) I don't mind, really. I like being a friendly face.

One home was really in the neighborly spirit. They were passing out candy from their porch and from their connected garage they had a DJ playing fun party music. I think the DJ was the dad of the family, possibly even the grandpa! Their drive-way served as a dance floor. I had so much fun as my middles took to the 'stage' and began to strut their stuff. Initially they started dancing as a joke, I think, doing silly moves. The DJ got excited and started playing even more upbeat dance music to accommodate them and they began to 'really' dance. A crowd formed and they basically had their own dance show going on, even Kurtis got in on the action. We must've stayed there, dancing for at least 15 minutes. I think we could have stayed there all night but my brother is not much of a dancer. He and the wifey enjoyed the 'act' from the sidelines. That was my favorite part of the evening and left me with warm, fuzzy feelings for my neighborhood.

While we were canvassing the neighborhood, the Mr., oldest and our friend Forrest were back at home passing out candy and offering a bit of frightful fun for the older candy beggars.