matril

Hey! It's time for that once-a-year feature, wherein I elaborate upon our family's Halloween costumes. Is anyone surprised that we went Big again this year? Our daughter is -- eep! -- a senior in high school, and so we let her choose the theme.

We had long wanted to attempt costumes from the 90s cartoon Gargoyles, and with Emma's decision we went ahead and made it happen. Sometimes the components require lots of DIY and sometimes they cost a lot. This was....both.

Ryan was a little less than enthusiastic about doing a full, elaborate Gargoyle costume, so we suggested Puck, the mischievous imp who plays a twisty role in the series. It was a fairly simple matter of visiting a thrift store and modifying two t-shirts with some cutting and some trimming. Plus, the pointy ears.



Luke also needs simple costumes, for his and our sanity, so we went with Macbeth. Yes, that Macbeth. Except he's quite a different character on the show. Anyway, he wears a long coat with dark clothes and has a beard. We already owned all of those components.



(We told him to shake his fist angrily)

That was all taken care of in the last week before Halloween. We had spent more than a month planning the harder costumes. Body suits would definitely be easier than body paint, so we bought those online, plus some wigs, horns and some tiny little wimpy dragon wings. After a trip to the fabric store, I sewed much bigger wings atop the originals, so we could still have the nifty full-wingspan effect by pulling the strings. It involved a whole lot of hand-stitching, but I think it paid off. I also sewed tails and fastened them to the body suits with snaps, and put together the simple loincloth/dresses. I used gold construction paper to make the bracelets and crown. Top it off with makeup for the face, and here we have the finished products:



Demona, one of the all-time greatest villains ever created. Seriously, she's complex and tragic and terrifying.



Goliath and his long-lost daughter Angela. And yes, you can guess who her mother is, Goliath's estranged "angel of the night."



You can find pictures of the original characters pretty easily with an image search. Our costumes were pretty reasonable facsimiles, all things considered. Those few people who knew the show recognized us immediately, and everyone else was still impressed. That's all I need to consider it a success.

And now it's time for that rare one-a-year series, detaling yet another obsessive Halloween.

We knew we wouldn't have a big in-person venue for showing off our costumes this year, nor trick-or-treating in any typical fashion, but that didn't stop us from pulling out all the stops once again. And hey, the Internet is a pretty big venue, so here is our grand display.

First off, the kids. Emma wanted to create something based on one of her original characters, someone with wings. We found a some pretty cool wings, but they were white and she wanted something closer to gold. Out came the fabric markers. We were still filling in the final edges at the last minute. It took a grand total of five markers. They were all completely dried out by the end. The other issue was finding an outfit to go with it. She wanted something that didn't look too modern, so I dug out the dress I wore for my own costume back when I was pregnant with Ryan. (It's slightly alarming to realize that Emma is already nearly adult-sized!) It really ended up looking pretty impressive.




Luke was the one person able to show off his costume at school (he's currently on a hybrid schedule with two in-person days a week) so we got him a pirate costume. Not cumbersome to wear, but very clear for all its simplicity. Ryan, meanwhile, had no idea what he wanted to do until the very day before Halloween. Then he abruptly decided to be a king. He borrowed my jacket and made a crown out of cardboard, colored with metallic crayons. Not bad for something extremely last minute.



By the way, each year I have to wonder if our kids will decide they've outgrown the concept of dressing up for Halloween, but it hasn't happened yet. It certainly hasn't happened with their parents. ;)

Speaking of the parents! Who is familiar with the film Ladyhawke? It's a gorgeous medieval-ish fantasy, a romantic fairy tale that's only slightly marred by a goofy synthesizer soundtrack. A pair of lovers have been cursed by a jealous madman, so that the woman turns to a hawk by day and the man turns to a wolf by night. I realized how absolutely delightful it would be if my costume included a stuffed wolf, and Mark's included a stuffed hawk. How many people would actually get the reference? Eh, maybe one in ten. But for those people, they would *really* get it.

First, the costumes. Isabeau wears a number of different outfits, but I knew I wanted a hooded cloak to imitate her look on the poster. Then I found a purple dress that was decently similar to what she wears in the finale scene. Mark wore all black, plus a military-ish tunic, and a cloak and sword we already had in our store of costume supplies.

The animals were a little trickier, partly because I was very picky. I wanted a hawk that didn't look cartoonish or too much like a toy. Don't worry, I didn't quite go to the extreme of taxidermy. The one we finally chose was effective enough. It was much harder to find a dark wolf. Most of them were lighter; the only black wolves were cute little puppies. At last I gave up on perfection and ordered a large but light wolf, hoping to find some way to dye it. When the order showed up, it came in a gigantic box which Ryan immediately claimed as a fort. It's not only a huge wolf toy, it has very stiff legs and can't be squished or folded in any manner. Then I attempted to darken it with a black fabric marker and was delighted to have success. The only downside was that, even weeks after the initial coloring, it still makes smudges. So after carrying the wolf around everywhere on Halloween, my hands and clothes had gray splotches all over them. Ah, well. We had a blast.

And we took a lot of pictures. The one upside of getting several inches of unseasonable snow the day before Halloween was that it provided a fitting landscape for a photo shoot. We are gigantic nerds.






Always together, eternally apart...

This year we ventured into the other big space-related fandom. That's right: it is fully possible to be a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek. ;)

We had discussed a lot of different ideas, but nothing was really getting me excited until I realized I would love to dress up as Spock. And it would be a fairly simple costume as long as I could get the right components: a decent replica of the uniform, pointed ears, and a wig. All of these were obtained online without much trouble, so it was one of the easiest costumes I've ever done -- though far from the cheapest. I justified the expense somewhat by the lucky find of a set of men's pajamas (size small) for the uniform, so the purchase wouldn't be for only a single use. It looked great, and now I have a new set of comfy pajamas! Substitute a camera case for the tricorder bag, and the costume was complete.



Apparently without my glasses and long hair I look a lot like Luke? Well, we are related. And yes, I can do the Vulcan salute on my own, without taping my fingers together or any such cheating.

With the Star Trek theme, Mark debated a bunch of options. Captain Kirk? Data? A Klingon? And then he remembered how he'd thrown together a last-minute Borg costume in college (before we met) and has always been dissatisfied with how it turned out. So he figured it was worth trying again.

Over the next week or so, he accumulated the components -- black clothing, black spray paint, corrugated hoses. But then he put it all together in a single afternoon with duct tape and a whole lot of ingenuity. I'm quite impressed. He used an old thermostat and a broken video game cartridge for the electronic bits, and an actual working drill inside a cardboard box to make a twisty thing for his right hand.

This picture is from school, where he finally, finally won the teacher's costume competition. (The students vote and it ends up being more of a popularity contest, but the teacher who usually wins didn't participate this year, so hooray!!)


Together.


Emma wanted to be Disgust from Inside Out, which meant lots of green. She, too was hardly recognizable with her wig and makeup. Ryan was a zombie, and Luke tolerated his Batman costume fairly well. I guess we've been dressing him up as superheroes a lot over the last few years. Well, the look is simple and non-cumbersome, which is all he wants.

This year, we decided on our costumes a little later than usual. We were honestly starting to panic that we wouldn't have enough time to put together anything very impressive. We have quite a reputation to live up to at this point. ;)
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2014! If I can get in one more entry of this before Halloween, I'll be able to proceed at a nice leisurely pace of one post per year. ;)
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In 2012 Mark wanted a Halloween costume that had a chance of winning the teacher costume contest at his school (the students aren't allowed to do costumes, but the teachers found a loophole with a contest that doubles as a fundraiser). So we brainstormed a while and finally decided to do a pair of monsters from Greek mythology - a minotaur and Medusa.
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It's been a while since I've done one of these, probably because 2009 wasn't a particularly exciting year for costumes, so I haven't been super enthusiastic to write about it. But I'll just go ahead and do two years today.
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For Mother's Day of 2007, Mark bought me a sewing machine. I was very happy to refresh all those sewing skills that had lain dormant for years. And by October, I was sure I was ready for a challenge.

It was slightly more challenging than expected.



My costume was easy - someone had given me the dress; I can't remember the particulars. From my brief stint in my college's medieval club, I knew it wasn't remotely accurate to the vaguely Renaissance-y/Middle Ages style it was attempting, but I was willing to forgive that for its convenience. Meanwhile, I was in way over my head with the pattern we'd picked out for my husband's matching costume. The hat alone had me in fits. The ribbon work was tedious and took forever. I never did quite get the button holes right. But in the end, we weren't going anywhere that would put my work under close scrutiny, so it was enough. And I could be reasonably proud of it, mistakes notwithstanding. Since Mark started working at a wizard-themed summer camp last year, he's been able to reuse the tunic as part of his counselor's costume. Convenient!

So who were we portraying, exactly? Possibly a generic medievalish couple. Possibly Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn - and as I was noticeably pregnant with Ryan, there was a gleefully macabre aspect to that choice.

As for the kids, Emma decided she wanted to use last year's Cowardly Lion costume for its intended purpose - a monkey. We figured we could make Luke another animal so they were still kind of themed. Sewing a white oval onto a black robe was ridiculously easy after Mark's costume. I just love how solemn they look.



A little over a month later, Ryan came along, and we've been five ever since. :)

For Emma's first Halloween, we thought it would be fun to have a fairy tale theme. We found a little pointed princess hat and paired it with one of her frilly dresses, made a very simple knight costume for Luke, and put together wizard and fairy costumes for Mark and me with a just a few accessories from the costume store.
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In October of 2002, we had our first Halloween as a married couple. Deciding on our costumes was, of course, a matter of utmost importance. ;) We contemplated using our handmaiden and Maul costumes yet again, but ultimately decided it was time for something new. And since I'd done that fandom two years in a row and he'd done it three, we figured we'd better try a different theme. True, our mutual obsession with Star Wars was basically the thing that brought us together at the start, but there was more to us than that - other geeky fandoms, even!
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