Halloween 2011

It would not be an exaggeration to say that I had the best Halloween ever this year.  At least the best Halloween in my accessible memory.  We've always done well in the costume department.  (See here and here.)  But this year I sewed costumes!  And we're not talking the 2  straight-line seams I sewed for my cavewoman costume, or a hot-glued engineer hat.  We're talking real seamstressing here.

Carson, in no uncertain terms, wanted to be Cosmo the Cougar--the BYU mascot.  (At 3 1/2, isn't he a bit young to already be choosing his own costume?  Wasn't I supposed to get at least one more year of control?)  He already had the football shirt, so I figured I could throw together a little cougar hood and paint his face, right?  Oh yeah.  I did that and more!  Look at that thing!  It's superb!  And, quite frankly, except for the fact that I left his real face visible, that's pretty much exactly like the real Cosmo costume.

Austin then decided that he wanted to be a character from the TV show Arrested Development, which we had just finished rewatching on Netflix.  Buster came to mind as the most charicature-ish, so he procured an Army hat, wore an old Army jacket he had in the closet, and fashioned a hook out of a plastic baby-food bottle and hanger.  To accompany him, he asked if Cora could be the "Loose Seal" who was responsible for biting off Buster Bluth's hand in the first place.  A seal costume, eh?

I originally thought I would just find some brown jammies or a onesie and sew a tail on it or something.  How wrong I was.  Instead, I bought a couple yards of fleece and some felt and put together this baby.  If you don't look too closely, you can hardly even tell my daughter is in there!  That seal costume is to die for! 

Then there's me.  Do I follow a theme?  If I joined Carson, I'd have to be something like a cheerleader or a referee.  Um, "no thank you," and "boooooring!"  If I joined Austin and Cora, I'd have to be a Bluth.  Lindsay?  Too slutty.  Lucille Bluth?  Too old.  Lucille 2?  Too...um...Liza Minelli-y.  So it looked like I'd have to strike out on my own.  And with some brief internet make-up research and my old funky disco-ball dress, I came up with this.

I'm not even sure what it is.  Anime?  Who knows.  But I think I'm set on costumes for years to come.  Think of the possibilities for faces I could do with this technique!  And it only cost me about 30 minutes and nearly one whole eye-liner pencil.

We didn't actually get around to carving pumpkins until a week or two after Halloween, but I posted this picture here because it's cool, and because it wouldn't really fit in anywhere else.  :)

Once we were be-costumed, we went to a neighborhood soup and bread party (to fill our bellies with something nutritious before the onslaught of goodies) and admired the costumes of our neighbors.  (Let's be honest.  We were just showing off ours.  Ha ha!)

Then, thanks to a poster we had seen at the deli where we got our sandwiches for my birthday excursion, we headed off to join the Provo hipster crowd for a Glow-in-the-Dark Bike Ride.  Oh man!  So much fun!  The weather was SO warm it was almost balmy.  The crowd was young, and I enjoyed doing something just a little bit crazy.  We wove glow sticks all thru our bike tires and I stuck some in my hair, and we rode off into the night.  Someone had a portable stereo with huge speakers strapped to his bike so we had funky hipster Halloween music as our soundtrack.  I can't think of a more fun thing to have done that night.

Austin took a bit of video on his iPhone, but I don't have any of that on my computer just now.  I found this blog post where another rider posted some pictures.  If you look closely in the 2nd to last picture, you can just see our yellow and red bike trailer.  The ride started on Center Street in Provo, went all the way up the the BYU Football stadium, around Campus Drive, and then headed down into South Provo.  At that point, we broke off so we could let Carson do some Trick or Treating in the little neighborhoods down there. 

We knew he didn't need much candy, so we just visited a few houses, including my friend Amanda's.  Then we hit the road again (still on bikes) and headed up to the Wells Fargo building on Center Street near where we had parked our car.  When Austin and I were still dating, and I was still a rookie at bicycling (I could do it, I just didn't recognise it as a legitimate form of transportation) we rode our bikes downtown to this building and then rode up the parking structure in the back.  I think it's only 4 or 5 stories, but it seemed like a big deal at the time.  Anyway, for old times sake, I asked if we could ride up again before we headed home.  So we did.  And it was as fun as ever.

I told you.  The best Halloween ever.  We went home, washed all the paint/make-up off our faces, and slept like babies.  Hope we can top it next year.