Category: Halloween

X-Men Evolution

This was Daemon’s first Halloween, so tradition dictates that we do Satyrs and Fairies again. (Ez’s first halloween and Sebs’ first Halloween)

We were getting sick of going to Uptown Sedona every year, so Isis suggested we go to Old Town Cottonwood this year. The Old Town shops would be giving away candy just like Uptown, but there was also a Fall Carnival with “rides for the kids and tons of treats”. It also had a costume contest for 2 to 7 and 8 to 12 year olds.

This sounded perfect. The boys could get a bunch of candy trick or treating, and then get a ton more treats at the carnival. They would also get to ride some rides, and then mop up at the costume contest. (not to be conceited or anything, but my costumes were WAY better than the 100 store-bought ninja costumes that were there) I was going to have Ez say he was 8 so he didn’t have to compete against his brother. (it’s not that much of a lie, he will be 8 in a month and a half)

As awesome as all of that sounded, the night was anything but. Trick or treating started at 5:00pm, and was supposed to go until 8:00pm. We got there around 5:45pm, and 3/4 of the shops were already closed. Not sure if they had run out of candy, or just closed down before anyone got there so they wouldn’t have to buy candy. Judging by how small the crowd was, I doubt they ran out.

After the 10-15 minutes it took us to go to the few open shops, we headed over to the Carnival. It was on one of the little league baseball fields.  There were 5-6 bouncy castles, a seemingly un-manned radio remote truck playing a loop of halloween-ish music, 2 light poles providing not nearly enough light for the field, and one little card table where some dude was selling hot cocoa. There was no obvious sign of anyone in charge, and more importantly  no sign of my promised “tons of treats”.

The boys didn’t seem to notice the lameness, and were excited to bounce in the castles. We had to strip off their horns, wings, and hooves so they could go in. I did this more to protect the costumes than to follow the rules, since there wasn’t anyone manning the entrances like there usually are. I finally saw a dude wearing jeans an a t-shirt that might have been working there, but I’m not positive he wasn’t just a dad that enjoyed yelling at other peoples’ kids when they misbehave in the jumpy castle.

The horns, hooves, wings, and vests were getting somewhat cumbersome to carry around from castle to castle. So Am suggested I put them in the car until the contest. BAD IDEA! Halfway to the car Ez’s horns fell and snapped in half. Then as I was opening the car door, Sebs’ horns fell. At first they seemed ok, but then as I was putting everything in the car, I felt a crunch under my foot. A piece had broken out of the side of one of his horns, and then crushed into several smaller pieces when I stepped on it.

Luckily I had brought a hot glue gun, just in case something happened with one of the costumes. I searched around for an electrical outlet, and ended up in the men’s room, on the floor right by the door. Several guys came in and looked at me like I was crazy while I squatted there, waiting for the glue gun to heat up.

By the time I finished gluing everything back together, it was time for the costume contest. I quickly got the boys back into their costumes and rushed them over to the stage. It was a very dimly lit, rickety old stage, that had probably been built in the late 80’s.

A single dude with a microphone asked everyone everyone to line up on stage. A young girl that must have been his daughter was going through a cardboard box full of plastic trophies. I looked around… Where were the judges? Then he explained the rules: “There are 3 categories: scariest, prettiest, and most original. When I put my hand over a costume you like, yell.” So this wasn’t so much a COSTUME contest, as a POPULARITY contest. We definitely weren’t going to win prettiest or scariest. But we should at least be able to get most original.

The first category was scariest. He went down the line, and some not so scary princesses got some cheers, but it came down to a scary clown and a mexican girl that looked like Lily from the Munsters (long black hair, a black cape/dress, and white face makeup with black lips and eyes) He went back and forth a few times, and the witch-girl ended up winning. Not the way I would have gone, but there were a LOT of mexicans, maybe they’re not a fan of clowns.

The next category was prettiest. He went down the line, and I was amazed when this pretty little girl who was a Peacock-Fairy only got a few cheers, probably from her mom and my family. (I might have been a little biased since she and her mom came up to us earlier in the night and complimented our costumes). The dude with the mic kept going down the line, stopping over little girls in princess outfits. Then from the crowd you could hear “the dinosaur, the dinosaur!” He stopped and went back to a little 2-3 year old mexican boy in a dinosaur costume. The crowd went crazy. Needless to say the dinosaur won for prettiest costume. This was not a costume contest, it was a “who brought the most mexicans” contest.

Any hope I had of the boys winning most original was gone. I hadn’t brought ANY mexicans with me.

We left the Carnival with nearly no candy, and feeling like the night had been wasted. Next year we’re going to Clarkdale, where Gabe’s kids made out like bandits. Either that or I’m stopping by Windsong to pick up a few amigos for the costume contest.

Amber and the Boys on “Prep Day”
I had everyone try out their costumes the day before Halloween to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

Alice in Wonderland

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

Classic Movie Monsters

I wasn’t feeling too into Halloween this year, and Amber kept pushing me to decide on our costumes. I finally decided to just re-use the Satyr and Fairy costumes we used for Ez’s first Halloween. His costume would now fit Sebs, so I would only have to make a new pair of pants for Ez.

After I got the costumes down out of the closet, I actually started getting into Halloween. I took my old Skeksis costume and put it on the Dancin’ Santa I got the day after Christmas. I’ve been meaning to hack it and make it say all sorts of fun things, but I never have time for fun stuff anymore.

I put on my Satyr pants, put all the pads in, and decided Ezra needed pads in his costume too this time. Luckily I had a couple of blocks of foam left from last time. I started carving his knees right away. One thing I learned: Babies love razor blades! No matter what I tried, Sebs kept trying to take the razor blade away from me. I finally put him in his highchair with the only thing he likes better than sharp objects: Food!

I had a few scraps of fur left from last time, so I brought them over to my mom’s so I could use my sewing machine. I used an old pair of Ez’s sweat pants to make a pattern. After I had my pattern, I laid out the fur to cut it out. One problem; the pattern was about an inch too big to fit on the cloth. It took me almost 3 hours of arranging and re-arranging to finally get it onto the cloth properly.

After I got his pants done, I needed to make him some horns. I used sculpy and made a pair that was smaller than mine, but bigger than sebs’s. After looking at mine again, I decided I wanted giant satyr horns, not little faun horns. I would make new ones for myself, give Ez my old ones, and give Sebs the ones I had just made for Ez. So I got a foam wreath holder from Wal-Mart, and sanded it down, making 2 giant horns. I needed something to make them look horny, but decided sculpy would be too heavy at that size. I happened to see some twine in the car on the way to work, and decided it looked a lot like the grooves in the commercial horns I had bought last time. I wrapped the foam horns in the twine, and then used watered down Elmer’s glue to harden it and make it stay in place. They were too heavy to hold on with fishing line like I did last time, so I took one of Amber’s old plastic head-bands and hot-glued them on. They stayed in place pretty well, and my hair was long enough to cover the headband.

Last time the hooves I made were pretty crappy. I made them the day before Halloween, and they were just cardboard covered in brown tape. This year I wanted them to look a little more like a real hoof. I still used cardboard for the base, but experimented with different materials to make the bone/fingernail texture. I started with papier maché, but quickly decided I didn’t like the texture that was coming out. I was looking around for a thickener for the glue, but we didn’t have any flour. The only thing I could find was oatmeal. I thought it might give me a good texture, so I mixed some into the water/Elmer’s glue mixture and microwaved it for a few minutes. I decided to forget the paper, and just cover the hooves in this very sticky oatmeal. It came out really cool, but not quite the texture I was going for.

I spent a couple of days thinking about what I could use, and kept coming back to sculpy. I knew that it would be too heavy, and very likely to break, but if I could find something like a thin sculpy I could smear over the card board, it might work. Then I remembered the box of dry-wall plaster that’s been sitting in my shed since I moved in. Somehow it was still moist after almost 2 years. I took a hand-full dipped it into a bowl of water, and smeared it onto the hooves. It was just the texture I was looking for. I built up the front of the hooves, making them pseudo-cloven with a crack down the middle. Once they were done I put them in the oven for about 20 minutes. They looked great, but they were bright white. So I took some old coffee grounds and smeared them on. It was just the right color, and had the added bonus of smelling great.

I made Ez and Sebs a pair of hooves as well. Since their feet are smaller, I didn’t have to build the plaster up so much, and just used it for texture. That turned out to be a good idea, since their hooves made it the whole night. Mine didn’t. It only took 5 minutes before the tip busted off one of them. I was able to glue it back on, but it still didn’t last. By the end of the night, the plaster was missing from the bottom inch all the way around both hooves. I think next time I’m going to use a foam/latex combo for the hooves, so that they will just bend when hitting the ground, rather than break.

Yes, I said next time. Amber has decided this will be a tradition for each of our kids’ first Halloween. So check back for the updated costume in 5 years.

After sewing like crazy for the last few weeks, the big day finally arrived. Ezzie looked so cute in his little Yoda costume. Everyone wanted to know where we bought it, and they were amazed when I told them I sewed it.

We went to the mall first, and Klara (who works with AM) was very impressed. She sews, so she knew how much work it took to make the costumes. Ezzie had a little hood with Yoda ears, 3 fingered gloved, 3 toed feet, and the Jedi outfit I made for him back when Ep III came out. Technically the tunic and pants were the wrong color, since they were made in the Obi-Wan style, and Yoda’s tunic is very dark, but no one seemed to notice.

They also didn’t know that I was Anakin and AM was Padme. Most people thought we were Luke and Leia. One old dude even said “Hey, I thought Leia was supposed to be a virgin!” =)

Every shopkeeper we saw said ours were the best costumes of the night and we should win a prize. Most of them did give EZ twice as much candy as they gave everyone else. One lady was even going to dump her entire basket into his “pumpkin” (KT got mad that I kept referring to it as a pumpkin, since it was actually Darth Vader’s Head. I feel that it is still a pumpkin, even if it takes a different shape).

We got stopped by at least 10 people who asked if they could take EZ’s picture. And we noticed quite a few others who took it as we went by without asking. Many with video cameras too. We should have charged a few dollars a pop.

Over all EZ thoroughly enjoyed this Halloween, not just for all of the candy he got (which I will be taking a percentage of for costume construction fees 😉 ), but also for all of the attention he got. I think he liked that even more than the candy.

Check out my halloween page for this year’s costumes as well as all of our costumes from the past few years.

This year Ezra decided we were going to go as Star Wars characters. He really wanted to be Yoda, and since Amber is pregnant, she and Sebastian would be Padme and Luke and Leia (he did a good job of playing twins). That left Anakin for me.

I sewed all of the costumes myself (except for the pants, it was easier to just find pants that were the right color) I used a pattern for my Anakin tabbards and tunic, but just made up patterns for Yoda’s head, 3 fingered gloves, 3 toed feet and Padme’s tunic. I also made the jewely for padme’s neck line and belts.