Costumes and Cajoling

Here at Tales we love Halloween. In October, when you walk the streets of the neighborhood where we all met and established our friendships (before the great exodus)...you will see a grand enthusiasm for the holiday of Halloween. There are ginormous blow-up ghosts, pumpkins, bats...spider webs, skulls, cut-outs, grave stones and jack-o-lanterns everywhere. Halloween Decorations are more popular than Christmas...well maybe that's because I used to live in the Muslim Block of a neighborhood in Queens.

The point is, it's contagious.

Our Ward Halloween Party is pretty amazing. Everyone gets into it. There are so many fun, creative and amazing costumes every year; and the range from very little effort to a LOT OF EFFORT is totally acceptable and encouraging.

We put out so much amazing Halloween Karma, that we even had THE Napolean Dynamite, yes Jon Heder, in the flesh: Not his twin, not somebody dressed up to look like him, not someone's cousin from Idaho, the real, authentic ND/Jon Heder attend our party in 2005. He was happy nanny's guest at our party, and of course we rewarded him greatly for just being there, with our presence of course.

I know some of you in the blogosphere poo poo Halloween, and that's ok...but here are some Costume Ideas to make your Halloween really great:

Face it, it's fun to dress up. Costumes can be as intricate or as simple as you want...just get one together. I think it is particularly fun when you dress up with your family or friends as a theme. It was quite a hit when four Dads in our ward each dressed up as one of The Wiggles. Carrie used her crafty skeelz to dye four shirts and iron on a wiggles patch, add to it a pair of black pants and you have a wiggle. AWESOME.

Costume Categories:

The Wig:
Pick a wig. Any wig. Put it on. Leave it there. It might inspire you to put something else on, and something else until you have created your own original masterpiece.

One year I saw a neon red wig and it was the same that Jennifer Garner seemed to be sporting in a LOT Of Alias ads. I threw it on, and wore all black, and voila!


I found a site with a LOT of inexpensive wigs...click here.

Makeup:
The sky is the limit when it comes to makeup. You can learn to do all sorts of special effects: gashes, bruises, cuts, scrapes with a few easy makeup wheels and instructions...
I LOVE these ideas from Martha Stewart....grass? come ON!

Crafty:
For this type of costume you need to pull from your own closet, or maybe buy a piece or two from the Salvation Army, or as some of our readers call it, The D. I., and keep it cheap. Then you must make a trip to your local craft store for a few add-ons to make your costume complete. Once I did this as an old beauty queen. I bought an old Bridesmaid dress from the S.A. and made a sash from some felt and craft glue, topped my head with a blond wig I already owned and borrowed my daughters dress up tiara. I think I also spray painted some old shoes silver, but that is definitely going the extra mile. Here are a few more examples of this approach that I just love:


This family of three always has great ideas. I particularly love this one of the 3 Primary Colors. Look how simple it is to wear a solid color and add a Crayola sign.

Another year this family was the 3 Blind Mice: all it takes is some ears and sunglasses people...a little eye liner for whiskers and a prop cane for the little blind mouse and you are all set:


One of my fave crafty costumes of all time: PB & J: Check it out!

And here is Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. Grab a safari shirt from the DI/SA or ebay or wherever, and just add the name....STEVE.

This photo is a good segue to our next category:

Sewn/Homemade Costumes:
Pictured above is the little Crocodile Bunting that goes with Mr. Irwin. Obviously, you should only sew your costume from scratch if it brings you great joy! Here we have Madeline and Miss Clavel, all made from scratch:

And below, the three princesses all hand-sewn...Grumpy (non)Dwarf was bought off of ebay:


There are also some easy-sew options like this flower costume idea, or these cape ideas.

Store Bought:
Which brings me to the most popular category of STORE BOUGHT. I know it gets expensive to buy costumes for the kids every year, let alone the whole family and the dog. Here are a few ideas to make your bought costumes easier on the budget:
Ebay, Craigs List etc.
Buy off season...they will ALL go on sale on Nov. 1st, so buy for the next year then.
Costume Swap. Perhaps you could organize one like this? Or, you could eye someone's costume from this year and make dibs on it for next year?
Rent something FABulous (you don't have room in your apt. to store anyway)
Salvation Army/D.I.
Look for deals. I researched my DH's costume QUITE a bit, at a LOT of different websites, and I feel that my comparison shopping ACTUALLY got me a good deal.



Compilation:
Above you will see the Mrs. Incredible Costume. I was extremely dissatisfied with the Disney offering of the Mrs. Incredible Costume (they did not pay attention to detail, such as the height of Mrs. Incredible's boots etc.), so I decided to compile my own. Red unitard, felt/craft-made insignia, boots off ebay, black makeup for my mask on the face etc.

Here you will see our very special guest pictured with a gal who just compiled some medical wardrobe from around her house:


Which brings us to our final category:

Maternity:
Scrubs are good
Our red crayon up top was also in the family way. The nun costume would have been good for pregnancy, unless of course you felt that was disrespecting the office of the nun....is the nun an office?

There is the ever-popular pumpkin as a maternity costume...and you could go plenty of places with the sphere: a globe, beach ball, watermelon, basketball, the list goes on...just a white tee and some felt/markers/fabric pens....and the sky is the limit boy howdy!

There are also some quite clever ideas here. Thanks for the link Carrie.

If anyone would like to submit photos for a followup post, just email us at our email...which is somewhere on here....maybe on the sidebar? And if you would like to take a guess at what my Posse is going to be this year, click here.

Happy Costuming!