Halloween is coming!
Well, for us the spooky season starts on October 1. So it’s been a month-long HALLOWEEN FESTIVAL. We got dem decorations, advent calendar, and lots of parties to attend.
This year the cub scout AND church trunk-or-treat parties were planned for weekend TWO WHOLE WEEKS before Halloween. So I was strict about the kids locking in their costume ideas by October 1st. Since I often end up hand-crafting a lot of the costumes I needed to get started early.
That’s why Ben and I are a couple, and the kids are a couple. We adults picked ours in August, so I had already started buying pieces. Jack had decided on his costume in October of LAST year and, surprisingly, never changed his mind. Somehow he convinced Sam to be his partner and Sam commited too. Dang it, I would have made all four of us match if I had known their plans earlier! Oh well. Behold!
Jack is Jack Skellington and Sam is his dog, Zero. Jack’s costume is store-bought, with a modified mask, separate gloves, and a rib bone that he painted so he can pull it out to toss to Zero, as seen in the movie. Sam’s costume is entirely handmade by me. I was most nervous about the headpiece. I couldn’t find any tutorials I liked, so I improvised the whole thing. It’s a paper-mache and cardboard mask built on a baseball hat, covered in fabric, with poseable wire-framed ears. The nose piece was a 3D printed pumpkin I made last year which just happened to be the perfect size!
Ben and I are obscure characters from The Lord of the Rings. They didn’t even make it into the movie version. Only two people we know have correctly identified us. We are Tom Bombadil and his companion Goldberry!
(Jack took these pictures, so this is the best I have. Most are blurry and have Sam dabbing in the corner 😉
For our trunk I made a dragon’s lair. There’s a bony dragon head that breathes smoke (I funneled in dry ice smoke from elsewhere in the car via a hose.). There was gold and gems and armor and twinkling red and gold lights. Best of all, I found some great ambient sounds on youtube that I downloaded. Nearly every kid paused and stared at the great beast.
I took a short video that sort of gives you a taste of the final set-up:
It worked great on the first night, but I had a lot of technical problems the second party, including with strong wind blowing away the smoke. It still garnered some oohs and ahhs (the church party trunk standard is much lower than the scout party).
The second party was sort of a bust due to the aforementioned wind, and our tardiness. I had the audition workshop that afternoon and didn’t have enough time to properly do dinner and get everyone out the door calmly. This is just to say that I don’t have any pictures from that night. Here’s the whole scout group:
I’m sure I’ll have more pictures to share once Halloween is ACTUALLY here 😉
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