Orange You Glad It's Halloween?

Halloween... Ah, Halloween! As I love to say, it's the most wonderful time of the year. And I could hardly believe that it has been an entire year since we strutted our stuff as blue-haired punk rocker family. I'll admit that I went a little nuts last Halloween creating our ensembles, and I'd had big plans for our costumes this year. My original vision was that we'd be a glam-rock family - Benjamin would be David Boo-wie (get it? BOO-wie?), Calliope would be Baby Gaga, I would be Cher, and Vince would be a party pooper (he wasn't too keen on this theme). But now that I have two rugrats keeping me busy, I'm much shorter on time to devote towards creating a concrete manifestation of my worth as a mother-- I mean, I have much less time to spend designing and sewing costumes. So, I choose an easier vision to achieve - the nefarious Droogs from A Clockwork Orange.

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We had ample opportunity to wear our spiffy white costumes and black derbys. One of the first events was the Halloween celebration at the Boo's preschool. Most people "got" our costumes right away, and they absolutely loved it. I did have one mom comment that the costumes were "sick and wrong," but she was kidding. I think. In any case, I prefer to think that we dressed up as pop culture icons and not as serial killers.
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The next day was the neighborhood Autumn Festival. There were food vendors, face painters, and bounce houses. There was also a performance by aspiring ballerinas from my friend Tanya's So Fly Kids dance class. The little dancers wore puppy dog ears and adorable pink tutus. As I watched them, I wondered if I should done what any other normal mom would have done and chosen a more typically "girly" costume for Calliope. She didn't seem to have an opinion on the matter either way, so I guess it was fine. Besides, her brother probably would taken it from her anyway...
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...just like he's taken some of her other tutus. Suffice it to say, my son is in touch with his feminine side.

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In addition to parties and cross-dressing, what Halloween is complete without a visit to the pumpkin patch? Every year since Benjamin was just a baby, we'd gone to nearby Shawn's Pumpkin Patch. He seemed to enjoy himself the last two years, but this year, he became obsessed! Over the course of two weeks, we went to the pumpkin patch five times. FIVE TIMES! We went with...
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...Benjamin's preschool classmates and neighbors Maxwell and Novella...
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...best buddy Nolan...
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...and all by ourselves - not once...
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...but twice!
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We also made one final trip with Benjamin's school buddy James on the actual day of Halloween. I was a little worried that Benjamin wouldn't be able to handle the fact that the pumpkin patch would be gone until the following year. Luckily, there was trick or treating to take his mind off of this huge loss!
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That evening, the four of us donned our Droog outfits and headed to the park for a neighborhood costume parade.

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I was especially tickled by the sight of Daddy Droog and Little Droog walking hand in hand.
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And as though a family of cinematic serial killers wasn't enough of a spectacle, my best friend Deb joined us dressed as a giant yellow Teletubby.

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At the park, there seemed to be at least several hundred people milling about. We saw witches, superheros, princesses, and cartoon characters, but no other Droogs. In fact, a few people didn't even realize that we were Droogs. One person commented that she thought it was so cute that we were all dressed up as Charlie Chaplin. Hmmm. I guess that's what I get for dressing my kids up as random serial killers. Next time, I'll be sure to pick serial killers that most people are familiar with!
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It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Part 3

After two weeks of pre-parties and pumpkin patches, the day had finally arrived: Halloween was here! We started off our evening by visiting Vince's mom, sisters Leslie and Adele (pictured above right), and nephews Obi Wan Kenobi (AKA Ryan) and Superman (AKA Tyler).
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Thank you, Holly, for supplying the photo of the Chan Clan!

After a brief visit, we returned to go trick-or-treating with neighbors. Some of the characters we encountered were a ladybug (Berry), a witch and a teddy bear (Aneta and Michalis), two Little Red Riding Hoods and a very scary Granny Wolf (Holly, Rusty, and Isabel), and a mummy (Nolan - duh!).
. The concept of trick-or-treating seemed to elude the Boo at first. He hung back with Daddy and warily watched the other kids take candy from strangers. After the first half hour, though, he grew tired of watching from the stands and jumped right into the action. Thankfully, we'd tricked him into thinking that part of the fun was bringing each treat back to Mommy for safekeeping - and out of the mouth of a young toddler who'd otherwise be up all night on a sugar high. In the process, however, he'd forget where he'd been, and - after depositing the candy into my hands - would often turn right back around and return to the person from whom he'd just trick-or-treated. The result was lots of loot:

There was actually much more candy than what you see pictured above, but somebody ate it all...

Thank you, Grace, for this fantastic pic of Monica, Julie, me, and my bump!
Hope everyone had a rockin' Halloween!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Part 2

This Halloween was one of the busiest I can remember. In addition to the neighborhood Halloween parties we'd already attended, we had several other spooky-themed events on the books, including an outing to a local pumpkin patch with our Emerson class. While Benjamin and BFF Nolan clambered all over the pumpkins, I couldn't help but think back to the previous year when we had visited this same patch...

What a difference a year makes, eh? I marveled at how much my little boy had grown. Back then, he was a chubby baby who could barely sit up.

Now, he's an intrepid little boy who is brave enough to venture into a faux cemetery.

Ok, maybe he's not that brave.

The Halloween festivities continued at class the following week, when the kids got dressed up in their costumes to go "trick-or-treating" through the other classrooms. We visited English language classes, a seniors knitting class, and a figure drawing class where, thankfully, the figure model wore a costume of his own - a pair of flesh-colored briefs. Though I was tempted to, I did not take a picture of him.

As he strolled through the halls wearing his punk outfit, blue mohawk, and devil-may-care expression, Benjamin looked like a miniature juvenile delinquent.

After trick-or-treating, the kids wrapped up the morning at a Halloween carnival set up by the teacher. One of the carnival games involved bobbing for powdered donuts. It took Benjamin a while to figure out how it worked, but as soon as he did, he was hooked.

He could not get enough of the sugary goodness! After bobbing successfully for his first donut, he went back for seconds. When I wouldn't let him have another one, he scoured the ground for crumbs the other kids may have dropped, but the slim pickings led him to make a face that - minus the powdered sugar residue - would have rivaled Henry Rollins' most vicious yell. Again, a far cry (no pun intended) from Emerson class one year ago:

Stay tuned for more on Halloween 2009!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Part 1

Halloween. A time when ordinary, everyday people transform themselves into anything they can imagine: superheroes, comic book characters, legendary figures, fantasy figures, or mystical creatures. Is there no more magical time of year?
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This year, Vince, Benjamin, and I decided to trade in our boring identities as accountant, toddler, and housewife and become a family of blue-mohawked punk rockers. We debuted our new family look at the neighborhood Halloween party with our neighbors Cleopatra, a mummy, and a Caesar's Palace emplo-- I mean, Marc Antony.
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Since three-foot-tall punk rocker costumes are hard to come by, I took matters into my own hands and created one for the Boo myself.
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I started off with a black t-shirt and jeans from Target. I cut the sleeves off of the shirt, sewed on zipper trim, and used iron-on transfer paper to add the red letter "B" I'd created in Photoshop. I narrowed the legs of the jeans and sewed black pleather trim with metal rivets down the side seams.

Unfortunately, I'd narrowed the pants a little too much. When Benjamin wore his costume for the first time at a Halloween party for the neighborhood kids, he fell over nearly every time he tried to run, walk, move, or breathe. Once prone on the ground, he had trouble getting back up because the pants bound his legs together, so he wound up wiggling prone like a little punk rock fish-out-of-water. Also, the tightness in the legs kept pulling the waistband down, exposing his knickers. Not a punk rock look at all.

A few quick mods fixed these issues. I cut out the inseam of the pants and replaced it with a strip of stretchy black jersey. To keep his diaper under wraps, I added metal snaps to securely fasten his shirt to his waistband. Problems solved!

Add a few finishing touches - a metal-studded pleather belt cut down to Boo-size, a variety of industrial-strength hair products, and a cuff made from leftover pleather trim and studs pried from the belt - and Benjamin was transformed from chubby, everyday Boo into...

BADASS BOO 2009!
More Halloween hijinks to come, so stay tuned!

"I Pity the Fool!"

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. It's the day when we're allowed to dress up however we want, and use the excuse "This is my costume!" to explain ourselves. Well, at least that's what I did back my wilder days when I'd prance around looking like a you-know-what. But I digress... For new parents, baby's first Halloween is chance to get the little one dolled up and looking even more precious than usual. For most, that means dressing up their little one as a pumpkin, a teddy bear, or a bumblebee to a chorus of "ooooohs!" and "aaaaaahs!" For me, it means draping my baby in bling and waxing up that mohawk to a chorus of "I pity the fool!" If you're scratching your head quizzically at this point, then you're too young to be reading my blog.

Because I wanted to make sure that I didn't sacrifice Benjamin's safety for the sake of his costume, I had to fashion my own Mr. T bling. I purchased some basic materials at the local craft store - velcro, fabric glue, gold braid, and felt - and got to work. It was actually surprisingly difficult to put these two necklaces together. I can't tell you how many times I accidentally glued the materials to my own clothing or to the couch. Don't tell Vince I said that. He loves that couch.

It's a good thing that we had a bazillion Halloween events to attend, or all that work I'd put in would have been wasted! There was a get-together in neighborhood park, where Benjamin kicked it with his neighbor Franken-Nolan and classmate Grant the Friendly Dinosaur.

We also attended a green Halloween event at Eco Station with Nolan (who had to chuck the costume in the heat), his dad Shawn, and mom Julie. Shawn and Julie dressed up as a mad scientist and the Bride of Frankenstein, and in a stroke of genius, Vince put on his own clothes and told people he was Murdoch from the A-Team. Nice try, Murdoch.

Of course, Playa Vista put on its own Halloween party, where we met up with neighbors Holly and Isabelle, who were dressed as a chef and a crab. Dad Rusty (not pictured), was a crab fisherman. Not to be topped by our neighbors' ingenious costumes, Vince upped the ante and came dresssed as an accountant on his day off from work who was very lucky to have scored a date with me, Foxy Brown.

The great thing is that the fun isn't over yet! Benjamin and I still have a few Halloween events left to attend today. I don't think I'll be wearing my costume again, though. This was Benjamin's face when he saw me in my wig:

Scary indeed!