Halloween!

As I said earlier, I love Halloween! As usual, I dressed up the yard a bit tonight:

Carved pumpkins (four words, people: battery operated pumpkin carver – this thing was awesome!):
 

Jo and Felicia wanted a front row seat, so they camped out in the front window to watch trick-or-treaters:

I dressed up as Violet Hunter again…this time without my Sherlock Holmes. Oh well.

We ended up with 63 trick-or-treaters. We gave out 29 books. The first trick-or-treater came at around 6:05 PM (for reference next year – every year I try to remember what time the first kids com around so I have the pumpkins out and my costume on in time). The last came at around 9:15PM (after we’d turned off the lights and doused the jack o’ lanterns…we didn’t open the door).

Now all that’s left is to clean up the yard. Sigh, and I’m off to Philly for the day tomorrow…hope it doesn’t rain until Friday at least.

Tags: halloween

Halloween at the Pops

The fruit of all my costume-making labor came to fruition this evening at the Marvin’s Halloween Monster Mash concert at the Kennedy Center. Our picture was snapped by someone from WASH-FM, a local radio station, but we haven’t seen the gallery up on their web page yet. There were lots of kids there, many of them in costume. A few adults were in costume, too, though not a huge number. Our costumes, in my humble opinion, were among the best there tonight.

The concert hall was decorated up for the occasion. All the doors into the Hall were decked with spider webs. The stage had a pile of carved pumpkins, a couple enormous bats and spiders. There was also a skeleton choir. The decorations set a great mood for the concert.

The opening piece was a spooky-sounding string quartet, during which the other musicians paraded through the audience and made their way up to their seats. This was a great chance for us to check out their costumes. The musicians’ costumes were all top-notch. There were the normal suspects: pirates, witches, a punker, a Nat’s player (or fan), etc. Of note, there was a mad scientist, a sumo wrestler, a old, fat Elvis, an Indiana Jones, and a Raggedy Ann with a knife in her belly. There was, however, one witch that looked exactly like the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz (or Elphaba from Wicked). The best costume was the “balloon guy” – he was dressed as a headless guy (i.e. with a jacket that went up over his head), and then in place of a head, he had an enormous, helium-filled, round orange balloon decorated like a jack o’ lantern. Oh, and the best part of the balloon guy’s costume was that he could make the balloon rise or lower, so for a while it was hovering well above the rest of the symphony.

The entire concert was great. Here are a few notes:

• There were a few movie pieces, from King Kong, Psycho, and Harry Potter.
• They performed a couple of numbers from Wicked: The Wizard and I and For Good. The soprano who sang the part of Elphaba in the Wicked pieces was fantastic. Sadly, I didn’t really like the other soprano who sang the part of Glinda in For Good – she didn’t sound as natural in the part, singing almost too deliberately for a Broadway song.
• They played a tango from The Addams Family, after which a girl dressed as Wednesday Addams came out and chided Hamlisch for vilifying ghosts and goblins, her friends. She then sang a sappy love song, which I can’t remember the name of (and isn’t in the program). While the girl did a great job with the song, I couldn’t believe that Wednesday Addams would sing such a song. She’s all about being morbid, and the song didn’t ring true.
• The finale was two numbers from Phantom of the Opera. The singers did a great job with these numbers, but I’m not sure I’m a fan of Phantom. Maybe I should actually see it one of these days.

Overall, this was a great concert. Andrew and I are going to have to look more closely at the Pops schedule and see if there are other concerts we would like to see.

Tags: halloween, music

Costume finished!

Andrew is going as Sherlock Holmes, and I’m going as Violet Hunter. Violet is a character from a Sherlock Holmes story and is reported to be the female character who got the closest to marrying Holmes of anyone (I think — Andrew is the Holmes fan, I have yet to read any).

Sadly, the pictures do not do justice to my costume. The main fabric of the bodice and skirt is shiny, so if we use a flash, it ends up having weird shadows. Andrew snapped a couple last night without flash, but they’re a bit grainy (and the seam up my bosom just looks wrong).

I decided to forgo the bustle pillow, though looking at the pictures, I might be better off with it. I figured that I have enough butt as it is, but the bustle might sit better with the pillow under there. Oh well — that will have to wait until later.

We have the Halloween Pops concert tonight, so everyone sent good costume-staying-together thoughts my way.

Tags: halloween, sewing

Halloween Pics

I hope everyone had a great Halloween. We had a good one. There were about 67 trick-or-treaters at our house. This year I had 43 books to give out, and they were a big hit. I had 6 left over (unlike last year, when I ran out by 7:30 PM), so I now know that next year I should keep it to about 35 books (though it’s not a problem to have left-overs…I’ll just save them for next year).

Surprisingly I only remember one Darth Vader this year. I think the best costume I saw was early in the evening, a little girl was dressed as a pirate, complete with hat and boots. Her baby brother was also in a pirate outfit.

Here are the pumpkins I carved this year:
   

And I gussied up the house a little:
   

Felicia and Patrick watched the trick-or-treaters:

Me? I dressed up as a saloon girl:

Tags: halloween

House of Halloween

Have I mentioned that I love Halloween? Yes? Well, I’m going to say it again. I LOVE Halloween!!

Everyone in the house gets into it — that’s Felicia and Patrick. Felicia has a witch costume, and after Patrick saw it, he wanted to get into the act, so I gave him my cat ears so he could be her familiar.

And I carved my pumpkins today – I’ll post pictures tomorrow with the candles burning.

Tags: build-a-bear, halloween

Happy Halloween Weekend!

I love Halloween, so I thought I’d dress up the place a little. (If you’re reading through an aggregator, you’ll need to come to the site and see what I’m talking about.)

Tags: admin, halloween

Halloween Cookies!!

Have I mentioned that I love Halloween?? And, I have a collection of metal cookie cutters? Put the two together, and this is what you end up with:
   

Tags: baking, halloween