Happy Halloween!

As Halloween season draws to a close this year, I think I did alright.  I’m feeling better after my little meltdown!

I did get the costume repaired while The Professor was in school so it lit up once again.  That night we had a special dinner:

Ghostly grilled cheese for the Pre Trick or Treat Supper.

Trick or Treating went pretty well, other than it was cut short by the frequent “pee-er” (That would Iron Man).  We pretty much hit our whole street, and then we were done so he could pee.  That was probably just as well-it was getting chilly.  At least I was getting cold, they were wearing long johns under their outfits.

Cat Girl and Iron Man, crime fighting duo.

Acting as their characters. They had a lot of fun with this.

Both kids seemed pretty satisfied.  I got my Mom tax for taking them out, two Reeses Peanut Butter Cups.  I can’t complain about that.

Happy Halloween everyone!  Eat a bunch of candy and be merry.

Moronic Mommy and the Memories She Tries To Make

Last night I bawled my eyes out because I felt like I have failed at creating good memories for my children.  Is that moronic or what?

Let me back up a bit…

We have made decorations but have failed to put them up because Mom couldn’t find the stuff to hang them.  Grandma even bought us a spool of invisible thread this past week and I could not for the life of me figure out where it went.  I found it, as I was scurrying around doing the costume thing.  So as of this morning, the decorations are still laying on the table.

I have gone back and forth and back and forth on how to put the light in The Professor’s Halloween costume.  This saga started about a month ago in Extreme Geekdom, Iron Man Style.  When the pocket idea came up, of course I waited until the last minute to sit down and start sewing.  The idea was simple-just sew a little pocket into the inside of the costume.  I decided to sew a little pillowcase type thing.  The only material I had was left over from my daughter’s cape last year, which was fine.  I spent a good portion of the afternoon hunched over sewing this cute little black pocket:

The pocket

One thing that I forgot to do before I started on this venture was to see if the light would actually shine through the material.  My son came home about the time I discovered that it, in fact, did not. The bad thing about this is that the library Halloween party was tonight, and his parent-teacher conference was at 4:30.  Therefore I had very little time to remedy this.  After I got both kids their snacks I sat down and tried to think quickly.  I came up with cutting out the front part of the pocket so the light could go through.  That works, right?  Not so much.  I finally put the light in a ziploc bag, and pulled the material around it and then sewed the whole dang thing together to the costume.  He thought it was awesome.

Iron Man strikes a pose. I wanted to get the gloves to go with it, but ran out of money.

Then off to his conference.  Then back.  A quick supper.  Then it got REALLY interesting.  There were three parties, one for Pre-K, then for K-2nd Grade, and then the big kids.  So I would have to take one child up and have my husband bring the other up a half hour later.  This would not be a huge deal except that when  I went out to start my car the battery was dead.  The drivers side door appeared shut but it wasn’t quite.  We live not too far from the library, but we were already running late.  So I stuck my head inside, told my husband what happened, that I would take his car, would be back for the Professor around 6:30, and took off with Princess Gimme.

Now here is where I choose my words very carefully, lest I offend anyone.  I love our library, I think they do a great job with their kids story times and have a wonderful selection of books for such a small town.  But this years’ party was, well, short.  VERY short.  Like one game and it was over short.  The costumes were cute.  The kids were cute.  But that’s all it was.  I’m sure there was a reason.  I know we went a few years ago and it was much longer and there were lots of different games.  We’ve missed the last two years due to other stuff going on.  So it was over and done in twenty minutes.  And then they took the older kids, ahead of schedule.  I being the one parent who as usual missed the boat, did not have my older child with me since he was still eating dinner.

Cutest black kitty ever. She’s a manx in this picture-her tail is in her treat bucket.

I jumped in the car with my daughter, drove home, ran into the house to grab my son and no one was there.  Not a soul. Not even the dog.  This means that my husband had to walk on his injured foot to take my son up there.  Meanwhile, my daughter had already removed her shoes and was starting to eat her tootsie pop.  I made her throw them back on, and we sped back to the library.  There sat my husband with the dog.  How we missed each other I’ll never know.

I made him take the car and the Princess, and I went in to meet up with my son, who incidentally had already forgotten that his costume lit up.  I walked up to him, and pushed his chest to turn it on.  All of the kids went nuts-they thought it was the coolest thing they had ever seen.  The Professor, meanwhile, did not realize what I had done until about ten minutes after I turned it on (not sure what he thought all of his friends were raving about!)  He happened to look down later, see the arc reactor lit, and had a cow, “HEY IT WORKS!  IT WORKS”

It works! It works!

They played the same game that the preschoolers had played.  And then that was it.  Luckily, The Professor did not know what to expect, so he was very pleased.  We walked home, which took twice as long as it should have because he is distracted by streetlights that turn on and off by themselves.  He had to stop and ask questions each time we encountered one.  When we finally arrived home I gave him very specific instructions on what he needed to do.  He ended up taking the costume off, losing the hanger, and managed to take the light out and pull the pocket almost completely off.

This was when my head exploded due to all the work I had put in, my aching back, the scurrying around, the miscommunication with my husband, and the dead battery.  And oh yes, I got a call this evening to bring paper plates and napkins for The Professor’s school party in there somewhere in between the party and the pocket incident.  I will have money to get them tomorrow, but no way to go get them or get them to the school.  Therefore it will be plain paper plates and napkins instead of fun Halloween ones sent in my son’s backpack.  I feel so very, very bad about that.  There was just sort of an explosion of emotions from all of us.  I went upstairs, closed the door, and just had a nice little cry by myself.

After that well deserved cry I felt better, and talked to my son about his costume.  I have theorized that the pocket coming out was an accident when he took the costume off, because I’m sure he just stripped it off and tossed it.  I’ll never really know, because all I saw was him holding the light two inches from his face, walking into the living room (it wasn’t on, because then he would be blind-that thing is BRIGHT!)  Even though my husband swore up and down that his costume would not be fixed, I think I can fix it pretty easily.   Memories, dammit, we’re gonna make some great memories-because I’m the Mom and I say so.  Tonight is Trick or Treating.  Hopefully that will go much more smoothly.  And dammit, I’m going to have a Coke today.  Because I deserve it.  That will make everything go better.

And the car battery?  Oh it’s terminal, which I think is a pretty funny joke if you ask me.  Get it?

Ready To Haunt: Let Halloween Week Begin!

At long last Halloween week is officially underway!  I think we’re almost ready.

It’s a full few days for the kids.  Tonight marks the first appearance of their costumes-the public library Halloween Party.  That will be interesting, since there are two different parties-I’m hoping the Halloween hating hubby will help me exchange children in between.  Then Tuesday Trick-or-Treating.  Wednesday The Professor has his class Halloween Party. That’s one more time that he’ll get to wear the costume. We’re hoping to go over to the school for the costume parade.  We’ll see if we can make it over there.

The final verdict on the Iron Man costume was to use vellum over the light so that it wasn’t quite so bright, and to sew a pocket into the costume.  The vellum part is done and I will be furiously trying to get the pocket sewn before The Professor’s parent teacher conference this afternoon!  The cat costume is positively adorable.  We used the accessories that we bought at Target, and she’ll wear a black fleece and black pants along with them.  It has been approved by Antisocial Kitty, who has pressed it for weeks by laying on it every day.  How nice of her.

Apparently laying her costume on top of the tp was the right thing to do, according to the cat.

I hope to have pictures taken and posted tomorrow or Wednesday.  However, things don’t always work out like I want them to.

We have made fun decorations using some foam shapes and glitter glue and markers, but really struggled on how to display them.  We finally punched holes in them and hung them in the windows using invisible thread.  Along with our purple lights and cobwebs in one window, and the bat lights in the other, we had a pretty great display!  For Trick or Treating we have a green glow stick for the cauldron on the porch to give off an eerie green glow.  So hey, we may not be giving out treats but our house is going to look really cool!  Again, I’m hoping to get it done and get pictures up sometimes in the next day or two.

I’ve said before how much I love Halloween.  It WAS a big deal when I was a kid.  Not only that, but one of my favorite rides at Disney World was the Haunted Mansion ride.  It was never scary, just really cool.  I always wanted to work at the Haunted Mansion for a summer job. Unfortunately we moved away before I was old enough to do that.  Such a bummer!

My favorite part of the Haunted Mansion, the ballroom.

What do you love about Halloween?  Do you have any great Halloween memories?  I’d love to hear any cool stories!

Extreme Geekdom, Iron Man Style

Guess what this is?

For those of you who have read my “About” page, as you can see by the picture above Evil Genius really did make his own arc reactor.  Now it’s not real-all it does is light up, but it looks REALLY cool.  It’s LEDs and a power source, nestled into a pvc pipe vent that has been hollowed out and the design cut into metal by a laser.  Oh and vellum, that was my contribution.  It’s actually part of his cubicle sign at work, but this part he worked on for quite some time at home.

(Just in case you haven’t noticed, we are geeks.)

At some point in this process, Evil Genius promised The Professor that he was going to make him an Iron Man suit of his own for Halloween.  He wasn’t thinking at the time that The Professor would remember. He did.  I ended up buying him a cheap Iron Man costume at Target last week.  There were two different costumes.  The $20 one had muscles.  As far as I could tell, that and the glow in the dark arc reactor were the only differences that I could tell between that and the $10 one.  Needless to say, I bought the cheaper one.

Me being me, and the wife of an engineer, I had to make it light up somehow.  I jokingly asked Evil Genius to make him his own arc reactor.  Not going to happen.  Then I had a vision.  At Lowes they have these lights that look remarkably like the arc reactor in the movie.  Lowes is not a place I get to very often. It’s not like it’s out of my way, it’s just one more place to stop when I’m out running errands.  I checked the light section at Target while I was there, but it didn’t look enough like what I was going for.

Now who cares that a seven year old’s costume that happens to have the middle light up is authentic looking.  Apparently I do.

Today we finally made it Lowes after renting movies.  The light, while not exact, looked pretty darn close to the one in the movie.  So I shelled out the money, and have spent the better part of the afternoon trying to figure out how the heck to attach it.  The first idea was to sew a pocket onto the inside of the costume, and slip the light in that part.  I don’t want stitches showing.  So that idea went away.  My second idea was to use the circle of velcro that came with the light.  I had my son put on a black shirt, then the costume over it.  I slipped the light in between with the sticky side up against the shirt and stuck it on.  Then I sewed the velcro to the shirt.  Looks great, but it’s pretty obvious that the light probably won’t stay on.  The additional part didn’t work-I cut circles of velcro in half and stuck them to the light and to the inside of the shirt.  You could see the half circles of velcro through the costume when the light is on.

The light, attached to the shirt, with the velcro that I have since removed from the front.

This is kind of what it looks like shining through.

This is what I’m actually trying to light up.

So that’s where I’m at.  I’m not sure where to go next here.  Suggestions are welcome.  I’m sure I’ll come up with something, it may just take some time.

Here’s the funny thing, this isn’t an abnormal situation at our house.  We always seem to have something a little strange brewing.  Some days I don’t think we are just geeks, we are EXTREME geeks.  Now granted, I’ve seen people take it to extremes on the internet.  I’ve seen people get married in full Klingon garb and wear their Star Wars costumes around for fun.  But we get into the technical stuff, and that’s a little scary.

I think Tony Stark would be pretty darn proud of my ingenuity. Oh wait, he probably wouldn’t care. He’s a narcissist.

Halloween in my family has never had a shortage of creative costumes.  As an adult, that creativity has been stifled in me somewhat.  Mainly by a husband who doesn’t care for Halloween.  Also because I just haven’t had much opportunity to dress up.  This year, the kids are getting old enough that I can really have fun with it.  We have the house mostly decorated, we’re working on the costumes, I’m getting my geek on in a big way!

I’ll keep everyone posted on the costume.  I’ve had a couple of suggestions from friends on Facebook.  Maybe between that and the old brain, I’ll come up with an uber brilliant idea…

(Incidentally, just as proof that we aren’t just geeks, but well rounded ones- The whole family actually got to go to the football game this time.  It was meant to be.  Not only was it perfect weather, but the eagerly anticipated half-time performance from the marching band just happened to be music from Star Wars.  This was enhanced by the summary of the football season thus far scrolling on the big screen in a Star Wars type title sequence, as well as a mock award ceremony on the field with people dressed up as Star Wars characters.  It had to be one of the coolest things I had ever seen.  I don’t know if anyone else shared my enthusiasm outside of my family sitting with me, except maybe the guy who comes to the games in the Clone Trooper helmet.)

Princess Gimme and the Halloween Conundrum

And so it begins…

Target put out the Halloween stuff.  I suppose they are allowed since it is the middle of September.  I’m sure Christmas stuff will be out in a couple of weeks.  There should be a rule:  NO Christmas stuff until after Halloween is over.  They never listen to me.

Anyhoo…  Both children have already told me what their Halloween costume is going to be.  The Professor has known what his is for quite awhile.  He wants to be Iron Man.  He and Evil Genius have been drawing up plans for this fancy costume.  I can’t really say anything-the kid has chosen the same two costumes for most of his life.  He has been Jeff Gordon every year since he was two.  One year he alternated being a football player with the Jeff Gordon costume for two different events.  I figure we have spent less than $30 on him in costumes his entire life.  That’s ok.  Now I hope he isn’t disappointed if his dad doesn’t get around to making this costume.  I know it happens, I’ve seen him do it.  The Princess has had homemade costumes and borrowed costumes for the last few years-a fairy princess and a sparkly witch.  We’ve gotten off rather cheaply, which is a good thing.

Target happens to have an Iron Man costume in his size for only TEN DOLLARS.  I picked it up and eyed it, and cautiously put it in the cart.  I was thinking that we could produce it if the other one doesn’t ever get out of the planning stages.  A back up.  But I forgot who was with me.

“MOMMY YOU’RE GETTING MY BROTHER AN IRON MAN COSTUME!  I WANT A COSTUME!!!!”  Sigh… Yes I was shopping with Princess Gimme.

She has changed her mind about seventeen times already about what she wants to be for Halloween.  Most of that occurred today while we were at Target.  Originally she told me that she was just going to wear her Cinderella dress up outfit for Halloween.  I was all over that.  My aunt, who is in love with all things Disney, brought it to her a long time ago and she wears it quite often.

Then, the other day she announced that she wanted to be a kitty for Halloween.  I was similarly happy about this.  All black, I could make ears and a tail no problem, and draw on whiskers with eyeliner (wait… I don’t wear eyeliner).  We could even make a sparkly collar for her.  Oh this would be GREAT!

Then we went to Target today.  After her loud outburst about the Iron Man costume, she started in.  “Mommy look, there’s a Captain America costume.  I want to be Captain America for Halloween.”  I secretly smiled about that one. “We’ll see.” I told her.  She pouted.  We went around the corner, and there was a whole aisle of costumes.  “OH Mommy, there’s a Tangled dress.  I want to be Tangled for Halloween!  I love the dress, it’s PURPLE…”  “I thought you wanted to be Captain America?” I asked.   “Oh no, now I want to be Tangled.”

Two minutes later she spies a display of costume parts on an end of an aisle.  There were lots of different choices, including a set of ears, whiskers, tail, and bow tie for a black cat.  Only $5.  I could so do that…  She spied them “Ok, now I think I want to be a black cat again.”  Uh-huh.  I picked them up and put them in the cart.  Then she says “I changed my mind, I see stuff for a bee.  I want to be a bee.”  Then “I want to be a doggy.”  Then “I want to be a princess.”  And on and on and on…

I go back around the Halloween section and put the cat stuff back, and walk away as fast as I can.  I wasn’t so sure I should be investing ANY money into her costume choices right now, since she can’t decide.  She whines and pouts.  As we are coming into the beverage section, I see that my giant bottle of Sutter Home has been marked up almost THREE dollars.  Nooooo!  Maybe I should do without then.

Just then she says “How come you’re getting MY BROTHER a costume and not me?”  I snap “Because he made a decision!”  I pick up a small bottle of Sutter Home and set it in the cart.  I may need this after all…  Then I return to the costume section, and put the Iron Man costume back.  There was no way I was going to get it home discreetly, she was going to blab to her brother.

Perhaps I can make her a Princess cat dog with wings superhero costume, maybe that will make her happy.  Nah, she’ll just pick something altogether different at the last minute.

One thing she HAS been able to decide on is that she wants sparkly pumpkins.