Hi everyone! It’s me, Robbi!
I love Halloween. I think it’s my favorite holiday of the year (actually, I think it’s tied with Thanksgiving, but for the purposes of this blog post, let’s just say it’s my favorite for now). I’m not, however, one of those ambitious Halloween maniacs – the folks who come up with elaborate spooking devices they put on their lawns, or who go all out with the spider webs and jack-o-lanterns. I wish I were. Really, I do. But Halloween has a way of sneaking up on me and I’m never quite prepared for it.
This year was going to be different. Alden had been claiming since the spring that she wanted to be a princess fairy, and wear her Tinkerbell dress-up dress for it. Costume #1: done. It’s been done since May. Check. Kato has said all along that he’d like to be an airplane. Actually, specifically, a jet. So we have spent the last month or so discussing what we would need to make a jet. He’s been quite thoughtful about it. Well, all this discussion went nowhere until the 29th, when our Yankee Candle school fundraiser order arrived in just the right sized box to make a jet plane out of. We sprang into action.
I cut a hole in the top of the box for Kato’s head, and some small holes on the sides for his arms. We fashioned a tail out of a triangle of cardboard, and Kato advised me on the proper aerodynamics of the tail fins (I originally had much too long of a top fin, making the jet look more like a sideways rocket). It was such a flurry of jet-making that I forgot to take pictures. After ransacking our storage area for big pieces of cardboard that might work as wings, I found a bolt of cloth, and voila! Cut it in half and you’ve got two pre-fab wings.
Kato very carefully placed them into the slots I cut out for them.
We used the styrofoam packaging for a Yankee Candle jar to make the nose of the plane, and added the propellor from an old balsa wood wind-up plane that had been long broken. Again, I forgot to take pictures.
I also forgot to look after August, who announced that he had taken off his diaper and pooped on the floor. In the flurry of excitement following his announcement, I kneeled on my exacto knife, ruined a favorite pair of pants, and suffered a not-really-mortal flesh wound.
Because of the poop debacle, I only had time for a packing tape and paper towel bandage, but it seemed to do the trick.
Once we were back on track, Alden helped out with the taping.
We had decided to put duct tape over the entire cardboard construction to make it look more shiny, like a real plane.
We did not realize at the time how long this would take, given how impossible it is to keep duct tape from sticking to itself.
After a run to the store for more duct tape and several hours of dedicated service, the plane was finished.
Kato put it on, and immediately said, “I don’t like this.” And then took it off. Resisting the urge to scream, I asked what was wrong with it. He said that it smelled funny and didn’t have any wheels.
Well, wheels would have to wait. Not 100% enthusiastic, but bleeding from one knee and smelling of duct tape, we headed to bed, with a whole day to spare before Halloween.
After getting back from school the following day (Halloween Eve), we added some wheels, using the bolts for Iggy’s travel crate, so that they could be retractable.
Kato agreed that they were pretty cool. But he still wasn’t fully on board (no pun intended). A little more rummaging around produced a pair of work earmuffs that I converted to a pilot headset with the addition of a bendy-straw and ball-of-tape microphone. Instantly, Kato was sold.
Apparently being able to speak into a microphone and say, “Pilot to co-pilot, we’re ready for blast-off” cures all ills, including the funky smell of duct tape.
So, while Kato took his plane on a short test flight,
Alden began to fret. Her costume didn’t feel like much of a costume anymore. We had spent all this time on Kato’s costume, and she was just going to pull hers out of a drawer the next morning. I appreciated her sudden desire for craftiness, but couldn’t help but be a little annoyed at the timing. She still wanted to be a princess, but wanted to have a new dress. With about an hour to go before bedtime, we raided my closet. We came up with a few options, but they didn’t look quite princess-y enough (too cottony, perhaps, not enough polyestery). And then I remembered a piece of fabric I had – regal red with a gold herringbone pattern. And I discovered the most amazing thing (necessity really IS the mother of invention!) – you can make a fantastic princess dress out of a single piece of fabric and a ribbon – no sewing required.
And here are some vague-ish directions on how to do this, which you can skip over if you don’t care about princesses or princess dresses or how awesome it is to not have to sew a dress at the last minute when you can’t really sew:
So, these directions probably don’t make any sense, but it’s super easy. You cut a hole big enough for the head in the center of one side of the fabric, kind of close to the edge – that’s the neck hole. Put the fabric on, with the short part of the fabric towards the back. Bunch up the fabric that’s hanging on the back and drape it back forward over the neck (so it looks like a halter top). Then take the corner of the fabric that you just folded over to the front and pull it towards the back (under the arm) and up through the neck hole. Pull it tight until it tightens around the arm, making a kind of a sleeve. Do the same for the other side. The fabric that is pulled through in the back will make a bustle-looking thing, and you just tie the ribbon around the waist to keep everything in place. Note that relative to the kid, the fabric is actually a little bigger – for Alden it dragged on the ground in the front a little bit, because she wanted it to be long and princessy.
Again, I have no photographic evidence, because we were down to the proverbial wire. We cut a crown out of paper, added a wand with a paper diamond on top, made up a name for our princess (Princess Juliana!), and called it a day.
And then, it was Halloween! We were invited to a Halloween party after school. Once again, I decided to put together a costume for myself in the hour that we had after school before leaving for the party. I found two bags of indian corn under the stairs that the kids had brought back from a field trip two weeks ago and I had forgotten about. I decided to put it to use. With the help of a trusty construction stapler, some foam core and saran wrap, I made myself into a corn flake.
Get it?
August stuck with the old standby chicken hat:
(while Matthew stuck with the old standby “Exhausted Dad”).
I adjusted Alden’s ribbon:
And we were ready to party:
There were several great things about the party. One of them was lounging on the Adirondack chairs next to the fire pit:
And the other was getting away with forbidden love between man and cornstalk:
Oh, and of course, I forgot about all the pizza and candy we consumed.
And, perhaps best of all, the fake fangs that were in the goody-bags:
There’s nothing scarier than an off-duty pilot who’s turned into a vampire, unless of course it’s Princess Juliana come to suck your blood:
After the party we rushed back to our house to grab some candy and head over to our neighbors’ porch – ours is small and hardly noticeable, so it isn’t great for candy distribution. Donald and Ann have generously hosted us since Alden was a wee one – and we have so far successfully tricked the kids into thinking that giving candy out to trick-or-treaters is more fun than actually trick-or-treating.
We had a wonderful time and saw lots of great costumes.
Did I tell you how much I love Halloween? A LOT. I just can’t stop talking about it (no kidding!).
Hope you all had a happy, fun, and gratifying Halloween. Until next time,
