What I Did With All That Sh!t

Ahhh, what a glorious week to be a neurotic, overly-obsessed Toxic Housewife!  Thanks to the impending arrival of the Greatest Chocoholic Holiday Ever, I had so much to be dramatic about!

As promised, here’s what I spent the last few weeks obsessing about:

1)  The Great Pumpkin Debacle

The Market decided to have a pumpkin-decorating contest amongst the vendors.  The vendor whose pumpkin received the most votes wins a $25 gift card.  That’s right: twenty-five WHOLE dollars! 

Since I was selling pies as well as wooden spoons and earrings when I participated last year, I spent hours decorating a crudely-cut jack o’ lantern with wooden jewelry, pie tin hats, and spoon arms.  I was up until ten o’clock the night before, and I thought I as quite clever with my entry.

Sadly, I was soundly beaten by the vendors who do cutesy kids’ clothing.  They threw some OshKoshes and goggles on a few pumpkins and created this:

This year, I decided to take a cue from the minions and go simpler, but bigger.  I still wanted our entry to reflect our product though, and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money.  As you might have figured out by now, with my projects the following equation generally proves to be true:

Big Plans + Little Money = Total Crap Result

I am also a little handicapped now by the fact that I make a delicious pumpkin bread and kick-ass pumpkin pie, so I feel that:

Carving Pumpkins = A Waste Of Perfectly Good Pumpkin Flesh (i.e.,  “Pumpkin Murder”)

As such, I wanted to do something that allowed me to keep a pumpkin relatively intact, therefore possibly allowing me to use it afterwards for sustenance.

So I started with old bandsaw blades, leftover chicken wire, a trampoline we no longer use, and “second” spoons that had cracked at some point in the production process and are therefore unsellable.

Naturally, in my quest NOT to spend money, I instead spent hours and HOURS cutting and taping bandsaw blades, wiring spoons, spray painting trampolines, and creating a little tuxedo out of felt (WHY did I bother to do that?) to turn all that crap into this:

The Nightmare Before Christmas

And I have to say, I was quite proud of myself, and even Bee was impressed, and several of the other vendors gathered around my installation last Saturday to admire it.  And I only spent $3 (for the pumpkin) on the project.  And I as feeling pretty good about it all . . . for about 45 minutes: which is the point at which I learned that The Minions were back:

Curse you, Minions!  Thou art an evil, evil nemesis!

Next year, I’m doing Angry Birds.

2) Kitty-Cats and Tom-Cats

I didn’t have too much time to sink into a deep depression over my sound beating in the pumpkin-decorating department, because I had to work on Mr. C’s costume.

Last year, he wanted to be a “witch”.  This year he wanted to be a “kitty”.  Which is fine, because I always wanted a girl.  However, I decided to butch him up a bit and, rather than go the black-leotard route, I went orange-tiger inspired.

I spent $3 on the scarf and sweatpants.  Luckily, Mr. C already owned an orange hoodie, so I just had to turn it inside out to hide the white logo emblazoned across the front (naturally, I was too lazy to cut off the white tag that now glared from the back of the costume’s neck, though.)  Then I cut up the scarf and pinned it around his wrists and ankles, wrapped it around cardboard triangle “ears”, pinned the remainder on as a tail, and – voila!:


And he really did look pretty darn cute.  I was proud of myself for not going too overboard, and I liked that it was something he could easily wear around, plus have tons of under-layers to keep him warm.  Because the cardboard ears didn’t stay up too well (and despite the painted-on whiskers), I think a lot of people thought he as a dog or bear (which sort of freaked me out and made me think of the odd bear-costumed guy in “The Shining”).  Still, he got a lot more compliments on the costume than I expected.

Of course, after wearing it to 3 Halloween parties, it was definitely starting to droop by Trick-or-Treating time.  By last night’s end, Bee and I had stopped telling people that he was a “kitty” and had started introducing him as a “feral cat”.

3)  Ghetto-Chic

And now I had just-enough time to obsess over my own costume.  Which I only wanted to do because a few Halloweens ago I fell in love with the simplicity, yet adult-cuteness, of this jumper costume:

My resolve was stiffened several months ago when I found this wig for $1 at the thrift store.



I decided it looked cherry-like, so I would create an ice cream jumper costume in the same style as the one above.

It is unfortunate that I always seem to forget that I can’t sew.

Luckily, having found this white bedsheet for only 50 cents and using old bandsaw blades (again!) for hoops, I wouldn’t feel too bad should I happen to commit major amounts of sewing carnage.

Which I proceeded to do with gusto.

Several hours later, my ice cream jumper had been whittled away to a skirt, and that skirt was patched in all the spots where I’d cut too far.  But I added “sprinkles” and a bright top and the wig, and ended up like this:

Yes, I ran out of energy time to find patterned tights to slip over my boots so they’d look more like waffle cones, and, yes, most people assumed I was a cupcake.  By then, I just didn’t care, and figured a costume is a costume.  (Hence why I give Bee points for just putting on the bee suit.)

I had a little trouble getting through doorways with the hoop, and I looked particularly ridiculous riding my bike down a busy street to a neighbor’s Halloween party, but at least on Halloween I can look ridiculous and pretend like it’s on PURPOSE.

4) And Speaking Of Parties . . .

A neighbor had a family-friendly Halloween potluck last Saturday where everyone had to bring a food related to their costume.  So, because of Mr. C, I made “kitty-cat cupcakes”.

And then the very next day we hosted our own party, where I made apple/peanut butter lips:

And chocolate lollipops:

And cupcakes.  But the kids decorated those.

And, I am very proud to report, I kept the party simple, with just one pre-bought craft and two very short games.  So, unlike the Epic Knight Party, this affair was very laid-back and consisted mostly of the kids playing in Mr. C’s room while the adults sat around and ate the pumpkin bread someone else had brought.

5)  The Climax

By the time last weekend was over, my Halloween preparations had been completed, and I had nothing to do but relax and wait for the Big Night.

The weather last night wasn’t too bad for Trick-Or-Treating. However, we still need to find a better way to meet our optimum house-to-candy ratio.  There were entirely too few houses with porch lights on along our block to make trick-or-treating there worthwhile, so we moved on to the next block.  Unfortunately, that block was comprised primarily of geriatrics, which is also not ideal: not only are you more likely to get crap candy from someone over 70, but they take their own sweet-assed time getting to the door, and then act entirely surprised that the reason someone rang their doorbell on October 31st was to trick-or-treat, so – once the surprise has worn off – the elderly lady/gentleman has to slowly shuffle down the hall to get the bowl of candy s/he elected NOT to store right by the door, then slowly shuffle back to the door before distributing their one piece of Laffy Taffy / dental floss.  Bastards.

We just didn’t have time for that; we had chocolate to get!  So we moved along to yet-another block.  And here we lucked out for about 20 minutes, as we met up with a family that included a classmate of Mr. C’s, and the two kids spent their time arguing over whose turn it was to ring the doorbell and trying to race each other to the next house for the privilege of performing that task first; so we hit a lot of houses in a short amount of time.

But then the classmate and her little brother decided they were done, so they went home.  Bee and I, however, didn’t have the luxury of TWO children to gather candy for us all, so we had to keep trick-or-treating to meet our candy quota.  Now the houses with illuminated porch lights were closer together; however, Mr. C was back to being easily-distracted, and he kept dawdling and becoming fascinated by invisible things floating in the air above his head.  I swear, if I didn’t know any better, I’d sometimes think that kid was on ‘shrooms.

I am proud to report that it took only a little coaching to remind Mr. C that his only required lines were “Trick Or Treat!” and “Thank You!”.  Once he got those down, he started getting cocky, ad-libbing an extra “Happy Halloween!” on top, or perhaps a “Oh, and . . . thank you! and . . . I like your pumpkins!” (the ones on the porch).  Although the extra lingering took more time, it occasionally resulted in people thinking he was cute-enough to warrant a bonus piece of candy. 

Since we’d already drilled into him the following mantra: “Choose The Snicker; Leave The Dum-Dum”, we ended up with a pretty quality-haul of treats, even though it was nowhere near the quantity of last year’s.  It’s all good, though, since there are really only so many Butterfingers my thighs can take, and I finally had to throw out the dregs of LAST YEAR’s candy a few weeks ago, anyway.

So, all in all, I consider it to have been a very successful Halloween season.

And now I only have three weeks to decide how to over-extend myself for Thanksgiving!