11.01.2010

halloween for 4

i don't love everything about halloween. i'm not against it in the name of jesus or anything, but i don't find it entertaining or fun to try to scare or be scared. call me a pansy, it's cool, i totally am. i get disturbed very easily. i HATE horror movies with a burning passion and can't get excited about the parts of this holiday that are meant to creep, disgust and frighten. BUT i do love everything else that comes with it. like halloween junior. the candy, the costumes, the colors, the pumpkins, the bands of children roaming wild in the streets and grownups who make themselves look ridiculous for their kids. love love that stuff.

fun fact: my parents are teachers (my dad is the headmaster and my mom does PE) and we grew up in the headmaster's house which is RIGHT next to the elementary school (it's actually the school's house and when my dad retires the new headmaster's family will move in). its not in a neighborhood but obviously every little kid in the school knows where my parents live. so on halloween night we always had to keep all of the lights in the house off so that we wouldn't have a million trick or treating students constantly dropping by to see mr. and mrs. vincent's house and to show off their costumes. it would be so funny if all of us were home, just walking around in a totally dark house pretending to not be there. so festive, so welcoming are we.

well, jesse and i had NO plans for halloween this year beyond me having a costume idea for all of us and wanting to make a pumpkin. so we planned to get dressed up on sunday at home just to take some pictures for posterity and then call it a day. without actually going anywhere. ADVENTURE! luckily we got invited at the last minute to jesse's brother's church trunk or treat festival with the grandukes and cousins. that sounded much better and way less pathetic.

our pumpkin. this is shamefully the first one jesse and i have ever "carved" (aka punctured) together. we usually just buy a whole one and put it out on our doorstep until it deflates in mid-february.

so our costumes. if you remember last year, you know i am BIG into family-themed costumes that are not store bought and are not franchised characters (i know i will only be able to do this for a few years before their minds are poisoned and obsessed with all things disney/marvel/polyester vomit). so 2009 was the highly acclaimed, mortifyingly wonderful sushi-fam:

LAST YEAR: sushi chef, salmon sushi and bottle of soy sauce

the only thing i bought last year was judah's white-rice pjs which he wore dozens more times and the swath of green fabric for the seaweed which was like a dollar. and we got maximum impact. so the bar was set high and the budget low for this year. in addition, i HAD to incorporate the tiniest dukes and give her her own costume too, but it had to fit in with the family theme. so here's how we rolled:

the main event, star of the show: judah as georgia tech volleyball player.

i made his sweatbands and kneepads with scraps about an hour before we left the house. his jersey is a hand-me-down from his buddy drew. his shorts are some rolled up cargos of his from the summer.

the supporting cast: layla as volleyball, keight as the net, jesse as the ref

layla boo: we had a old volleyball that had a hole in it so we cut it up and patched it on my belly. our first plan was to just cut the back half off and stick it on top all in one piece, but HA! i am about 3 times bigger than an actual volleyball so i had to put it on like armadillo armor in pieces and segments. we just used a hot glue gun and glued the parts to an old shirt of jesse's.

keight: hot-glued black embroidery floss in a grid across the shirt and added a nylon strip to the top for the tape (white part of the top of the net). how many times last night did i get, "you're a soccer ball and goal?" OGG! no! i get irrationally and personally offended when people don't immediately get what my costume is. last year was really rough in that regard and i was practically screaming at people by the end of the night, "I AM SOY SAUCE!" like the deranged king of sparta.

jesse: painted the ncaa logo on a scrap of blue fabric and sewed it onto an old white polo over the existing logo. paired it with some black pants and white sneakers (so chic). the whistle was the only thing we paid for. after finding a $4 official ref's whistle in sporting goods i was peeved and not about to spend that much. so we headed to the party favors section and found a 4 pack of sports ball-shaped whistles for $1. i just took the baseball shaped one and painted it black.

the whole cast together. after about 95 attempts

judah has his eye of the tiger gameface on here

in action

hahahahaha

when i was trying his stuff on him at home he wouldn't tolerate even one accessory for more than 2 seconds before flipping out and ripping them off. so we waited until we got to the festival and he was so distracted by all the crazy sights and then we ambushed him with all 5 extra costume pieces. i think they all cancelled each other out in terms of bothering him and allowed him to be able to leave them alone for 10 minutes while we did the pictures. once we started walking around though, he remembered his hatred and his main nemesis, the too-tight (my bad!) headband came off. as well as his shoes which are 2 sizes too small and exploded off of his feet as soon as he was turned loose.

ok here is the best part (to me).

when we were trying to get a group shot, he kept going down into prime digging stance on his kneepads. when i saw him like that i was immediately reminded of a similar photo-pose from my past:

this lovely shot became slightly notorious in my life because it was published in full color taking up the entire cover page of tech's newspaper my senior year (which is weird because i was not the star. this may have been my only appearance in the old technique, in fact. well, if you only get one shot...go big).

that's my boy

9 comments:

  1. LOVE it! So creative, so pulled off. Tough call, sushi fam or volley fam. The winner is...volley fam (because of miss layla of course)!

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  2. Nice!!! That is my all-time favorite picture of you! Man I miss you! When I come back lets throw on some spandex for old times.

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  3. LOVE the costumes. bravo. I'm so impressed at your creative energy! I love Junior Halloween too!

    -the mama with no costume who dressed her kids in garage sale costumes.

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  4. Judah in drag :-) I adore him! You're insanely creative! I was going to be your blog for Halloween... but instead was an "Army Wife"... 3 kids under 5 yrs and pregnant... double stroller, sippy cups, and all that jazz!!

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  5. I definitely think the photographers for BOTH of these photos deserve some sort of by-line...They're awesome!!! This is definitely, you're boy!!

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  6. Keight... I had to comment! You don't know me personally, but we have many friends-of-friends and so forth... and I'm definitely a blog lurker.
    (1) I love the costumes. Absolutely fabulous and creative. Judah's knee pads kill me.
    (2) I may be partially (or totally) to blame for the Technique picture of you. I'm not sure when exactly this photo ran, but I was the Sports Editor for 2002 and a Senior Writer in 2003 (the first female Sports Editor in Tech's history - hooray!). Although I didn't always have the final say in what pictures made the cut, I'm pretty sure I had some input.
    (3) Hopefully you noticed GT women's sports got a lot more coverage when I took over the reigns at the paper - and with good reason: our girls teams were kicking butt! Between the Bond Girls (sorry if you hate that term), the tennis team, and women's softball doing so well during those years - the girls deserved more limelight!
    =o)

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  7. So creative, I love the costumes!!!

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  8. super duper happy i was linked to these old posts. you dressed your son like sushi ... there is nothing better that i have ever heard or seen in my entire flipping life. i am happy.

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  9. Your sushi fam costume is my favorite family costume. It's probably Judah's face, it says 'I am not sure that that cleaver is fake.'

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