Good taste in Halloween costumes

Turns out Annabelle wasn't the only Mrs. Lovett for Halloween! Carly, who works with my sister, also dressed as Mrs. Lovett, and her cubicle even got into the act, winning the prize for Best Cube with its cooking utensils, disgusting menu, and disembodied arm hanging out from behind the "baking supplies" cabinet:



Great costume (and cube), Carly! Are you excited about the movie coming out later this year?

Was it Mungojerrie?

Heck, no, it was Rumpleteazer:



And there's nothing at all to be done about that!



Annabelle fairly danced her way across Ft. Knox tonight in her Rumpleteazer costume. For those of you who haven't seen the musical Cats (and there must be what? at least 15 of you), Rumpleteazer is the lady half of this mischevious duo:



Mike went out trick or treating with his friends. He wore his prize-winning costume from Friday afternoon and had to come home once to dump off a bag full of candy before heading back out for more.

While Annabelle and I made the rounds for her treats, Fred stayed home and handed out candy. He enjoyed torturing the trick or treaters by making them touch the animatronic rat in order to collect their goodies.

Halloween 2005 is officially over. This is my favorite part of the evening, where I can bask in the afterglow and eat a little (OK, a lot) of chocolate. If Andrew Lloyd Webber is looking for a new leading lady or a makeup artist for his next production, he can find Annabelle and me right here, munching on baby Snickers bars.

Eddie says, "Happy Halloween!"

(Actually, Eddie says, "Get this stupid hat off of me, human, or I will put something very bad in your favorite shoes.")

Winner!

I wound up making Mike's costume last night so that he would have it for the Halloween dance today after school. He was so excited when I picked him up, because he won a prize ($10 to our local video game emporium!) in the contest. In celebration, I am breaking my vow to keep the costumes under wraps until Halloween, and will now show you Mike's prize-winning idea:



He's a chick magnet. Get it?

Annabelle's costume remains a work in progress. Tune in Monday night to see the final results!

A Halloween political funny

Shamelessly snatched from DailyKos:



(Click the picture to view the video.)

Getting ready for the Great Pumpkin

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. I love making costumes for the kids, and I have whipped up some doozies in the past, if I do say so myself.

I spent the entire month of October our second year in Hawaii, for example, transforming Annabelle into a princess on a pink pony. She wore it 2 years in a row, winning prizes with it both times. Here she is modeling her horse in Texas:



That was the same year Mike decided he wanted to be a werewolf. A little makeup and a lot of spirit gum and fake hair and voila! instant werewolf:



With Halloween coming so close on the heels of the neverending move this year, I've had to prioritize where to direct my limited holiday energies. Annabelle has asked for a fairly complicated costume (you'll have to wait until Halloween to see!), so that is sucking most of my energy and causing a wee bit of anxiety for me. Mike's is fairly simple yet fiendishly clever and alarmingly appropriate (again, wait until Monday!). I have all the supplies and just need a little sewing time.

What I haven't had time for this year is decorating, unless you count cardboard boxes and very little furniture as some sort of spooky theme. Fred did pick up one little decorative item the other day though. Let my neighbors deck their houses and yards with pumpkins, baskets of gourds, and bales of hay. Who needs all that? Not me. I have the one, the only (out of a stack of hundreds at Walmart) . . . agonized rat:



(Click on the photo to see the rat writhe in agony.)