Why Halloween is clearly the superior holiday

I

1. No family crap I get to choose who we hang with

2. I can dress like a tramp or a bum and it's totally ok

3. The candy tax! I gave birth to you so I get all of the peanut butter cups and a handful of sugary whatevers.

4. The decorations! Dude I have a giant blow up spider and a 9' dragon in the front yard, need I say more?

5. My child is an October baby and he inherently knows how to do Halloween right! Can I say boogie man costume...

6. Little kid TV movies for Halloween rock. Since they are only on for a short time I can binge watch Halloween Town and Hocus Pocus and not have the slightest iota of remorse.

7. Fall: pretty colors, crisp air, Apple everything(don't like pumpkin so we do apples instead), sweaters, warm drinks, blankies, warm doggies in laps, and fuzzy socks.

8. No gifts = no pressure, no family bull shit, and no disappointed children

9. I get to dress up Quinn in the best costumes and play like I'm a big kid, it's the best!

10. Rocky Horror Picture Show, where everyone is invited to fly their freak flag!

Oogie Boogie

Finally done! The boy child's costume is finally completed and officially has been through its first test run. It's not exactly like the inspiration photo but close enough. 

We decided to alter it a bit for more leg and arm movement. The legs were most certainly an improvement but the arms could have been better. Also ours glows in the dark which is too much fun. Quinn and I played in the bathroom with the lights out all morning turning his costume into a giant puppet and singing the Oogie Boogie song. I'm pretty sure if anyone were to have walked in on us singing in the dark I would have been sent off to a padded room.

The costume it's self wasn't too hard to make once mom and I thought about it for awhile. Since we didn't have a pattern we just drew every thing right on the fabric and cut from that. Most of the time we use parchment or craft paper to make our patterns but we figured meh it's the boogie man who cares if he's a bit lumpy and uneven. For the face on the hat we cut on the inside and made relief cuts and used the glue gun on the back side and just worked the poly fill in to create the soft sculpt on the eyes and mouth. To finish it we then glued in a piece of black felt for the eyes.

For the body we used an old sheet for the liner and we pinned the layers together to cut the body shape out. Essentially we rounded out the corners a bit, cut straight up the center for his legs, cut the neck, and arms. Then stitched it together on the machine leaving the neck open so we could stuff the poly fill in.

To finish it off I put all the detail stitching in with black yarn, painted it with glow in the dark paint, and hot glued some plastic bugs that I found in the bottom of his toy box.

For the costume we used 2 yards of duck cloth because it was on sale but wish we would have used something lighter and less stiff, 1 skeen of black yarn, 1 old flat sheet for the liner, and not even half a bag of poly fill. The over all shape of this could also be used as a fat suite for a sumo wrestler coustume that I'm now feeling may have been a missed opportunity for some really fun little kid bantering. 

We took Oogie Boogie out in public for the grocery stores kids Halloween night and got rave reviews. I was shuffling him along as people were trying to take the poor kids picture it was like the poperatizi  decended on the small town grocery store. The best part of the trip was the little haunted house, while we were in there Quinn scared the bejesus out of another kid! Quinn stopped to check out the skeleton on the ground then turned around and was pretty much right in this other kids face with his glowing big head. I almost felt bad then thought it was a total score for being abel to scare small people!

Doing Halloween Right!

Have I mentioned my Pinterest addiction? 

My most beloved holiday is nearly upon us and I finally started the boy child's costume. Last month we started the discussion of what he would want to be and he said dinosaur. While I would typically be stoked for this choice I was a bit underwhelmed since he was already a dragon (dinosaur with wings). 

I started perusing Pinterest and came across the cutest hot air balloon piolit costume and thought it would be a shoe win with Quinn. 

Well he is obviously growing up because he was pretty much totally disinterested even though he has an unhealthy obsession with balloons. 

So what's a mom to do?!? Well this mom all but forced the small child to sift through Pinterest with me till we could find the perfect idea. We went through all the typical costumes vampire, knight, hobbit, you name it we looked at it. Then out of some small dark corner of the inter webs poped up a tiny human dressed as Oogie Boogie from Nightmare Before Christmas. 

Quinn has only seen commercials for this movie as it's still a bit to scary for the child with a wild imignation. But he was so drawn to it, I let him watch a YouTube clip of the Oogie Boogie song, and what do you know this kid was sold! I have never been so excited for a silly costume, this movie is one of my all time favorites and I finally have a reason to dress up like a Tim Burton character. 

I love my little man so much and he gets gold stars this year. I think this might be one of those October baby traits, they just inherently know how to do Halloween the right way. I'm really hoping we pull this off because whoever originally made this rocks. Here's hoping mom and I manage to pull this one off without killing each other!

P.S. Mom- I promise I'll pick up the elastic and really do love that you put up with us, well particularly all of the crazy project ideas.