Mother: This is cool. The devil?
Child: I don't want to be scary.
Mother: This is pretty too: the flamenco dancer.
Tubes of white creme makeup, colored hair spray, adhesive eyelashes in purple lace... these things are only for sale in October. And watching ordinary people carefully select Witch's Brew nail polish or a curly black wig with silver highlights or a headband with pink leopard ears is quite amusing.
I'm not that into Halloween, really. But some friends of ours host an annual Costume Party for Halloween that gets pretty intense. One year someone dressed as a fisherman. In addition to the cargo vest, fisherman's hat, and fishing pole, he had built a canoe out of cardboard which was held up around his waist by suspenders. Inside the boat, he'd fashioned a pair of pants into a set of legs, so it looked like he was sitting in the boat, even though his legs actually extended beneath the boat, allowing him to walk around. His fiance dressed as a fish in a huge felt costume stuffed with balloons to make her appear plump. Her face was visible through the fish's huge gaping mouth.
This, and other elaborate costumes, are commonplace at the Halloween Bash. So when the theme this year was movie characters, we knew we had a lot to live up to.
Husband chose his character first. Mr Tumnus, from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The chance to dress as a faun was irresistible. I wanted to be a counterpart of some sort, so although he petitioned for me to be Lucy Pevensie, I chose to be the White Witch, Jadis.
We tackled the Tumnus costume first. We already own an old-school black umbrella, and used some empty cereal boxes and kraft paper to make packages. A red scarf would make him appear dressed for a wintry day. For horns, Husband fashioned small bits of wood into pointed nubs, drilled holes in them, and strung them on a length of floral wire. The wire formed a nearly invisible headband, keeping the horns perfectly in place.
For hooves, Husb constructed stilts by screwing an old pair of dress shoes into a two-by-four and then connecting that to a base which he whittled in the front to resemble a split hoof. We had found a pair of furry sleeves at Goodwill. It was unclear what their original purpose had been, but we put them around the stilts to cover the shoes. The angle of the shoe meant that he was nearly walking on tiptoe, but with no support under his heel, like even a stiletto would provide. This made his entire foot appear to be the ankle portion of faun's legs. and they made the perfect ankle portions of the goat hoof.
The most important part of the costume, though, was the fur legs. Husband bought some fur fabric at Joann's and we embarked on our first sewing masterpiece together. Using a pair of pajama pants as a pattern, we traced and cut out four faces for the pants: two fronts and two backs. Then, lining them up carefully, we fed them through the sewing machine and slowly watched a pair of pants emerge. A quick tutorial from youtube on sewing an elastic waistband, and we had wearable pants! It was our most triumphant moment as husband and wife, I think. Seeing those pants come into existence.
When he first put them on, they were quite obviously a little too short.
His real ankles showed between the bottom of the pants, and the top of the goat ankle. So we had to make extensions and sew them onto the bottom of the pants. After that, they were perfect.
The Jadis costume was next. One small element of the costume would be shoes. Whatever else I wore, the shoes would have to be white and appear snow-worthy. I have nothing that fits this criteria. So I stopped at ReUzIt on the Tuesday before the party to find any shoes that would fit. A pair of black heels with squared-off toes seemed right so $4.75 later I was on my way to Walmart for white spraypaint.
Thursday afternoon, when I got around to painting them, I found - to my great distress - that the shoes were either incomparably stainproof, or else just made of some completely paint-resistant fabric. As much as I sprayed on there, not one drop of white paint stuck. The shoes were decidedly black. And staying that way. Time was running short and in addition to shoes, I still needed my icicle crown, a dress, and a fur stole.
I knew the key to my Jadis success would be the dress. If I failed in my dress shopping, I was prepared to wear my own wedding gown as a last resort, but it seems irreverent to wear one's own bridal gown as a costume. So I was on the hunt for a thrifted one. I'd tried three thrift stores with no success. It seemed no one donated their wedding gowns to Goodwill anymore. By Thursday night time was running short, and I'd found nothing. I had to find a dress.
I google-mapped thrift stores with my zip code and after finding the first one was only children and baby stuff, I went to the second one: the local Goodwill, which I'd not yet visited. It looked mammoth from the outside and I was sure I'd meet with success inside. But inside, I was met with this:
Yes. A Goodwill of bins. Where everything is sold by the pound. I was immediately discouraged. A wedding dress was certainly not hiding in these bins. But I took some time to browse the shoe section and found a pair of Nordstrom Comfort white pumps, size 8 1/2, with broad heels that wouldn't make me feel like I, too, was walking on faun ankles all night.
I had time for one more Goodwill, one I'd heard excellent things about, one 30 minutes away, but that was open 'til 9:00. I called Husband, told him I'd be a little later, and made my way there.
Stepping inside, I saw the costume attire gathered toward the front of the store. Goodwill knows its October purpose. But no white gowns. Then, across the room, I glimpsed a fabulous billowing white wedding dress hanging on the wall. I beeline'd to the dress and found the price tag. $100. My heart sank. The costume party is intense, but not $100 dress intense. Across from the first dress, I saw another one. "$25 As Is" As is? Broken zipper? Huge rip? Wine stains down the front? Nope. A nickel-sized black stain, possibly pen or marker, at the right hip. I snatched it from the rack and into the dressing room, hardly believing my luck. I put it on.
It fit! It fit as in I-could-have-worn-it-as-my-actual-wedding-dress fit. A size 8 dress, there on the rack, a week before Halloween... The faun pants triumph was matched, possibly surpassed, by the sheer triumph I felt walking out of the dressing room with the perfect Jadis dress gathered up in my arms. Before I left, I walked around the store and happened upon a rocking chair, an exact match to rocker we already have. It was $10. So I hauled the chair and the dress to the checkout line, paid $35, and headed home, more satisfied than I'd imagined possible at the start of the evening.
At home, I tried on the dress with a length of white fur fabric Husb had bought to try out as faun ankles prior to the ankle sleeves we ended up finding. It looked perfect. I sewed the ends into triangles so it would have more of a shawl appearance, then safety pinned it to shape around my shoulders so it would stay in place.
There was just one day left, and I still needed a crown. I had some icicles (thanks to my mother-in-law!) so I just needed a tiara to attach them to.
Friday after work, I hit up the Dollar Tree for a pink tiara. It had an edging of pink fur and a plastic gem butterfly at the peak, but I tore that stuff off, spraypainted the whole thing white, and superglued the icicles to the tiara's points. OK, Husb did the supergluing on Friday evening as I was hairspraying my hair into wild White Witch waves.
When it was time to go, I think we looked pretty authentic.
We were, I'm shocked to say, extremely impressive to our costumed friends at the party. Forrest Gump, Wolverine, Mary Poppins, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Esmeralda, and Quasimodo were just a few of our party companions, and all had impressive costumes. Tumnus and I, however, were awarded Best Costumes! What an exciting honor!
There has been little in our marriage so collaborative, or so successful, as our efforts on our costumes this year. I am proud of our Best Costumes Award, but I'm more proud of our mutual creativity and the achievement of making things together.
Happy Halloween!
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