Halloween: A New Era

Happy upcoming Thanksgiving!!! Before it gets even farther along, figured to to the belated Halloween post!!!

The new era alluded to in the title refers to this being the first year where the older was not in the vicinity, so it was just the younger.

First up is a shot of the Jack-O-Lantern. For a change, they didn't have the carving contest at work this year. Just the one this year, as it seems time always gets tight this time of year. Based on Papyrus from Undertale. The youngest drew it out and I carved it. considering the challenging design, I think it came out quite well. Didn't do it that far in advance, either, so it was in excellent shape for the traditional early November mayhem. You can catch this year's here.

Next up is a construction shot of the most complex portion of the costumes this year, a pair of glasses. Involved was some Plexiglas from the dodecahedron project (worse for time, the protective paper had bonded fairly well onto it!!!), frames from some old sunglasses, much epoxy, and some even older than the Plexiglas window tint film. The black piece was a cardboard mock-up repurposed to hold the bows apart while it was being epoxied.

A couple of new shirts were in order. I did mine with the same technology the the older had previously used for his Vriska costume, a cardboard template and spray paint. The youngers' was made up with an iron on print, on an orange sleeved shirt. I never saw an image of this shirt with the orange sleeves, but hey, artistic license!!!

My costume was yet another Homestuck character, Lil Cal. Also involved was a gold tooth cap I'd had for more than ten years ago. My wife was a huge help locating it. Where is a good place to store such a thing??? An old ball cap and gold chain completed the look. To finish it off, I shaved off my mustache and beard and drew on the cheek spots and jaw opening. I wore it into work, and I think I was the only one in my department this year that dressed up.

The boy had his costume based on Dirk Strider, who of course, is closely linked with Lil Cal, so that is where the inspiration for my costume came from!!! Glasses, shirt, and an old wood sword fresh painted silver on the blade comprise his costume. I'm of the opinion that wanting to have the glasses and an orange shirt were primary motivators to his choice of costume!!!

More of the Jack-O-Lantern, this time on the cat tree. I don't think awesome cat much cares for his heiarchal position at the top of the tree being usurped.

Something cool, I have so many vacation days now, that I happened to see they had a half day available on Halloween, which of course I took. Nice, as they have moved the start and end time of my shift 15 minutes later, and it had already been a late get home time. We trick or treated around the neighborhood, the streets behind our house, then over to what had looked to be a promising area.

One place had this sign up on their gate... I feel vandalism coming on!!!

There!!! Fixed your sign for you, mister!!! No treat, here's your trick!!! Haha!!!

When we had headed over two weekends before, we'd spotted what looked like a walkway at the end of the dead end street we'd walked up. We had walked down it to another cul-de-sac in the valley below. This was the previously alluded to promising area. There were several houses with Halloween decorations, and while we were there we witnessed a mother and child having a Nerf gun war. It was pretty far on in the evening by the time we made it over there, though, and it wasn't as good as it had looked, though there was one guy we caught pulling into his garage who dug out a three year old bag of tootsie rolls and dumped a good quantity into our sacks.

Finally, now that there is one in the neighborhood, no Halloween night would have been complete without a visit to a haunted house...

"And they say the old man's body was NEVER FOUND..."

Best Halloween Ever???

As usual, I've got a backlog of posts I could do, but I'll start with this one, this year's Halloween post!!!

Start off with the pumpkins. I attempted to do the Red John smiley. It kinda came out. My wife did a pretty good cat face, I think it was the best of the three. The younger did a Derpy-O-Lantern. The older, we got him a pumpkin, but he never got around to carving it up. If it hasn't started rotting from the inside, I may cut it open and harvest the seeds. I was thinking just today of cutting it in half through the middle, and that gave me an idea for next year: try and find a large, round one, cut it most the way in half with a round part on the front, paint it up like a pokeball. Find another, smaller one and carve it up as your favorite pokemon and have it inside the larger one!!! There, I typed it out so I may remember next year!!!

He had pretty ambitious plans for his costume. Vriska, another of the trolls from Homestuck. It features some rather tricky looking horns, and one rather elaborate robot arm. He got the arm together pretty good, but never got the horns made up. It also has the hair, which we found him a pretty good wig for. He made up a stencil for the shirt and did it with spray paint.

The weekend before Halloween his DJ club was spinning the platters for a school dance, where several in attendance were dressed up. His ladyfriend was dressed up as a spider witch, which he said went well with his costume, the spider bitch!!!

Halloween night, he went out with several of his friends instead of going with us. He said one of his group hugged Slenderman. He and another girl were playing catch up with with the rest of the group when a bush jumped out and says, "What's the rush???" The girl shrieks. He stands there a few seconds, then points at the guy (in a ghillie suit) and announces, "You're a BUSH!!!" From there, there was speculation as to whether he was Senior or W Bush, to which bushman responded he was neither. You could tell he enjoyed his evening.

Of course, it was a work day for me. I reprised my costume from last year, Karkat. This year, for a change, I had a picture of him pulled up on my 'pod to show people how he looks, and they all agreed it was me. Of course, we've got a LOT on new people at work these days, so a lot of 'em hadn't seen last year, so I had that going for me. Unlike last year, however, a bunch of people dressed up, so that was cool. One of my favorites was the girl who came in with a full bee outfit on!!! The cafeteria even got all decorated up with lights and everything!!!

It was full dark when I got home, and the younger was antsy to get going. He had another very geeky costume idea he wanted to do, Ruby Rose from the RWBY series (so, if you're keeping count, both my boys cross-dressed for Halloween...)

We found him a red hoodie this year, and added on a cape, and I made up a rather dissapointing gun scythe.

I'm used to my wife not doing much at all, but this year she surprised me by having cat gear on when I got home, so she got in on the act for a change. We headed out arount the neighborhood.

Usually there's not too many kids around the area trick or treating because it's mostly all steep, but there were more than I've ever seen this year!!! It's a good one to do, because even though several places don't participate, the ones who do are usually pretty generous!!! Saw a parent done up in full on old school Joker from Batman. One house we were coming up on had probably a dozen kids coming the other way. One guy, probably around 12 or 13, came up to me and asks if I'm Karkat. I fived him for knowing that, and told him of my older going as Vriska. Yeah, by degrees, the neighborhood is getting geekier!!!

A bit further down, we come to a house with a lit jack-o-lantern outside and lights on, but it's down a series of steps. Obviously, they're participating, so we head down and knock and say the magic pass phrase. No one seems to be home, though, and as we're turning to go, here comes a little kid in a storm trooper outfit, minus the helmet. He's saying something about he needs his silver bowl, and we're wondering what that's about. Naturally, I had to use the line on him, "Aren't you a little short for a storm trooper???" Shortly after, his mother and little brother start down the steps. Turns out they live there, and had set out a rather large silver bowl full of candy, and someone abscounded with their bowl!!!

A bit later on, we came to a house that's the most done up we've seen. We walk up, and they invite us in, ask if we want any water bottles or some of the crock pot of chili they've got made up!!! I'm there. They were having a little Halloween party, and it was pretty excellent!!! The chili was pretty decent, too!!! We were probably there for close to half an hour!!! Just a few houses further, and there's ANOTHER Halloween party going on, and they invite us to have some hot dogs or help ourselves to their libations!!! We didn't, it was getting late late, and I had work the next day. I'm thinking of taking the day off next year. Truly one of the best Halloweens I've seen in our neighborhood!!!