And the Golden Glue Gun goes to...

My plethora of glue guns sit in a drawer all year long until Halloween.  There is not a single cutesie craft that will lure them out before then.  I'm allergic to cutesie crafts.  They make me itchy and squish my face up in contempt.

But a week before Halloween, the glue guns resurface and Mark goes into hyper-drive.  He's trained our kids to be repulsed by all those off-the-hanger costumes and go for something more original.  But original to me means scalding hot glue burns.  My fingers clench just thinking about it.  Thankfully Mark's largely the costume builder and I just do the finish work like painting them or sewing stuff.  I leave the injury provoking work to him.

That's all well and good except for the fact that this year Mark had business meetings in Texas.  That left me home alone with my scorned collection of glue guns and Halloween looming just days away.  No thanks to Pinterest, Chloe and her cousins had already made grandiose costume plans and were alarmed when they heard that Dad/Uncle Mark would be out of town.  What's a craft-repulsed mother to do?  My first thought was to ban them from surfing Pinterst.  My second thought...

I decided to show Mark that I could get "Project Runway" on without him and summon my inner costume curator...

 Chloe, Janelle, & Madi

turned into a bunch of suds-ur-duds...

And for baby Kendra,

I dusted off my sewing machine

and turned her into Boo...

 

Without his dad around, even Connor fended for himself 

and made his own glue-gun creation... 

 I caught him peeking out of his ginormous box mask.

But just when I thought I was doing pretty good fending for myself I catch sight of this little beauty at our church Halloween carnival...

 

This is my friend Angela's MASTERPIECE.  This year the costume craze caught hold of her and she said she decided to give the Skillman's a run for their money. So she turned her daughter into a freaking Christmas Tree!  There are even wrapped gifts under the tree!!  How Spectacular is that?!  Angela spanked us at our own game of Project Runway!  There's no question Angela definitely wins the golden glue gun award for that trick-or-treating treasure!

Luckily my kids are growing and soon they'll be tired of costumes (they will won't they??) and we won't have to do many more of these costume contraptions anymore.  But until then, I'm gonna make sure Mark isn't scheduled to leave town around Halloween anymore--My fingers would rather take their chances carving pumpkins with a sharp knife than risk 1st degree hot glue gun burns any Halloween.

 

Face Painting or Graffiti?

We always know when Halloween is coming.   The hype usually starts the very first of October when a handful of folks,  including myself,
all start slyly trying to figure out what in the heck Mark has planned for the kid's costumes.  Unfortunately over the years he's gone costume crazy and has developed a bit of a reputation.  I think all the interest perked a few years ago with  Chloe's shower costume which marked the onset of Mark's infamous decent into costume madness.

Originally, his odd costume quest was his way of doing anything but help the kids carve up their slimy pumpkins.  His repulsion for all things squishy has driven him to become the Calvin Klein of Costumes and go into Project Runway mode.  The very moment we grab a piece of cutlery remotely sharp enough to whittle a vegetable, Mark gets a bizarre urge to get the glue gun out and preoccupy himself with a sketch pad drawing up detailed plans and schematics for the making of an unorthodox contraption he calls a "costume"---a complex but surefire ruse to get him out of scraping pumpkin guts.

So this year while the rest of us were in the house chiseling our pumpkin masterpieces, Mark was out in the garage with some old moving boxes and spray paint (and yes, a glue gun).  This year it was Chloe's turn for a "Mark Masterpiece".  After an hour or so he emerged with this bizarreness for Chloe:

He made Chloe into a Arcade Crane Game.

Where does he come up with this stuff??
Perhaps the paint fumes.

Meanwhile, after I played the role of "stable single parent" by scraping and carving pumpkins with the two kids, something I rather enjoy,
I still had to come up with a costume for Connor.   Mark had suffered some sort of glue gun or scissor injury that prevented him from making another glorious albeit unconventional costume for the Con-man.

So I grabbed a few wigs, lightened some dark jeans (boy did that take me back to the 80's), and dressed up Connor and his friend Severin:

Nobody under the age of 35 knew who they were.  But everyone who grew up in the early 90's knew right away and gave them a costume 'thumbs up' by quoting a favorite line from the movie. Party on Wayne.

Then it was off to our church carnival.  Here Chloe had a hard time Trick-or-Treating due to a design flaw in her costume which caused a major technical difficulty:  No arm holes=No Candy Bag. A real deal killer there.  Always the quick thinker, Chloe propositioned a friend into holding her bag, by luring her with some sort of complicated candy trading payment proposal.  Problem solved.

Next it was off to the Halloween carnival.  Here she had to ditch the costume.  Kinda hard to get your face painted when your behind a glass panel.

It was at the that very face painting booth that Chloe ran into more trouble:  Trouble by the name of Sheralyn, one of her older cousins.

Here's Sheralyn in Costume.

She's in charge of the face painting booth:

Don't let the pink bunny costume fool you.  

Under that rabbit exterior is a sly little fox. 

Apparently Sheralyn has forgotten how to paint flowers, rainbows, and cute colorful butterflies on happy little children's faces.  Perhaps another bizarre case of paint fume foolery, much like the demonized one Mark suffers from.  This year a peculiar design emerged from her paintbrush--a sign that she may have been working the face painting booth for far far too many years...

Chloe was all excited to have me tell her what "surprise" her cousin Sheralyn painted on her face, and here's her reaction after I tell her:

Uh yeah, I'm thinking this is more like Graffiti than face painting.  Especially when all her handiwork began being plastered all over the clueless children that night:

Soon, Sheralyn's friend Molly was perniciously emboldened and everyone who dared to visit the face painting booth was branded by these two wayward girls:

The paint fumes have apparently taken their toll on poor Sheralyn over the years.  I think it's safe to say it's probably a good thing she's off to college next Halloween where she will be safely away her all carnival paint booth duties.

In the meantime, Mark will still be around next year for costume bizarreness.
-->

Halloween Round Up

This was our first Halloween without Chey around, pretty creepy.  Our family loves holidays because it gives us a chance to throw another party (we'll celebrate practically anything!).  Mark loves coming up with strange costume ideas, but he is not too fond of carving pumpkins, he groans about it every year, we think it's because he hates the slime inside of them.

This year we tried to do a little pumpkin Skype-carving with Chey so we felt like she was hanging around with us while we carved pumpkins.  Not really the same as having her here, but it was fun to give it a try.

We missed her so much that we got out the photo albums and took a stroll down Halloween past.  Some years we get into costumes and it was fun to look back on all the weird and silly costumes we've painted and hot glued in the past.  So this one's for Chey, a fun look down memory lane!

Cheyenne...

Mitchell...

Connor...

and Chloe!

Ever since Mark went crazy putting together the legendary shower costume, folks have started to expect crazy original costumes from us each year, this is a lot of pressure!  You know things get out of hand when at the end of August your thinking about Halloween Costumes.  One day I'm gonna throw the whole town off by turning back to the dark side like we used to do and scaring people by going store bought!

Until then, kids and parents alike are having fun with a little costume madness.  This year Chloe went as the Travelosity Knome (she even trick-or-treated doors by telling all the candy-givers, "Thank you, and remember, never roam alone."   Connor's been begging to take scuba classes so he wanted to be a scuba diver this year.  Our cousin's Madi and Janelle came over and got into the fun too.  We painted a box up for Madi so she could be WALL-E, complete with a working fan that Mitchell had wired up inside her box so it would really work when you pushed a cardboard button (go figure), and Janelle found an old costume of Chloe's and wanted to be a pretty pirate.

Mitch, who may never outgrown Halloween, got out the duct tape and made his own costume...


It had working parts and somehow he got it to ooze smoke.

Halloween was fun but not the same without Chey home!  One of our favorites is a vintage picture of she and Mitch dressed as a Cowboy and an Indian.  Mitch looks totally cross-eyed in this photo!

Happy Halloween Chey!