Halloween 2013, Zelda-Style

 We had awesome costumes this year, but McKay does this weird thing where he only takes, like, two pictures of anything, and one is always super blurry and the other is semi-blurry. This means I took 2 bazillion pictures of him and Lincoln being adorable, and I got one shot of me in the costume we worked so hard on. One day we'll get better pictures of it. Or maybe not. In case of that second eventuality, I'm just gonna post this now. Super late.

   This isn't my for-reals costume. I wore this for the ward party, because they wanted me to be in this Hollywood Squares skit and needed me to be something recognizable. Which my real costume really, really wasn't. So . . . witch!

Lincoln got woken up from bedtime for the ward party, which is why his face. And for those he can't tell, he is Link from the many Zelda games! McKay is his trustworthy, very annoying fairy from the game Ocarina of Time. Just so you know what they're trying to recreate:

Source

Not a super great picture, but it was hard to find anything besides fan art. There's some really weird fan art out there, by the way.

  Lincoln's costume is primarily thrift store finds, and some of it is from his Rory the Roman costume from last year (like the boots and cross-belt. Those boots fell off constantly last year, now they fit perfectly!). The sword and shield are cardboard that we cut out and painted. Go us! And we got the hat from McKay's mom, who for some reason had, like, three of them. I'm guessing elf Christmas hats? Maybe? Anyway, saved us some sewing time!

 Once Lincoln woke up a bit more, he loved the party. Especially once candy became part of the equation. The youth set up trick-or-treat rooms that looked great, and had fun activities. One of them you had to army-crawl under a cutely decorated table, which Lincoln thought was the shiz. After visiting the room across the hall (bowling), he dropped down in the hallway and army-crawled back to the other room. Candy shortage was a problem, so sometimes we'd have to give the youth a piece of candy we'd already received for them to give to Lincoln at the end.

   Carving the pumpkin. As usual, my job was goop. McKay carved a simple triforce (to continue the Zelda theme). Which . . . we forgot to take a picture of. Oops. McKay tried to get Lincoln to touch the pumpkin goop, which promptly made Lincoln FREAK THE FREAK OUT.

  The only two pictures of me and the costume that took so long! I bought the skirt, shirt, shoes, and vest (which was originally a turtleneck sweater) at the thrift store. McKay sewed the vest (no pattern, he's good like that), I cut out the lining for the bottom of the skirt free-hand out of (you guessed it!) felt. Took forever, but it turned out far better than it should have. I also made the chicken (cuckoo) out of felt, it looks much better in life than this photo would suggest. By the way, did you know that straightening cheap wigs doesn't work out super well? I realized that when the hairs immediately burned off and began  to shrivel at an alarming rate. Oops. By the way, NEVER EVER NEVER wear heels to trick or treat. I headed back home after a half hour to pick up better footwear. Stupid Julia. ANYWAY, can you guess what I am??

  Most likely not. That's okay. The only woman who ventured a guess while we were trick or treating said, "Oh, so you're a girl from Holland?"
" . . . Yeaaah." And I moved on.

  Anyway, I was the Cuckoo Girl in Ocarina of Time (her real name is Anju, but nobody nowhere would know that. I sure didn't.) She asks Link to gather her cuckoos for a reward, since she's allergic and can't touch them. Which makes my carrying around a giant cuckoo suspect, but whatevs.

Actual still shot on the left, which it looks creepy now that I'm no longer used to N64 graphics. Artist rendition on right.

 Actual trick-or-treating! Lincoln LOVED LOVED LOVED it. He got very good at knocking on doors (not so much at actually saying "trick or treat"). He initially was confused on whether he was supposed to put one of his candies from his bag into the bowl or vice versa, but he learned. Oh, how he learned. He also figured out that because he's cute and small, he could take handfuls of candy, and the bowl-wielder would usually be cool with it. We didn't try that hard to stop him. We like candy. A lot.

  SO EXCITED waiting for the door to open!

  Short video of Lincoln yelling, "YAY!" as he runs to the next house (and me trying to remember the Zelda music).

Aaand another showing Lincoln taking advantage of his cuteness and us not trying very hard to stop him.