Halloweenies 2014

   Skipping birthdays and all that junk, heeeeere's Halloween!

  So, I chose a "Firefly" (Joss Whedon's amazing space-cowboy-outlaw masterpiece) theme for this Halloween back in . . . June? I figured Lincoln's costume would take a bit of work, and mine and McKay's would be easy-peasy. I was going as Kaylee, McKay as Wash, and Lincoln as Mal. Here are some reference pictures if you don't know:

Wash upper left, Kaylee upper right, Mal on the bottom. Anyway, I figured for mine and McKay's the main thing we'd need is coveralls. McKay already had a Hawaiian shirt from a different Halloween costume that didn't pan out, and I figured there'd be a billion shirts like Kaylee's at the thrift store, it's got a very nineties vibe. 

  I . . . was wrong. My shirt was easily the hardest thing to find, I went to the thrift stores every few weeks since June and could find nothing. Also, coveralls are INSANELY expensive (at least to college students), and I looked for weeks to find some under $80. I finally found a website where they were listed at $40, and I leaped at it. Unfortunately, they didn't have any olive-khaki color in my size, so I bought the white with long sleeves. McKay's were spot on. 

  Here's a picture of my coveralls (and Lincoln, who couldn't understand the concept of a picture without him in it), after I'd already de-hemmed the sleeves into oblivion.

   Next was the dye. We don't have a washer and dryer, and I didn't want to potentially ruin a friend's next load with leftover dye, so I decided to use our sink. It was a long, long hour of turning the coveralls in the sink. And then I looked at the package for the thousandth time and realized I only had to do it for half that long. GAH.

  Here was the awful result! I was pretty disappointed at how uneven the dye job was (but, really, what had I expected with that huge thing bunched up in the tiny bathroom sink?), but then I remembered--Kaylee's coveralls aren't exactly squeaky clean. In fact, they're filthy. So I shrugged it off. And dyed them one more time in an attempt to make them slightly less mint green.

  McKay tried his coveralls on . . . to discover that the sizing was off. Way, way off. McKay's usually a 34-34, so I got a 36 to be on the safe side. When McKay pulled them on, he had a good five inches of ankle showing. I couldn't remember what site I'd bought them off of, plus I hadn't even bothered to have him try them on for MONTHS because I was so sure they were going to be large on him, so we were pretty much stuck. But since the Hawaiian shirt covered up the middle, McKay added a panel of cloth in the torso, and they fit pretty well after that. I got zero pictures of this process.

  Lincoln's costume turned out to be the easiest. Mostly thrift store finds, just needed some extra buttons on the pants for the suspenders, plus I added the brown line down the sides. The coat was from a cheap Hobbit costume we bought, so we've already got next year's Halloween pretty much covered for him.

  I had also bought some cheap temporary hair spray dye for McKay and I so we could be the brunettes/red heads we were supposed to be. I even thought I could share mine with Lincoln. But did you know that cosmetics people don't believe anyone would want to spray their hair a normal brown color? I looked at half a dozen stores, and none sold brown hair spray dye stuff. Finally found one that was labelled "burnt brown". Good enough.

  We decided to use the ward Halloween party as a test run for the hair dye. And thank goodness we did. It was a DISASTER. Dye everywhere, the fumes nearly made McKay throw up, my spray was way too dark, and because I have so much hair, it ran out before we'd finished. Leaving me with skunk hair. And McKay wasn't thrilled with his neon orange hair, either.

    Thank goodness we did it on me before Lincoln. He would've freaked the freak out.

   Lincoln kicking butt at the games. He did very well, mostly because people tend to let cute two year olds cheat. A LOT. After a few tries he gave up on throwing and gently placed the spiders inside the buckets.

   The sister missionaries were doing face painting. They nearly fainted when Lincoln said he wanted a train. I had to look up a picture of a train on my phone for reference. Lincoln liked the result at least.

  Wash, failing at bobbing for apples. He kept saying he was going to have to dunk his whole head to get the apple, but if he had that water would've been straight-up poison. Lincoln grabbed the apple for him in the end.

  And now on to real Halloween! We learned from our mistakes and decided not to try dying our hair again.

   We told Lincoln to blow off his gun, which naturally turned into raspberries.

     I'm sure there's some fanfic out there with Kaylee and Mal getting makey-outy.

   Mal probably doesn't have a runny nose in it, though.

   Lincoln was very, very ready to stop taking pictures and go trick-or-treating at this point.

Aaaand we lost him. He was off to ring doorbells.

It seemed like there were fewer houses with their porch light on this year, but Lincoln got SO EXCITED for each new house, it was really fun to watch. Every time we told him to say 'thank you', though, he would turn back to the street while signing it. After every house we'd say, "Be sure to say 'thank you' out loud, Lincoln," and make him practice. And then in the excitement of doorbells and candy he would turn his back while signing it. Again and again and again. Except for the few times he said, "Thank you out loud." The payoff was when we knocked on the door of a deaf man, who looked so excited to have someone say 'thank you' to him.

Zero recognition on our costumes, but that's okay. Nerdiness for nerdiness' sake is our game. Happy Halloween, everyone! Hope you had a fantastic, sugar-fueled night!

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.

Middle School Crush--Cartoon Edition!

  One of my few acquaintance-friends in middle school was Wil. One "L", that was very important. He was a genuinely nice, funny, and smart guy with red hair and the customary freckles.

  Looking back, I think he's the reason I immediately liked and trusted red heads as a teenager.

  We had a few classes together. One of them was computer class, and we sat with our backs to each other. Or at least, we were supposed to. A lot of our time was spent with our chairs turned so we could chit-chat. At least, that's how I remember it.

  Finally, a girl next to us asked us if we liked each other.

  But we totally did.

(Also, from here on out, I forgot to give Wil freckles in the cartoons, and I'm too lazy to go back and re-load all the pictures, so just pretend Wil is covered in orange spots, k? Thanks)

  At the end of middle school, I expected to never see him again. He was going to the Smarty-Pants High School With Really Hard Homework, while I was going to The School With Shooting Threats Every Few Weeks.

  High School was actually a great time for me. After puberty hit EVERYONE, I was actually a pretty normal height, not the freakish giant I had been in middle school. My acne cleared up. I figured out how to make my hair not as lame. I even figured out make up to a degree. Boys had crushes on me. My confidence had never been higher.

 My senior year of high school, I visited the Smarty-Pants school to watch a friend in a musical there. I was perusing the program when I saw it.

  I immediately whipped my head toward the band area (the play was put on in a cafeteria, so there was no band pit), and I quickly spied him. At least, I was pretty sure it was him. He had changed, too. His hair was longer, and he'd grown quite a bit.

I immediately pointed him out to my friends, unable to contain my excitement. I kept asking if they thought it was him, if they thought he would remember me, etc. Finally, one of them said, "Julia, just talk to him during intermission, geez!". Intermission! Brilliant! I could hardly wait. I kept watching him during the first half, seeing if he laughed when I did, eyeing him while he played drums during the musical numbers.

Finally, intermission arrived. Suddenly shy, I meandered over, taking my time. I imagined our meeting would go something like this:

 

  After that, we would talk and laugh for the whole fifteen minutes, and we would groan when they announced that the second half was starting and we needed to take our seats. Then maybe, who knows, we would exchange numbers, maybe email . . . we would start hanging out, maybe become best friends . . .

  But that's not what happened.

  I didn't know it until then, but Band Kids are scary. They're like their own nerdy gang, ready to beat you into pulp with their retainers if you mess with one of theirs. In fact, in my head they looked something like this:

 It wasn't that bad. But it was close. Anyway, back to the story. . .

  I was crushed. My depressed state wasn't helped by the fact that everyone in the play died in the second act.

  A year or so later, I saw Wil again. It turned out he was in a band with a few of my friends, and he was at a party they were throwing.

  I'm not sure why I thought it would go better this time around. I guess I hoped the last time was a fluke. Maybe he was embarrassed to talk to me in front of his band friends or something.

 It was not a fluke.

  For some reason, I was desperate for the boy who had been so nice to me in middle school to like me again. I laughed louder, joked more, and flirted outrageously with the other boys, hoping to get his attention.

So, basically, I was the epitome of an annoying teenage girl. I can't imagine why my scheme didn't work.

  Not being mature enough to just simply ASK Wil why he was now repulsed by me, I never did figure it out. Most likely I said something stupid the last time we saw each other in middle school and conveniently forgot about it.

  Whatever the case, red heads suddenly didn't look so great anymore.

THE END