updates and apologies

Apologies to my many, many readers for almost a month of absence! Once the school year starts up, my schedule gets chaotic. But trust me, I am thinking about Halloween near constantly. (promise!)

I've purchased the materials for the Baby Charlie costume and should put pics up as the costume progresses. I've found that unconventional costumes are easy to shop for at fabric shops, because you're often looking for ugly fabric that's on sale. I found a semi-suede dark brown for the alien skin and a pinkish, knotted fabric for the viscera of the "gore-hole". It was actually harder to find a good hoodie for Baby Charlie, but I think I found something that I can build the costume around - something that the ever-expanding baby from beyond won't outgrow within a month.

The marionette project is stalled and it looks unlikely that I'll have it up by Halloween, which is a shame. I got over a major technical hurdle this summer and I now have a working styrafoam turntable. But there were so many other parts to the contraption (let alone the marionette, itself!) that I would seriously need another summer to get anywhere on it. Maybe next year!

Luckily, a semi-decent Halloween store has opened in Roanoke - Spirit Halloween. They seem to have gotten the genius idea to cannibalize the corpse of old Circuit City stores. I don't doubt that they got a great deal. I hope I would be able to do something similar in the future, if I opened a haunt. A space like that would be perfect.

change of plans for baby charlie costume?

For those of you unfamiliar with the Baby Bjorn baby carrier, it's like a harness that straps a baby to your front. Baby Charlie loves it, and is currently big enough to ride in it facing the same direction that I'm facing, about chest height. You see where I'm going with this, yes?

I got the idea for a hilarious baby/daddy combo costume today. We can re-enact the infamous scene from Alien, with me playing the part of poor Kane and Baby Charlie being the chest-burster! Tell me that doesn't rock! Charlie's costume would actually be simpler to make, as all I'd have to do would be to make a tight-fitting alien "hoodie" for her, because only the upper half of her body would be showing. My own costume could be very simple - throwaway clothes from Goodwill with gore around the chest hole.

Seems a shame to give up flying monkey, though. Although I could always do that next year, but she'll definitely be too big for baby bjorn, then.