Halloween -- by guest Micah Heiselt



In my humble opinion Halloween is by far the best non-denominational holiday that we have. It is the only day of the year when you can turn yourself into whatever you want and still be accepted by your friends, family and society. At least as much as you were before.

The downside to Halloween, though, is that almost all of the design that accompanies it is really bad and kitschy. Kids dress up in prefab, plastic costumes and march past yards full of prefab, plastic pumpkins, inflatable witches and orange Christmas lights. There must be a universal law correlating the quality of a holiday with the amount of depressing design that represents it.

This is why I believe in taking Halloween back to the good old days of homemade costumes, self-carved jack-o-lanterns and Sugar Daddies. In a good year I start my costume planning around June or July, mull it over for a month or two and then spend a leisurely month or so followed by an all-nighter on construction. Here are some of the fruits of my labors.




I believe this is the costume that Rachel was referring to in my introduction. I had lots of fun with this one and even won a cake!




My wife and I had a great time with these. We had broomsticks inside which allowed us to stretch up to 9 feet tall.



This was a costume that we had planned long before we even thought of having a kid. We saw a baby porcupine (a porcupette) at a nature preserve in Alaska and it was settled.

So, Happy Halloween to all! I really enjoyed guest blogging this week and I want to thank Rachel for inviting me. Also, thanks to all of the nice people who posted positive comments. It’s nice to get a good ego boost now and again.

12 comments:

Courtney said...

Holy cow, that is a phenomenal Edward Scissorhands!! No wonder you won a cake with that costume!

Piper Jacquelyn said...

Wow, completely amazing costumes! I can't ever seem to get mine to work out quite right and spend most of the night explaining what I am!

Emily said...

oh my gosh, that is AMAZING! the greatest part is you actually look like edward scissorhands, face shape and all. not everyone can pull that off. impressive.

Caroline said...

I can get behind everything but the Sugar Daddies...blech.

*L said...

the edward scissor hands looks amazing... and the baby costume, adoreable. halloween is my favorite holiday evveer.

shill said...

edward looks superb!!!and porcupine baby is simply adorable :)

Stephanie said...

Great posts...and great costumes!

Cheryl said...

Especially love the porcupine! I think our toddler is going to be a gray owl this year! Halloween is so fun! :) We are now in the UAE and I'm just glad we can celebrate.

micah said...

Thanks everyone. We went to a party last night where the kids could be in a small costume parade. Needless to say I spent the entire day at the sewing machine and still got there late. All went well, though, and after only three broken sewing machine needles my son became a fish. Unfortunate, we didn't get any good pictures, but we still have until Friday before all of the Halloween festivities come to an end.

Megan Whittaker said...

Oh my, are those black and white costumes from Spirited Away? I love that movie. Great costume idea

Jen of MadeByGirl said...

GREAT EDWARD SCISSORHANDS!!
The makeup is so well done.


Jen Ramos
'100% Recycled DESIGNER Cards & More'
www.madebygirl.com
madebygirl.blogspot.com

anna jo said...

I love the baby porcupine costume! I was just thinking today about how you usually only see babies dressed up as pumpkins... this is much, much better. and you do make a great edward scissorhands, btw.

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