Halloween Gets Political

Halloween gets me all excited, you guys, and now I have a wee one to dress up, too.

Well this year, our costumes all got inspired by my son’s hair; he has the most delicious shade of Trump strawberry blonde, and even a bit of a mullet to boot.  Plus, Trump often acts like a toddler anyway, so there was little difference.  The decision pretty much made itself.

And then I decided to be Hillary, because there was no way I was going to dress up as Carly Fiorina, and because Hillary is one awesome lady who likes to have fun.

That left Brian.  Our backup plan was that he’d go as Chris Christie.  Originally, I wanted him to go as Rick Perry and wear the smart glasses and say “oops” all night, but then our super smart Texan dropped out of the race.  So Christie was the backup, where we’d stuff his suit with pillows and call it a night.

But we thought we could pull off something a little better.  A little more creative.  We dreamed up a punny idea for Brian to be a Super PAC.  He’d be like a crooked super hero with a cape that looked like money!  Only, he’d be able to hide where his donations came from so he’d wear a mask.  And instead of “United States of America” it would say, “Citizens United” which was the court case that made these lovely organizations legal.  And the dream was realized.

Look at this inspirational First Family. Super PAC even has on his power tie!

Anyhoo, I made the cape and mask all by me onesie.  Drew, cut, and glued on the green felt accents, and stenciled on all the words.  It turned out even better than I imagined.

My slammin’ powder blue pants suit came from a thrift store for like $2 (Macklemore starts playing in the background…pissss), and I made the campaign buttons for both Hillary and Trump.  My mom actually made Dylan’s black jacket since we couldn’t find any to buy in his size.

Happy Halloween, y’all!!  Vote early and vote often.

Cutest comb-over ever.

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I am participating in NaBloPoMo/NanoPoblano, where I try my darndest to post every single day in November.  Bear with me, cuz that’ll mean that I’m not necessarily posting my best, but it’ll be interesting!

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The Gray

Today I took a walk with Dylan, and I am so glad I did.

We squeezed it in, forced it into the tiny space of time between the end of cleaning up from lunch and the moment when D self-destructs without warning, in need of a nap.

I am glad I forced it.

Why?

Because I can feel the Northwestern winter creeping up on us all too soon and it’s freaking me out.

We had a few days of gray and rain and coolness already, and I hoped that we hadn’t said goodbye to summer already.  At this time last year, I remember it still being quite hot, or is that just me seeing through the foggy, thick pea soup of having a newborn and carrying around the extra heat-producing baby weight and wanting sleep so badly I’d do something illegal to get it…?

I can handle the depressive gray for a few days here and there.  And when I know it’s only temporary, then I actually like a change of pace where the weather’s concerned (of course, then my therapist self reminds me that everything is temporary if you give it enough time….so there).  Last Sunday I actually started to feel that twinge of excitement and coziness that I get around Halloweentime.  It makes me want to throw on a sweater, watch movies, and consume warm, sugary beverages (as opposed to the warm months, which make me want to consume cool, sugary beverages).

This will be my third winter but only my second fall in the Northwest.  This year, approaching Fall and Winter feels different.  Last year, I had a snuggly newborn and I was overwhelmed and tired and had a great excuse not to go anywhere or see anyone.  I didn’t get dressed, and I breastfed and cuddled and snoozed and rocked and bounced and sang and ate and watched TV.  Yeah, the weather sucked, but I was too wrapped up in my own personal ball of crazy – each gray day blending into the next – that I didn’t notice.  Or maybe it was that the gray backdrop matched my gray days and so everything seemed to fit.

But now – now I have a kid on the verge of walking.  He wants to MOVE.  And go outside and see things and explore.  And as for me, I want a life, too.  Seeing the world through his eyes also makes me want to go outside and see things and explore.  But the weather.  The gray.  That makes it hard.  It’s like The Nothing from The Never Ending Story.  Sounds a bit dramatic, but I assure you, Seasonal Affective Disorder is real and it sucks.  I have to push through it and I am not looking forward to pushing.

Which reminds me why I pushed to get outside and walk today.  Because it was SO NICE outside.  It was beautiful, and for that I am very thankful.  School was just letting out, and I enjoyed getting to see all the littles getting picked up by their parents who love them.  Dylan and I watched and I told him that’ll be us in 4 short years.

Four very short gray winters from now.

Happy Belated Halloween

You guys know how much I love Halloween.

And so I couldn’t let it go by without concocting some sort of costume for myself, babydaddy, and nearly 3 month old little duck.

If I had my act together a nanny and tons of sleep, time, and money I would have made Brian be a sexy pilot (because he already is one), I’d be a sexy flight attendant (because I aspire to be one), and Little Duck would have been a sack of peanuts.

Maybe next year.  I’ll just have to stop feeding Dylan to make sure he’s still tiny and able to fit in said peanut sack.

For this year, I decided to go easy.  The D-man would be the cutest Pumpkin Spice Latte in the whole world and Brian and I were baristas.  It fit because Dylan is sweet, expensive, and we made him with love.  And extra foam.

First I looked on the Starbucks website to see if I could buy the green aprons that the employees wear, but I needed an employee number in order to do so.  Nards.  So I went to Amazon and tried looking there, and found some for like $60 soooo I decided to make my own.  I just bought green aprons and ironed on the patches that I found on Amazon.  I also found the cute iron-on Starbucks logo that went on Dylan’s plain white onesie.  I glued a real Starbucks sleeve (I’m authentic, y’all) to some ribbon and tied it around Dylan’s cute waist.  I drew the drink option boxes and such on the back of the onesie freehand.  My friend helped me sew the foam for around his neck, and my mom made the pumpkin hat.

Boom.

 

Happy belated Halloween, y’alls.

One doodle that can’t be undid

I wanted to share with y’alls the Facebook pregnancy announcement I made because it was just too awesome not to share.

Any ideas for family Halloween costumes?  We’re already in the planning stages.

Priorities, Homeskillit.

Halloween in District 12

Happy Halloween, Psychos!

As many of you know, Halloween is my all-time favorite holiday.  For those of you who don’t know, go here and here and then come back.

Last year, I was overcome with sadness because wedding planning had taken over my life and sucked time away that should have been spent making a brand new Halloween costume.  I was forced to reuse an older costume, but I vowed that I would get back into the spirit this year, and this woman keeps her Halloween vows.

Behold, my interpretation of Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games:

May the odds be ever in your favor!

My awesome partner was Peeta Mellark from The Hunger Games:

I smell like doughy heaven

For my costume, I bought the dress at a thrift store, I bought the amazing wig at a Halloween store (worth every penny), and my mom helped me sew the jacket so that I’d have appropriately shiny fabric and puffy sleeves.  Indeed, those sleeves are stuffed with tissue paper.  I got the flowers at the fabric store and pinned them into the wig, and pinned one on each shoe.

For the makeup, I actually used this old, bright pink blush because the color was perfect.  It’s on my eyes, cheeks, and lips.  I bought some tinsel eyelashes and cut them to look more shapely and dramatic.

Happy Hunger Games!

For my partner’s costume, he bought the District 12 shirt online, and from what we can tell, it’s exactly like the one in the movie.  Then he added some black workout pants and black shoes and his natural charm, and BOOM, you got some hunky dude whose warm arms smell just like freshly baked bread.

Bet you never knew there was a secret fling between the two, right?  I mean, how else did Peeta actually make it through the games?!

Love is hate

Have fun this Halloween!!!  How do you celebrate this fantastic holiday??

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Guess what?!  I just brought more crazy to Facebook!  I wasn’t even sure that was possible, but I dream big.  Liking Psychobabble on Facebook is like putting on a nice, snug straightjacket to give yourself a hug!

The stalks, they have ears

This past weekend, Brian and I followed tradition and hiked our way through (what was in 2007) the largest corn maze in the world!

This corn maze is grown and perfected every October, and if you’re ever in the vicinity of smalltown Dixon, California, I highly suggest you check it out.

This year it took us about an hour to get through, but that’s because there was pretty extensive wind damage and we were rerouted, bypassing a good chunk of maize maze…in years past, it’s taken us the better part of 2 hours to get through, and this is with a map, a compass, and water.

Did she say a map?

Why yes, that’s how crazy this maze is.  I seriously doubt you’d be able to make it through without the map.  Goodness knows I barely manage with the map.

each square is worth a few steps’ distance. yikes!

This year, we went through during the day, but the real fun is to go through after dark.  The corn is so high that any surrounding light from civilization is pretty well blocked out, and you need to bring your own light (red-filtered headlamps for us, because we’re badass like that).  The best part about night-mazing it up is to be able to sneak ahead of your group, hide in the corn, and then scare the living crapnuggets out of them.  Beware about scaring me, though, because I am always ready to impale zombies through their glazed eye sockets.

descending into the maze…

consulting the map cuz we be lost…

the corn goes as far as the eye can see!

the maze at night…pee-your-pants, zombie-eat-your-brains scary.

This year, we emerged triumphant, relatively unscathed, and picked out pumpkins to go home and carve.

we think this is our subconscious surfacing to say that marriage is terrifying.

To top off the weekend, Brian and I reprised our costumes as Queen of Hearts and Mad Hatter at my company Halloween party and we won second place!

yup, that’s fake blood on the mirror.

Happy Halloween, everyone!!

This Is Halloween – Part *Boo*

Welcome to the second post chronicling the various Halloween costumes I have crafted and in which I have strutted about over the years.  I don’t even care that that last sentence is really dense, so go back and read it again if you have to.  That’s right, here on Psychobabble, I make you work.  Or you can just skim.  Whatever.

In case you missed it, slink on back to my first Halloween post to see the blogging debut of my peanut head I had as a toddler, as well as some kickass costumes brought to you by the 80s and 90s… and a dash of whoreish makeup.

This one time, at band camp… – When I first got to college, some random dude on my dorm floor told me I looked like ‘that band camp chick from the American Pie movies.’  I said, ‘Gee, thanks, drunk guy!’ and then I looked in the mirror and knew he was on [to] something…besides the drugs.  That, my friends, was where I got the idea for that year’s Halloween costume.

aaaaand that’s my recorder I got at Girl Scout Camp, for serious.

I dyed my hair an awesome shade of red, I borrowed running shorts from my crazy runner roommate (because all runners are automatically crazy in my diagnostic book), and I ironed on the band camp letters to the shirt that I still wear to this day.  Don’t worry, I made sure to wash off the recorder.  Safety first.

Silly Caucasian girl likes to play with Samurai swords – When I was in college, there was no cooler badass chick in the movies than Uma Thurman in Kill Bill.

all I need now is the yellow motorcycle.

This is my version of The Bride’s yellow leather motorcycle suit.  You know, the one where she wipes the floor with the Crazy 88.  My mom and I searched for what felt like for-ev-er for that yellow jacket.  I think we finally found it in a Forever 21, and it actually has “Italia” embroidered across the chest, and so we hid the letters with various patches we found at a local army surplus store, then we sewed on the black stripes.  We searched in vain for yellow pants, and so my mom actually made these for me because she’s a rockstar.  The shoes were mine, and the sword was plastic.

I dyed my hair blonde(r)…or as blonde as I could get it, short of bleaching it.  I looooove playing around with makeup, and since I couldn’t bring myself to douse my new yellow jacket and pants with fake blood, I made sure my face looked as realistic as possible.  This year, I won second place in a costume contest.  The following year, I wore this same costume in the Netherlands during my study abroad program, and my makeup was realistic enough, and Halloween was foreign enough to my Dutch professor that he actually tried to get me to leave class and see a doctor until I shouted out “Happy Halloween!”  His response:  “Oh you silly Americans…”

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At this point in the game of life, Brian was forced joined in on the Halloween fun!

This is one doodle that can’t be undid, homeskillet – I was obsessed with the movie Juno when it came out.  Diablo Cody, I wish I could pay you to script my life, and Ellen Page, your delivery was like Daria came to life for me.

No, this is not a food baby all right? I’ve taken like three pregnancy tests, and I’m forshizz up the spout.

Brian and I bought our shirts online, and they were the actual shirts the actors wore in the movie: Dancing Elk Condors for Brian, and Slinky for me.  It’s fun for a boy or a girl!   I dyed my hair brown (I think I like any excuse to dye my hair).  We bought gold gym shorts and then my mom hemmed them up super short.   I think the best challenge was figuring out how to make my pregnant belly.  Believe it or not, under there is a Spiderman pillow held in place with and old tube top my mom had.  Not shown are props of orange TicTacs for Brian and a jug of SunnyD for me.

Those girls with their fishnets and sexy nicknames – So my obsession with Ellen Page continued after I went to see the movie Whip It.  Even though I wasn’t very recognized that year, I still had a blast dressing up as her roller derby character, Babe Ruthless.

Be your own hero

What made this costume especially cool for me was that her roller derby team was called the Hurl Scouts, and I rocked the Girl Scouts for 11 awesome years.  Their derby uniforms were sexy, modified versions of a scouting uniform.  I found my dress in a department store and got real Girl Scout patches left over from when I was in scouts.  Fun fact – the red 22 numbers are actually Boy Scout numbers, so I ordered those directly from the boys in charge.  I wore green tights and my knee pads from when I played volleyball.  My helmet looks super rad (not even close)…it’s my bike helmet made to look as round as possible with the yellow jammer star on the side.

Brian was an awesome version of Razor, the team coach, played by a Wilson brother.  And, sadly, we both went sans skates because we didn’t want to seriously injure ourselves trying to get into character.

Off with their heads!! – This was the year Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland came out, and I created my own version of the Queen of Hearts.

a need a little pink pig for my feet.

I found a red and black bridesmaids dress with pit stains at a thrift store, and then I bought more black and white fabric.  My mom helped me sew on the black side panels and then we ironed on the black and white hearts.  We ironed stabilizer onto some white fabric and fashioned the stiff collar which we pinned to the shoulder straps of the dress.  My mom made my crown by pinning felt around a plastic water bottle that had been cut in half.

Brian went as the Mad Hatter, and I fought him to be able to put makeup on his face.  Such a good sport, this guy!!

we’re so good at (pretending) to be crazy

I want you to help me catch a killer of women – Last year, I went as Lisbeth Salander, aka The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Again, I dyed my hair, but this stuff was only spray on and wash off, because I only wanted to be a badass for one night.   The best part about this costume was custom making the temporary tattoos.  I bought temp tattoo paper online and printed out the two images I wanted – Lisbeth’s dragon and wasp.  They came out perfectly if I do say so myself.  After doing this I could totally understand why people get the real variety.

Wasp.

I bought fake piercings at a costume store and put them on my nose and ears.  Holy crap did those things hurt!!  And then I basically walked around that night punching people in the face.

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So, I hope you enjoyed the chronicles of Melissa’s Halloween obsession.

Happy trick-or-treating!

This Is Halloween – Part One

I love Halloween.  J’adore.

This is me saying that Halloween is stinkin awesome, you guys!

I mean, what other day can you dress up in a fab costume and become someone (or something) else and get rewarded for it by stealing candy from kids with minimal negative consequences?

No other day.

I love the art that is Halloween costuming.  I’m a purist in that I don’t support the personal usage of entirely pre-packaged Halloween costumes.  That’s too easy, that’s a sell out, plus who wants to pay $49.99 to wear a piece of tissue paper that barely covers one’s ass?  Thanks to the fact that I grew up with an awesome, crafty mom who made my costumes and also freaking loves Halloween (up until the year she retired, she also dressed up for All Hallows Eve), my costumes have been original, creative, and epic.

My first H-costume was classic.  Timeless.  The Balloon-filled Pumpkin.

check out my embarrassingly large and saggy breast-o-lanterns

Looking back, this costume was brilliant because I was still getting the hang of this walking and running thing, and I was basically wearing a bright orange sack filled with balloons, so if I fell (which, my parents gleefully report, I did several times in the time it took to visit the 4 houses in our court), I simply bounced around on the pavement, unhurt but also unable to get up.  And goodness forbid that one of those babies popped and scared the crap outta me, cuz the only logical explanation for a sound like that would be a warning shot fired by hooligans wanting to take my candy.  Oh hells no.

A favorite costume from my years as a youngin was a fairy princess (I learned at a young age all about the fairy monarchy, and my plan was to come out on top).  And by favorite, I mean that I wore it several years in a row.  It was actually a leftover costume from dance class my mom put me in when I was 5 and all I did during performances was stand there and cry, so I figured I should get some mileage out of that otherwise wasted, yet totes fab, tulle.

this photo was candid, not posed. you can see how much I loved my little brother, at that time doomed to wear my hand-me-downs.

Even though I’ve always lurved Halloween like a zombie lurves brains, I developed a more primal obsession for the ghostly holiday after I executed the most awesome costume in the history of fun-sized candy bars:

excuse me…la, la, laaaa, la, la….

That’s me as Daria and my best friend as Jane, from the MTV cartoon show.  This show was witty and sarcastic and smart, and it was ME.  I loved this show so much, I wanted to lose my virginity to it.

My friend and I got way into these costumes and into character.  We got the boots at a discount store, the wigs at a Halloween store, the green blazer was my mom’s, and pleated skirt I found in a thrift store, and the orangey shirt I just had and still wear to this day.  We practiced not smiling for pictures, and we practiced our dry, witty comebacks to rhetorical questions like “Where’s the beef?” and “Who let the dogs out?”

Well, all that hard work paid off, cuz our unsmiling mugs made it into the yearbook that year.  Yup, we were famous.  In high school.  For like 5 minutes.  But the experience sparked something in me, something that had been lurking ever since my mom painted those rosy pumpkin whore cheeks on me.  I loved the challenge of turning myself into a current, recognizable character that got reactions from people.  (Like, favorable reactions.  Nothing that involves throwing food at me.  Ok, you can throw candy.  And cake, if thrown expertly into my mouth, but let’s not get too crazy.)  My quest to outdo my smug Daria self has continued every year since then.

Mary Poppins – My mom helped a lot with putting this bad boy together.  We already owned most of the pieces, but my mom found the perfect hat and glued on all the daisies.  And the red bow tie was practically perfect in every way.  I am very proud of this costume!!

The building in the background is South Hall on the UC Berkeley campus, which was the inspiration for the rooftop for the “step in time” scene in the movie.

Over the years, I have gradually conquered the majority of characters from the Wizard of Oz.   All I have left now is the crowning glory of becoming one of the flying monkeys.

I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore – My mom captured that cheap whore quality with copious amounts of makeup.  She sewed the blue dress from scratch and glued on hundreds of sequins to make those smashing ruby slippers.  Please also note the 101 Dalmatians plush toy as Toto – a new take on an old friend.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Hello, my pretty! – The Wicked Witch of the West rocked it hardcore.  She wore her green skin with pride, and so did I – that’s green eye shadow slathered on my face for a full day of grad school classes.

…and your little dog, too!

Ding dong the witch is dead – After reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire and going to see the fabulous musical by the same name, I decided to bring the Wiz costumes full circle and be the ill-fated Wicked Witch of the East, who was the first true owner of the ruby slippers…until something large and heavy probably crushed her skull.

this must have been the view from under the house

I found these absolutely perfect red shoes in a thrift store for $2 and painted them with red glitter.  I even picked up these tights in Salem, Massachusetts.  That’s how legit they are.

Hokai, so I have several more amazing costumes to share with y’all, but this post has already grown longer than this election season.  Stay tuned, bloggers.