Halloween 2014

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween! We only had one trick played on us this year. Someone put glue on the door handle at the house. Easily cleaned. Last year we got egged! And our jack-o-lantern is still on the front porch and not smashed in the street. So all in all, the shenanigans were kept to a minimum.

At work we only had a few people dress up, but we had fun!

Left to right: Jaki is Medusa, April is a Cereal (serial) Killer (It's a pun!), and Megan is Harley Quinn. 

Steve, our photographer, set up a spooky backdrop in the photo studio and had walk-ins all night for photos. It was really great! This photo is actually with my camera. His photos were way better!

Megan made her costume. I made mine too. I'm a dragon. We'll come back to that.

Have you seen How to Train Your Dragon 2? If not, the following photos might not mean as much to you. But here's Hiccup (the main character) for reference. 

In the new movie he wears this flight suit. He can base jump off his dragon now. His suit has hidden compartments with flaps that open out for gliding. The sword is made somehow with dragon spit, which can be ignited or something... Anyway, we loved the movie and decided to tackle this costume. 

Without further ado - Ethan as Hiccup. 

The suit is made out of various materials, including vinyl, suede, leather (just small pieces), quilted cotton, and lots of hardware.  I worked on it pretty much the entire month of October. I broke three leather needles.

Hiccup lost his left foot in the first movie, so figuring out how to make a prosthetic foot on a real one was the hardest part. We started out with what you see above, which is tin foil. But that didn't last through the photo session, so we ended up painting the boot. It was ok, but not great.

I decided to play around with photo shop and took out the boot. Now it looks more like Hiccup! 

These are the flaps that extend when he's gliding. In the movie he has a fin on his back too, but I ran out of time to get that part to work.  

 The sword has yellow cellophane around it and we dropped glow sticks down in the plastic so it would glow.  

I'm Toothless (his dragon)!

In the new movie Hiccup meets his mother. So I REALLY wanted to be that character, but Ethan's costume took too long. I threw together the dragon costume in two days. I have wings on my back, but you can't see them in this photo. I copied the hoodie and tail from something I saw online. People recognized me first, and then they figured out who Ethan was. Not enough people have seen the movie!!

 The candy bag was a scared sheep. In the movies and TV show they race the dragons, and one of the challenges is to catch the sheep as they are catapulted into the air. Here's a photo for reference.

Sheep is scared. He's next.

The whole time I was working on the sheep the cat kept attacking him! Oh man, I'm laughing just typing that! It was pretty funny! I HAD to get Sirius in on the action. He looks just like Toothless!! 

 LOOKIT THOSE EYES!!!!

Sirius was not happy with his wings. But he obliged for a few minutes!

There was a costume contest at the food court and Ethan won first place for his age group!

I don't know how many more years Ethan will agree to dress up and go Trick or Treating. So every year I try to make the costumes more and more epic. I want to have the maximum amount of fun each year just in case it's the last. (And the fun part for me is making the costumes - and parading him around base to show them off.... Yes, I'm THAT mom. What.)

Oh, speaking of kids getting older - where's Haven? She did dress up, but only for like an hour and refused to take photos. Sad face. She was a Native American, complete with super long black braids.

Ok, I'll leave you with this clip from How to Train Your Dragon 2.

Halloween

Hello blog! Long time no see!

I've been crafting like crazy, but have not taken the time to photograph things. Most of it has been for work, but eventually I'll get it photographed and on here. I've been quilting a lot lately. The quilting took a back seat, though, while we created our Halloween costumes.

Haven wanted to be Sonic the hedgehog, but that proved a little out of reach. So she decided to be Pikachu and she had her boyfriend, Marius, dress up as Ash, the player from the TV show. We ordered Haven's costume, which is basically giant fleece pajamas. We ordered the hat for "Ash" and Haven made his jacket by taking the sleeves off of a blue hoodie and layering it with a white shirt. It worked perfectly!
 Ethan wanted to be Steve from Minecraft. If you aren't familiar with the game then you probably don't have a young boy living in your house. It's an 8-bit video game that has a crazy following. I can't say I truly understand it's popularity, but whatever. We couldn't walk two feet without someone yelling "STEVE!" all night long!

 I had decided back in the summer that I wanted to be Merida from "Brave." I bought the bow and arrows at the Medieval market months ago. I know the picture doesn't show the elbows, but I got the poofy bits of fabric in there. The cape was a last minute decision, and I'm really glad I made it because it ended up being COLD. Oh, I even wore hair extensions to get the long red curly locks. I couldn't get my hair quite as full as hers... that's computer magic. But the kids knew who I was.

I've been trying something new with scrapbooking. I'm intrigued by the Project Life products we've been selling in our store. They aren't a new concept, but they've really gained in popularity the last couple of years. They are little pockets where you slip in cards or pictures instead of doing a detailed scrapbook page. They come in digital form too. So here are two pages I made using this style.

I kind of like the clean, simple look of it. And it's for sure easier than doing all the fancy layering and all. I haven't done much scrapbooking in the last year, so I guess if this helps me start working with my photos again then it's a good thing.