Monday, October 31, 2011

Halloween 2011


They can't help but smile because they love Halloween, but they're not in character.
See below for the "in character" photos.

This year marked our 12th Halloween in the U.K. We celebrated in high style: we scored the biggest pumpkin from The Creaky Shed, we had nearly 50 people for Halloween hijinks on Sunday afternoon, and we finished it all off with trick or treating on Monday night.

The costumes the boys created this year were more nuanced than previous years, but believe me, a LOT of thought and discussion went into the assembling of them both. For example, it would appear that Thing Two is wearing only a suit. However, upon closer inspection, his "Hello My Name Is" tag says, "Lex Luther." He spent weeks thinking about the details-- he wanted to wear cufflinks and a tie clip, just like Lex Luther. He had Daily Plant front pages in his pockets which he had marked with an X and had crumpled up in Lex Luther anger. We got him a bald cap, so he could look most like Lex Luther, but after trying it once, he didn't want to wear it. He found it too uncomfortable. (Where is his devotion to his art, I ask?) When I asked him when he wanted to change his large green Green Lantern ring into a Krptonite ring, he said, "Mom, I don't want to provide TOO much detail."

Thing One was a Hard Man, complete with a backward baseball cap, tattooed arm and an axe in his head. Perfect. He too, wasn't too keen on additional accessories, such as scars or makeup. Maybe he wanted to streamline his Halloween operation, knowing that he'd have to rush off to trick or treating following rugby practice and then dinner. The tattooed arm-- or "sleeve" to use the proper tattoo terminology-- was an awesome purchase from Hong Kong earlier this month. It looked pretty realistic, if you didn't look to closely at it.
He's not smiling because he was in character.

So that's another Halloween done and dusted. At this point, we're starting to wonder how many more years Thing One will be up for participating. At least I know I've got three solid years with Thing Two before I need to worry about it. We had a blast on Friday night-- on our way to the Science Museum Halloween Party-- looking at all the pictures from previous yeras. If you want to see the collection yourself, click through to here.

Happy Halloween!

2 comments:

Kirstin said...

Oh yes! I always love the costumes your two wear and what fun to look through previous years too....xxx

M.A. Stapleton said...

Thanks K! I nearly started to cry when I happened upon the pictures of the early years, especially the first party in 2002 (remember having them bob for apples and what a spectacular disaster that was?). xoxo