Hallowfriggenween

There, this beast is done. I told you it was gonna be huge, and look - so it is. By the way, I helped with the decorating this year. Those gold stars were my contribution. One of my favorite parts of Halloween is the mini pumkins. No the green and orange one there; the really really tiny ones.

We use them for everything.

They even smell nice, like cinnamon and cider and caramel and all sorts of holiday delicious things. *inhale* Mmm, mini pumpkins.

Cutting out those stars took about a million years, but it was worth it cuz we're recycling them to go with the Christmas decorations.

I love that bottle with the weird pickled vegetables in it. When I have my own house, I will have an entire Halloween cabinet full of nothing but bottles and jars full of nasty pickled things. And also finger bones and suchlike.

The bigger stars were even harder to cut than the little ones, but I think they look nice in the sunlight.

As my mom pointed out, that particular display looks more like Christmas than Halloween. Whatever, they're multipurpose.

My fingers looked like this after cutting them. Gold glitter paint everywhere.

When we decorate for Halloween, I get all the cheesy stuff for my room. No one else wants a bright orange owl that lights up when you plug it in.

I love this guy. He's so squishy.

My attempt at all-natural decor.

Funniest thing: my dog is terrified of this stuffed owl puppet. He thinks it's going to kill him any minute. He keeps staring at it, motionless, for several minutes at a time, followed by a deafening storm of barking and flailing, followed by a desperate last-ditch attempt to yank it down off the bench in an effort to kill it before it kills him. I threw it at him the other day, and he hightailed it out of my room like the devil was after him. I couldn't feel bad because I was busy laughing so hard.

I don't remember why we had roses, but when they started dying, I hung them upside down to dry. They turned out very nice; held their shape perfectly.

LEAVES! I love them so.

Specially when they change color, you know.

Yay!

*buries face in*

There are such striking sunsets in the fall and winter. Love. Kay, now costumes. This was the Monday before Halloween.

I am quite clearly a gypsy. I think this year's gypsy costume is way better than the one I wore last year. Those jingly things around my waist are literally the best thing ever. The vest, I borrowed from my mother. I don't like it on her, but I like it on me. Maybe because I wear it with light blouses, and she wears it with turtlenecks. Maybe I just hate turtlenecks. That must be it.

By the way, I took all these pictures myself. Yay timer!

Tuesday I was a post-apocalyptic scavenger. This one still needs work, I think. Actually, what it mostly needed was lots of dirt scrubbed all over everything, and some burnt edges, and a large weapon of some sort. But I only had so much to work with, and I had to follow the school dress code, so no.

You can't really see it in any of the pictures, but I made a string of random bits of metal to hang from my belt. It was partly to dress up the costume and partly me trying out a concept I'd thought of for a story (which almost worked; gotta experiment with it more. I'll explain all that later.)

Found those ski goggles in the closet. They make everything more better.

Wednesday I was going to wear my Andra costume again, but it was a little chilly outside, so that's why I have on the long-sleeve shirt under the tunic. And look, there's my new dagger!

Shiny, right? I didn't wear it to school, obviously, but I did wear the sheath.

And I wore my ears, because I figured dressing up as a generic elf character might fly better with the people at school, none of whom know who Andra is (and I didn't feel like explaining twenty billion times throughout the day.) So I got asked a lot if I was supposed to be Link. And I was like, "No. Not even Sexy Jutsu Link, because I'm clearly not wearing a hat. Duh." Although the colors are almost exactly the same as Link, now that I look at it. Oh well.

I actually did braid my hair this time, though! I think I've finally struck upon a method of pulling the front of it away from my face like Andra does without using insane amounts of hair spray. Not that you can tell any of that from this picture, but whatever.

Thursday I was a vampire hunter. I wanted some leather armor to go over it, but had none on hand and no time to make/acquire any, so no.

Nor did I have a proper stake or any other kind of awesome weapon, because they don't allow weapons at school. I ran into this problem with nearly every one of my costumes. Snarl.

In that pouch on my back are several whole cloves of garlic. I have two little bags of powdered silver hanging from my belt, as well as a high-powered flashlight and night vision goggles, visible in the first photo. Not visible anywhere, because they're in my pockets, are my vials of holy water. Just hand me a massive crossbow and I'm set.

That's all the crosses I own. Too bad; I wanted about sixty more, to hang randomly on my person.

Then I wore a Halloween Fairy costume on Friday, but we went straight to a piano lesson and I had to change so there's no pictures! I am quite sad. It was a freaking awesome costume. There were striped stockings involved. Anyway, on Halloween proper we went trick-or-treating with Brenticus and his sibs, and for that I was a steampunk pirate.

It was basically the same costume I wore at the OYAN workshop, but I picked up this precious hat at the costume store to go with it, and also a sword. Because I can't ever go in there without buying a weapon of some sort.

Said beasty sword. It has a little bit of a Prince of Persia vibe, but we're ignoring that right now.

I've had these gloves for ages, and they finally got too small, so I just chopped the ends off the fingers and made hobogloves. Problem solved.

Oh, and these were sitting there, so I took pics. There was a tutorial on A Fanciful Twist detailing the creating of these brilliant fabric bangles. The author said they were addictive, and she was right. You can't just make one.

There's a Halloween one I did. (And my Allomantic vials/holy water in the background there.)

This one I made for my mom.

But yeah, trick-or-treating was a blast, even though I felt really bad taking people's candy, being an adult and all that, but Brenticus reasoned that I probably wouldn't ever get the chance to do it again after this year, so why turn down free candy? Good point. He dressed up as Mat
from the Wheel of Time series, the first book of which I'm reading right now, and all evening we were tripping repeatedly over his gigantic spear. His brother was an Alloy of Law Allomancer, complete with mistcoat and very fetching hat (can't wait to get ahold of that book, Sanderson yaay), and his sister was a stylish ninja. My bro and his cohort were both League of Legends characters. Where's the fun in that, I ask you? Nobody had any idea who they were supposed to be. Halfway through the night, my bro switched to Ringwraith because that's what everyone said he looked like, so after a while he just went with it.

*drops down dead* Now I gotta study for my massive frightening Spanish final. It's gonna be bad. I am legitimately terrified.

Commander Kip

"Do something with your other hand. Touch your partner. Touch yourself - wait -"

Normal is overrated!