Trick or Treating

Trick or Treat!! I know it’s already the second day of November (WHAT?! When did that happen!?), but I freaking love Halloween so I am talking about it ONE. MORE. TIME.

Tuesday night, I rushed home from work to hand out candy to the kiddies in my building. My apartment’s leasing office organizes Halloween every year, where residents can pick up a paper the week before Halloween to put on their doors. If you have the paper on the door, then you demarcate yourself as a candy-friendly home.

Email from my building:

Happy Halloween!

Beware… Tuesday, October 31st, the halls will be taken over by little ghosts and goblins. If you are brave enough to provide them with treats, be sure to pick up your purple door sign, beginning Saturday afternoon! The trick or treaters will be searching for the purple sign to know which haunted houses have treats inside! Don’t worry, our brave Concierge will not allow ghosts that do not live in our building to haunt the halls.

Ok, clearly I live on the upper west side. Anyway, I hurried home because the Trick or Treating was from 3 pm -8 pm, and I have a job. I figured the parents in my building lobbied for early trick-or-treating, so they could make the nannies deal with it. Anyway, I got home just before 6 and I put that sign proudly on my door.

Then, because I am a weirdo, I put my costume back on from the Pub Crawl. Am I a gumball machine? Or am I a creep-o pedophile waiting for Chris Hansen to catch me on TCAP?! Honestly, I felt like the latter because I have no kids and who in their right mind puts on a unitard for no dang reason? ME. That’s who. I will say, almost all of the parents said, “Awww a gumball machine! How cute!” This was in stark contrast to most of the millennials out drinking on Saturday, most of whom thought I was some sort of robot ballet dancer in a red tutu who would dance for 25 cents according to my coin slot. I appreciate the parents’ appreciation for creativity. Maybe my costume was more of a throwback than I intended.

I opened the door once to a 10-year-old boy in a full-face mask that was lighting up 3 alternating colors, and as soon as I opened the door all the way, two of his little hooligan friends popped out from beside either side of the door frame and said BOO. I felt lucky that my emoji-boyfriend was home to protect me from these very juvenile delinquents. I told them they were terrifying and made sure they only took one piece of candy each. That’s what they get for make me quiver in my gumballs. Overall, we had about 50 kids come to our door, which is not bad at all. However, I overbought candy and I ate way too much of the leftovers, so I brought the rest to work today.

There were 3 amazing highlights:

1. I went in my costume to Chipotle, where I got a $3 BOOrito bowl. It made for an amazing lunch yesterday.

2. I found a golden skeleton just chillin’ in the lobby of the building next door to me. I dragged emoji-boyfriend aka my Instagram boyfriend, to take photos of me with him.

3. I had two girls Trick-or-Treat dressed as Cellino and Barnes. I’m talking, FULLY dressed as them. One of them even had a papier-mâché bald head with little puff balls of gray hair on the sides. Their mom asked me if I knew who they were, and I didn’t want to be rude so I just said “you guys look adorable!” Then the mom motioned for the girls to turn around, and on their backs, one said Cellino and the other said Barnes, and they had the phone number written there, too! I told them I’d give them extra candy if they could sing me the song, and one of the girls goes “5-6-7-8!” and they burst into the jingle. They won Halloween. And hopefully their night didn’t end in a vicious split-up like the real duo. WHO WILL GET THE RIGHTS TO THE JINGLE?!

What an amazing night. I know you guys are probably wondering what in the world I will talk about now that my favorite holiday is over, but fear not, the best weekend of the year in NYC is this weekend (MARATHON WEEKEND!), the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is around the corner, and better yet, ‘tis the season to start watching Elf on repeat (why can you not stream it for free anywhere?? Good thing I have the DVD).

 I hope you all had amazing Halloweens, did you see any unique costumes? Let me know in the comments!

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DIY Gumball Costume

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! As you read in my very long post yesterday, I spent $114 Saturday. October is my most expensive month. Therefore, I always try to spend as little as possible on my costume. I already told you last week, I am always trying to re-purpose the costumes I already have, since I have an entire box of them. Also, I have many crafting tools at my disposal since I have been doing this for years. My emoji-boyfriend is not so into the costuming like me, but if I completely take care of the cost and the labor of making it, he will relent and wear what I make him. Therefore, I try and make his costume low-cost as well. Overall, I spent $41.25 for both of our costumes. Not too bad. It may cost a bit more if you need to buy a glue gun, but they are generally less than $10.

We got a LOT of compliments, so I figured I could tell you how to do it.

Supplies for the Tutu:

  • Red Tulle
  • Scissors
  • Elastic or Ribbon that fits around your waist

Honestly, I don’t need to explain this whole process because I learned it, like many other things, from YouTube. Here’s a link to a great tutorial. You can decide either to use elastic as a waistband, or to use ribbon if you prefer to make a big bow on the back. If you use elastic, you’ll need a few stitches or a glue gun to connect the two ends.

I’ve done it both ways but I find elastic easier for bathroom purposes. Just cut the tulle to the width you prefer and cut it to twice the length you want, so you can double it over. I ordered it in 6-inch width from Amazon this year for ease, and because I didn’t have much time to cut the strips, but it was a bit more expensive. I linked it above, they have a lot of color options.

If you buy tulle from a fabric store, you’ll probably need 4-5 yards from a bolt (about $3/yard), but if you buy it like above from Amazon, you will probably need 4, 25-yard spools because they are only 6 inches in width. It also will depend on how long and fluffy you want your tutu. I needed to cover my silver-unitard-ed bum, so I wanted mine extra long.

 

Supplies for the coin slot:

  • Piece of cardboard (cut out of any box)
  • Duct Tape
  • Sharpie

This was incredibly easy. I just took a piece of cardboard from a box and I covered it in duct tape. Then I drew on the coin slot. The tricky part is I made a little loop on the back from doubled-over duct tape, so I could tie some extra tulle to it, and connect it to the waistband of the tutu.

Supplies for the Quarter:

  • One bowl for tracing
  • One piece of silver poster board
  • Scissors
  • Sharpie
  • Twine/string (stolen from the office)
  • A friend with amazing freehand drawing skills

Not much to say about this: trace a bowl for a perfect circle, have an amazing friend copy a photo of a quarter from the internet. Trace the pencil outline with a Sharpie. Or just freehand it with a Sharpie. I was ready to just write “25¢” on a silver circle, but my friend made a real piece of art. Then I punctured the front and back of the quarter with a letter opener, and threaded the string through. If you have money to burn, it may be a good idea to laminate the pieces so they don’t get soggy from beer, but I was short on time and money, and my emoji-bf is clearly better at not spilling than me. It lasted all day!

Supplies for Gumball Belly:

  • Same bowl for tracing
  • 2 pieces of white felt
  • Scissors
  • Lots of pom poms
  • Glue gun
  • More sticks of glue for the glue gun than you’d think (I used 10)
  • 4 safety pins

This was much easier than I anticipated. I spent a lot of time on the internet trying to decide how large the pom poms should be. Most people said 1 inch, so I bought the cheapest pack of them from Amazon (link above). They were definitely smaller than an inch, but it still worked out well and there was a great mix of colors. I traced the same bowl I used for the quarter on two pieces of felt, then hot glued them together. Then I started at the bottom of the circle, and tried to randomly place the colors, with some attention to keeping a variation of colors, but also not caring too much because real gumballs have the same color next to each other sometimes! It did take more glue than I thought it would, but ultimately only took about 10 minutes to complete while binge-watching Will and Grace. I opted not to use the white, brown and black pom poms, but that is up to your own artistic license. I also decided not to fill the circle up completely, to make it more realistic.

Safety-pin that baby onto your uni! (or tank top). I realized that I preferred it to be a bit underneath the tutu, making it more of a 3/4-moon shape, again to make the circle look a little more realistic like a gumball machine. Personal preference.

Supplies for headwear:

  • Headband you’re willing to part with
  • 10 pom poms (I had plenty left over from the belly)
  • Glue Gun
  • 2 sticks of glue

As I trolled google for gumball costumes, I saw a lot of people wear red beanies for the tops of the gum ball machine. That is a cute idea, but I have a really weird-shaped head. Every beanie I wear just makes me look bald. I settled on my old faithful hair accessories: headbands and bows! I glued 10 different-colored pom poms on a throw-away headband from CVS, and tied a red ribbon that I already owned in my hair.

I already owned a silver unitard from my previous jaunts as the Tin Man and a Hershey’s Kiss (see below), but for those of you who do not have one, you can always safety pin the gum ball felt belly on a white tank top and wear red shorts or a red skirt under your tutu. Highly recommend this costume, with or without the emoji-bf! You can be the quarter, too! The more accessories, the better. I plan on repeating the costume tonight to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. Hopefully no one thinks I’m a clown and gets scared again! I think I already know what I want to be for next year, but if you have any great ideas, comment below! Have a boooo-riffic day!

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