Remembering the Homemade Halloween Costume

Gurley Candles from habershamsales on ebay. Item number 321866355810

Remember when the only costumes in the stores were those thin cotton or plastic sheaths with a Ben Cooper mask? They were displayed in drugstores in cellophane fronted boxes, or on cardboard hangers in the Halloween section of the store. The same isle with the Gurley Company candles, and the Brach’s cardboard Halloween Display (Just a whiff of cinnamon and black licorice sends me back to this bewitching isle!)

While we never purchased these costumes, their existence in the stores helped set the mood for the season. Like everyone else we knew, we made our costumes. 

Sure, some friends had mothers and grandmothers who were brilliant seamstresses, whipping up long-tailed dinosaurs, and curly-headed clowns, but the majority of us had costumes  put together with things out of the rag-bag and attic. Cardboard box robots, and bed-sheet ghosts were what we trick-or-treated in, and a good deal of the fun was putting it all together.

When I first became a parent, I was admittedly seduced by the puffy pumpkin and fuzzy chick get-ups from places like Pottery Barn Kids. I think I was looking to put my finger on that “bewitching” feeling from childhood, and the warm atmosphere of such stores were doing a fine job of dangling a proverbial pocket watch before my eyes, subtly suggesting I needed to spend $85 on my tiny tot in order to give the best Halloween experience.

Luckily, I snapped awake in time to DIY the costume for my barely-able-to-walk Trick-or-Treater, making her an easy crepe-paper flower hat and dressing her in a green top and bottom she already had. She was perfectly charming in this costume, and the experience was a good reminder of how Halloween should be.

The next year, I grabbed an old tank top of mine, sewed a long length of cheap fringe from top to bottom, tucked the top of a peacock feather into a headband, and voila! Little Flapper Girl. I’ve “made” (read: cobbled together) every costume since. With a tiny bit of planning ahead, and a little creativity, making the costume is part of our Halloween tradition, and is a great memory builder.

While chatting with the owner of Perennials Boutique recently, she was contemplating whether or not she’d carry kids costumes, as the bulk of store bought costumes could be overwhelming and take up too much rack space in her store. I told her how succumbing to the high expense of mainstream “Halloweening” is easy to do, but that I was very old-fashioned about it. This inspired the put-together of some easy costumes in her front window. A fancy dress with ice-blue snowflake cape and little tiara: Frozen Costume! A secondhand flower-girl dress with inexpensive wire wings: Fairy Princess! Even a black shirt and pants with lone-ranger style mask and DIY cape could be the base for a Super Hero costume.

For those times we don’t feel particularly creative, or have zero time left in this last quarter of the year, look for a costume exchange. We have one here in our Arcadia neighborhood with a bring-a-costume-leave-a-costume rule. Costumes are in gently used condition, and allow your Trick-or-Treater to trade in his Tigger costume from last year for the Spiderman he wants to be this year, without being cash-out-of-pocket.

Whichever way you go when choosing a costume, make the experience part of your tradition. After all, Halloween lasts for an average of 12 years for your little goblin, and is only a few hours long, from sunset to bedtime. Make those precious hours count! 

Stay tuned for an easy way to memorialize Halloween costumes without having to save every one of them. 

National Animal Crackers Day!

Today is National Animal Crackers Day! Celebrate with an iconic red circus box of these yummy treats…maybe while watching the Marx Bros movie…or listening to the famous Shirley Temple song? Then wash up with Philosophy's best bubble bath "Animal Cracker"! 

Ducky's is celebrating, too! Vintage style, circus posters are only $10

Ducky’s 10 Best!

New Year’s Resolutions

Less Red: meat, wine, punch

Less White: bread, rice, cake

More Green: Salad, Recycling, Money!

More Reading

More Sleeping

Smaller Portions

Shopping Small

Stretching More (literally and figuratively)

Stressing Less

Living in the Moment!

Small Change

I’m reconsidering small, lately, and applying it to 2015. While planning my New Year’s Resolutions, I’m thinking I’ll make them small. And by that I mean approaching them in small steps.

I love the New Year…starting fresh and putting the best foot forward. It’s exhilarating! Yet, the statistic is, most of us have forgotten our resolutions by February, and so I make it a point to at least reread them, quarterly. While I haven’t become a brilliant chess player, or learned all of the foreign swear words I’d planned to, I would revisit these things in the drag of summer, or beginning of fall to remind myself what I want to accomplish. I’d start my practice, but inevitably, they would fade into the background again. I think the real trick is to practice small, and daily.

Weight loss, for example, (the number one resolution); Why do we discuss this in terms of “when”? We say, “I’ll start my diet on the first” or “on Monday”. And whenever we fall off the wagon, we choose another start date or day. Why not right this minute? If we over-ate at breakfast, why do we consider it’s a loss and throw the baby out with the bathwater? Resolve that at lunchtime, you will have a healthy meal in smaller portions, every meal an opportunity to make positive decisions and to be proud of yourself, and when you’re proud of yourself, you’re empowered!  Daily, we can resolve to reset, then each night we can celebrate our awesomeness with, say, an earlier bedtime, or good book (more sleep and more reading…both excellent resolutions!). There’s a reason “One Day At A Time” is such a popular saying…it’s really the only way to live, because it’s simply what we have…right now! And our biggest anxieties occur when we are dwelling on the past, or fretting about the future.

Come in to Ducky Shincrackers and post your resolutions on Ducky’s 10 Best board, and Make & Take a little “Messages in a Bottle”, courtesy of the shop.

Welcome, sweet Baby New Year! Let’s be kind to each other!

Glad Tidings of Comfort and Joy!

Small is the New Black

I’m looking for a new television…a smaller one. Friends think I’m either super crazy, or super smart. I’ve opened conversation lately with this statement, and sometimes get the old speech about the “Idiot Box” and people who want me to commiserate with them on “Killing the TV”. My careful response is to come to the defense of my old, faithful friend, Television, and remind Naysayers that TV has changed our lives for the better.

I love TV. LOVE it. But don’t like that this big rectangle (not very big at all, actually) is front-and-center in the living room, and all furniture is staged to point towards it. How many absent-minded hours are spent with this thing on, droning in the background? I dare not count. BUT, without TV, we would not have seen the Moon landing or the Kennedy assassination, or celebrate the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade every year. Or “get to” Sesame Street.

The TV provides information, suspense, and comfort.

It generates energy, makes us laugh or cry (or both, if you watch MASH) and, for the most part, has enhanced our lives. I love getting lost in a story, especially one with the likes of Doris Day or Esther Williams….I imagine myself as characters of these stories and challenge myself to rise to their standards…even if they are fictional. But I find I want more quality time with characters I love in TV Land, instead of the quantity time I waste now.

I can relate the same argument to food. We talk about food, obsess about it, and deprive ourselves of it. When I meet someone who brags about cutting out sugar or not eating carbs, I shudder a bit (that is a feather in a cap I don’t want to wear, thank you very much). While I have a certain pang of jealously or, more appropriately, admiration for people of such restraint, I also know that deprivation isn’t a way to live (there’s a reason everyone who goes on a diet eventually goes off and gains all the weight back, and then some…we, as humans, do not like to be deprived!) and that maintaining a balance is more important. In most cases in my life, this just means going smaller.

Katharine Hepburn was right when  she said “Without discipline, there's no life at all,” but shouldn’t that come with less pain and more payoff? Why not enjoy a small, fresh-baked piece of bread (instead of a unfulfilling slice of supermarket white bread) and take the stairs that day to balance and avoid guilt? Or have what you absolutely love, in smaller portions?

Life should be more about living than beating ourselves up for things we feel guilty for, or being caught up in menial daily tasks.

Case in point: I was standing in an over-crowded Walmart line today, blowing my bangs up with a barely contained huffy out-breath, concentrating on a Star magazine headline and trying to tune-out the screaming child in the cart behind me. Why do I subject myself to such torture? I silently ask myself. Especially during the Holiday Season? What was I buying that was so important? Light bulbs, nails, glue, canning jars…. How much money am I “saving” at this store instead of going to that small, charming family-owned hardware store down the street? Where they wear Santa hats and are always willing to help. I did the mental math, and I was MAYBE saving $5 to $6. Maybe. Was that worth my precious time? Persevering grumpy crowds, undisciplined children, endless lines, and a downright scary parking lot? I had to reassess.

I don’t “Shop Small” in my community enough. The idea of only patronizing Mom & Pop places, at worst, seems way too inconvenient and expensive. And at best, seems like a tiny luxury, reserved for special occasions, like finding specialty items or gifts.

But it’s time to start doing things differently. Would Frank Sinatra or Gene Kelly wait in a frustrating, heavy populated line, like sheep? Or would they saunter into the locally owned shop, tipping hats to the family staff, getting what they need in a flash, so as to return to their worthwhile lives? Who would I rather be?

Trite as it is, Life really is Too Short. Living beautifully means living a life of quality, not just mindless quantity, and that applies to TV, food, shopping…well, everything. And living beautifully can be a challenge when you’re stuck in a cattle chute waiting to pay for things on a conveyer belt, with a wall of tabloids on one side, and a rack of Kit-Kats on the other (especially when you justify the purchase of such colorfully packaged junk food because you’ve no time to cook a proper dinner because you’ve wasted any precious free time in lines. Junk food, weight gain, bad screen time…it’s a viscous cycle). And, It’s hard to be Audrey when you feel like you’ve just stepped into an episode of Montel.

I’m taking this challenge: to Shop Small…small businesses, that is. Try it with me. And see if you don’t just like yourself a little bit better. When casting the roles of your life, don’t you want to be a character you like? Instead of one who is compromising self and time to save $6?

Think about it.  

I know for me, I want to waste less time in warehouse style stores (who wants to be trapped in a “big box”), frequent little shops in my community (not just because I have one!), eat better food in smaller portions, and return with my purchases to a tidy parlor, where the TV is tucked away until it’s ready to be watched.

"Sometimes the best way to make a big difference is adding up lots of small ones."

Voyage to the Moon

Hand tinted film from Voyage to the Moon 

The rule of thumb for blog posting is “write about what you know”, and since you likely don’t care about my uncontainable love of band and military jackets, or my vast plastic dinosaur collection (although I’m sure I can discuss both endlessly….and, maybe you ARE interested. Hmmmm….Mental note: write about jackets and dinosaurs), I’ll tell you what I know, about what I love: the 20^th Century as it pertains to Pop Culture, how I see it.  

My modest Facebook page (I’ve never “Facebooked” until now, and it’s like having a new cell phone; it’s very user friendly, just a matter of learning the buttons) has a few “Voyage to the Moon” photos and I’m asked about them this week. They are from the famous George Melies film, "Voyage dans la Lune". It was a silent film from the late 19^th Century/very early Art Deco era, created by one of the most revolutionary filmmakers in history. He was nearly forgotten (it was impossible, for years, to find pictures of his amazing moon) until the fame of Hugo, where Martin Scorsese masterfully honored him and used actual footage from a number of Melies’ films.

The most notable thing, in my mind, about the life of George Melies, is that he was profoundly revolutionary in prop and filmmaking (his studio was made out of glass to take advantage of natural light, like a greenhouse. You can see it replicated, exactly in Hugo). He was a master prop maker, and was revolutionary in the advent of special effects, yet he spent the latter part of his life in poverty, selling toys in a train station booth in France (also depicted in the film). It keeps me pondering: How many of us are touched by absolute genius in our daily lives? All of us know someone who has extraordinary talent, yet is unsuccessful in it.  Why? Lack of discipline? Organization? Marketing? And we’re all faced with the annoying injustice of famous people with endless amounts of money and zero talent (I’m looking at you, Kardashians).  It’s unjust, and somewhat insulting, but it reminds me to always move back to center, hone my own talent, and constantly try to “Live in the body of my beliefs”. Wouldn’t you agree? (At least in theory?)

Other mentions of silent films from the late 19^th Century to the early 20^th Century to follow in future posts. In this remarkable age of technology, it is vital for our brains to regain some level of brilliant simplicity. (It’s hard to multitask while watching a silent film….you must sit quietly in the dark and follow the story, in the way the brain was arguably designed).

Homework: Watch Voyage Dans La Lune (or at the very least, watch HUGO!)

"Laugh, my friends. Laugh with me, laugh for me, because I dream your dreams."

             -George Melies