Lately it seems like I've been getting my posts out two at a time. (Foreshadowing for a post-to-come) I keep procrastinating until I have another big event coming up, and decide I'd better quickly post before I get too far behind. Not wanting to give away my surprise as to what our new life event is, I'll just get to the story of how we spent Halloween this year.
Last year I had bought Eric an inexpensive bat costume for Halloween. When it came time to celebrate, though, I realized that the costume was slightly too large, and just wasn't that cute anyway without the cute bat-head hood that Eric refused to wear. So, I just put him into one of his bear ear hooded suits, and left the bat costume for this year.
Maite, though, had another idea for us; well, sort of. She was excited to make herself a Batgirl costume, and came to me for some crafty help with its construction. A bat wouldn't have gone too bad with Batgirl, but I didn't know what I could be to try to fit in with them. Looking for Batgirl costume ideas, though, I noticed that there were now girl versions of a lot of the superheroes.
One whose colors I particularly liked was Robin's suit. The girl version costume, like most of the other superhero costumes, was a tad bit slutty and a bit too minimalistic for a childrens' Halloween party (or for my taste, for that matter). One of the advantages of making one's own costume, though, is that it can be made to suit your own taste. So, I proceeded to design my own version of Robin Girl.
If we were going to be Batgirl and Robin, we, of course, were going to need a cute little Batman to accompany us. So, we took advantage of the time that Maite usually comes to visit on Sunday evenings to plan and fabricate our costumes.
Looking at the Batman and Robin costumes, I decided that I liked the original vintage Batman and Robin the best. Modern batman costumes are all black and just seem to be missing something. To top it off, the only thing that really distinguishes them is the Batman mask that I knew Eric would never wear anyway. (I did make him one for his costume, just in case, but it never got worn.)
So we proceeded to cut out our masks, make stencils for painting on our respective logos, and looking for inexpensive clothing for our costumes. I bought myself a cheap red t-shirt and proceeded to cut off the arms to make room for the green Robin sleeves. I had a hard time finding myself any green fabric that would work for the sleeves and skirt. You see, being crafty here in Spain can be a bit of a challenge. It's not like I can just head off to the nearest Michael's or JoAnn Crafts to pick up whatever it is I need.
I did have a little streak of luck, though, and found a table at the flea market that had new t shirts for 1 Euro, and they just happened to have a couple of shirts in the green that I wanted for my costume. So, I bought a couple, and cut off the bottom part of one and sewed it to bottom of the red shirt to make my skirt. Then I cut off the sleeves and used the top of the sleeves for new sleeves for my dress, and used the bottom parts for my superhero gloves. It was actually quite easy to make the dress.
There was another table at the flea market selling basic colored cotton cloths, so I bought some yellow fabric for my cape and all of our belts. Maite worked on pleating our capes while I sewed the edges with my serger and sewed up the belts.
Eric's costume used some old grey tights that somebody had, luckily, just given us. I also had some gray. plain t-shirts that I had bought to decorate for him, so I used that for the suit. Even luckier was the fact that I had an old polar fleece blanket stashed away that I had already started to cut up to make Eric a swaddling blanket when he was a baby. With the leftover fabric I had just enough to make him the rest of his costume, including his blue cape, gloves (in this case sleeves) and boots, which were just "sleeves" to put over Eric's regular shoes.
We painted on our respective logos with fabric paint, and were ready for Halloween with plenty of time to spare. That gave me time to look for Halloween food ideas on Pinterest. I wasn't in the mood to make my usual Halloween cookies, so I wanted to find something less time consuming, but just as fun.
I settled on making a "pumpkin" cheese ball, and ham "face" and a gravestone "dirt" (aka Oreo) cake.
Overall the school Halloween party was a lot of fun. In the end I'm glad Eric didn't go as a bat because there were already two other bats there in the same exact bat costume!! Halloween, though, wasn't over yet after the party, and I got Eric dressed up again at night to go Trick-or-Treating with the kids in Mauri's parents' neighborhood like I had on Eric's first Halloween. (Last year I was too tired to bother.) Unfortunately, the kids of the barrio didn't care much about having little Eric go with them, I guess, because they kept postponing the time to get dressed in their costumes to go "Trick-or-treating." In the end, we got tired of waiting, and decided to just go home. We found out days later that they didn't stop by Mauri's parents' house until 10:30 at night!!! I said that I wouldn't have even opened the door for them by that time, but it seems that here knocking on someone's door at 10:30 at night isn't seen as rude as it would be in the US. Or maybe people just don't know how to react to the American holiday and just go along with whatever. Either way it is obvious that Halloween here in Spain gets more and more popular every year. Someday soon I'm sure there will be "real" trick-or-treating for kids. Hopefully it will arrive before Eric is too old for it.
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