Burger King and the Cleavage Queen

I've gone insane again and decided we needed to do another big Halloween thing.  This will be our last Halloween in Lafayette before moving back to the land where the trick-or-treater is an endangered species.

The first time we did this was 4 years ago with some friends from church.  Our neighborhood gets bombarded with hundreds of inner city kids every Halloween so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to love on them a little.  We put together this big Wizard of Oz thing where we all dressed up like a character from the movie, we built our own version of the Emerald City, we had the soundtrack playing in the background, and we gave out candy along with a little handmade book that shared the gospel Wizard of Oz style.  The kids really seemed to love it, even though some of them had never seen the Wizard of Oz and had no idea what we were doing.  They thought the Tin Man was a robot!  That didn't stop them from acting like we were the main attraction at Disney World.  Every kid wanted Mama to take their picture with one of us.  That was a little bizarre, we weren't expecting that.  It was exhausting but fun and hopefully the message got into the hands of those who needed it.

For the past couple of years I'd been thinking about doing a Willy Wonka themed thing, but we're kind of limited on character choices for that one.  Actually, I guess there's plenty of characters to choose from when you consider Charlie's grandparents and all, but they're just not fun characters.  Then a few weeks ago I thought about Alice in Wonderland.  That one has lots of fun characters to choose from and we have both the old and the new versions to play with.  I just wish Alice had a better soundtrack.  The Wizard of Oz soundtrack is fantastic but Alice....not so much.  We may have to improvise a little.

For the set, I'm thinking we'll have the Mad Hatter's tea party, maybe a game of croquet going on in the front yard, and definitely some giant mushrooms.  Heck, let's go all out and put the caterpillar on the couch and let him wile away the hours on his water pipe.  We all know what he was smoking in that thing.  In fact I'm pretty sure Lewis Carroll was on an acid trip when he wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  Then we could set up black lights all over the place and play Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit in the background while we all complain about the establishment.  I'm sensing that I may have gotten off track a bit.  Anyway, we'll figure something out.

Over the weekend Jayson, Taylor and I picked out our costumes at Old Vogue.  Yes, we take the weenie way out and rent our costumes.  There is no way we could put together the whole Halloween experience and our own costumes too.  I ran out of that kind of energy when I was about 38.  Renting them is pricey but it's worth it to us.

Jayson is supposed to be the King of Hearts but he looks an awful lot like the Burger King.  His outfit comes with these little short king pants and he's supposed to wear tights with them.  I CAN'T WAIT to see him put on a pair of tights!

Taylor was supposed to be the White Queen but given her costume and hair choice, we're calling her the Off White Queen.  They even had these adorable boots to match.  We were talking about the White Queen's makeup and how she has this really dark red lipstick and black eyebrows.  Taylor's fine with the red lips but when I suggested she use a black eyebrow pencil to darken her brows she looked at me as if I had just told her I wanted her to quit college and become a stripper.  She absolutely refuses to darken her brows in any way, shape or form.  I had no idea she was so protective of her brows.  My bad.

I am the Queen of Hearts or the Red Queen.  I will have to add a little undershirt to my costume since it is made in such a way that if I inhale while wearing it, I will completely ooze out of the top of it.  This could be traumatizing for the children and no picnic for me either.  I treat cleavage sort of like the good china.  It's only for adults and you only bring it out on special occasions.  Halloween doesn't qualify.

Now that costumes are out of the way, I can obsess over the set.  I see some chicken wire in my future which means there will likely be injuries to go with it.