Costume Contest

We had a blast on Saturday night. The Fairy costumes were so creative with everyone doing her best to play the part. Kathy talked Steve into the Romeo costume, which has it's own whimsical, if not fairy-esque, qualities as well. Joe the Strong looked solid in a Scare Crow costume. Dale out-did himself with his own tribute to Steve Irwin.

Unlike the characature on South Park, there was no blood involved. He dressed up in his safari shirt and shorts, rigged a Sting Ray stinger to be protruding from his chest, and added little haloes to himself and the Sting Ray. The ray was constructed of an inside-out, green T-shirt with reflective red eyes and a long tail, sans stinger. He looked tastefully fantastic; a very creative costume punctuated with the occasional exclamation, "Crikey!"

The bar we chose became quite crowded around 11 p.m. as the Costume Contest approached. Last year this particular bar did a great job of having staff pre-select the finalists. They were well chosen with credit given for originality, quality, and creativity. Unfortunately they failed to live up to that same standard this year and stranded their D-Jay with the overwhelming task of running the contest on the fly.

The poor guy did the best he could given a loud, rowdy crowd. All those who wanted to compete were given an opportunity to be cheered into or booed out of the final selection process - which was more of the same.

This sort of drunken popularity contest is my Halloween pet peeve. It disolves into three categories: lots of attractive flesh showing, clever and crude costumes that makes everyone laugh, or those who happen to look a lot like a celebrity and have succesfully capitalized on their God-given features with a little helpful clothing. Generally, the person who took the greatest risk at partial nudity or crudity, or the person with the most and loudest friends at the bar wins. I hate that.

It's not that I want to win. It's that I want to see prizes awarded for those who were the most creative with original ideas who executed an excellent costume in which they played the part. The good news is that I was so tired and thankful to be out dancing with my friends that I didn't even care that it was a lame excuse for a contest. Besides, it's simply fun to dress up and go play. That's the ultimate goal.

Capt. Jack

This couple came into the shop a couple weeks ago looking for a pirate costume. One of our staff came downstairs and said, "This guy upstairs is looking for a pirate or something. Do any of you know what some movie pirate looks like? Captain Somebody?"

"Captain Jack Sparrow?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's it," she said.

"I'M TOTALLY ON IT!" I yelled, running upstairs to help this creative customer.

So that's how I met Nick and Andrea. We started digging in tubs of scarves, boxes of pants, and racks of miscellaneous shirts. We came up with a pretty good costume. Nick was quietly willing to let the women work on the costume, with him weighing in here and there, grinning when we got it right, nodding encouragement when we were getting close.

When all was said and done he looked good, but not good enough, in my opinion.

"Would you let me make a pirate jacket for you?" I tested.

We had Pirates of the Caribbean, one of my favorite movies, playing on the costume shop TV by then so we could check out the details of Johnny Depp's Capt. Jack costume. Andrea assured me that she was working on the dreds, the beads, and the beard braids.

"Yeah, that would be cool," responded a grinning Nick.

"I love that movie, I love that costume, I love Johnny Depp, and I would love to make a pirate coat for the shop. I don't have a sewing project for this season yet - I think you're it. What do you think?" I invited.

"Let's do it," he replied.

So I whipped out my handy dandy measuring tape and took his measurements, wrote it down on his rental form, took his money, and asked him to call me on Tuesday the 24th in case I needed him for a fitting.

The women at JoAnn Fabrics in Woodbury were astonished that I would fork out premium dollars for 100% polyester fake leather from the upholstery section for a Halloween costume. They obviously don't appreciate the need for this coat to look and drape properly - the fabric was perfect.

As I've been working on the costume over the past week customers have been marveling at it. I began with a beautiful dark, plush corduroy to create a vest adorned with mix and match buttons. Then I began work assembling the coat. The pattern wasn't too difficult, but the fabric was expensive, so I couldn't afford to make mistakes. I took it more slowly and carefully than my characteristic short-cut style of speed-sewing. When Andrea called on Tuesday I had to confess that I needed one more day.

Wednesday she called and we told them I would be finished sewing buttons on by 7 p.m. and would be ready to hand it over. They walked in at 7:02 p.m. as I was preparing to sew on the last button.

"Hi guys!. One more button and I'm finished. Here's the vest. I can't remember if I told you I would make a vest or not, but I would love for you to at least try it. And look at the red head scarf we found - isn't it perfect?" I babbled at them.

They headed off to the dressing room to start to assemble his costume as I worked on button number ten. Andrea made perfect bead strands to anchor in the dredlock wig. I grabbed some sashes for his waist. Nick liked the vest and showed off the boot covers and pirate sword he found. Andrea used some of our bobby pins to attach the beard braids and WOW!! Nick looked so good. The coat was PERFECT. I was SOOOOO EXCITED! I just love it when a costume comes together like that.

We've had others come together this season, too. I have the shop for moments like these. It is a privilege and a blessing to help people be creative, imaginative, and playful. I love having customers like Nick and Andrea. THANK YOU GUYS!!! The picture we posted is from the first fitting. I hope they'll share one from the night they go out once he has on his make-up and jewelry. We'll be sure to post it at the website.

By the way, Phyllis found a great dress combo for her Cleaning Fairy tonight, and we altered Beth's Poker Fairy dress, too. We'll get pictures up of the finished fairies some time next week. We have tons of stuff left for you. Stop out this week and play Dress Up!

Fairies

All my life my favorite thing to do with my girl friends is play dress up. It's about 50% creating the costume and 50% playing the character you have created with clothing. You have to wear the character you've created inside and out. Playing the role makes the costume and provides most of the fun, assuming a personality that is not your own.

My friends who volunteer in the shop are playful women, young at heart, creative, and playful in spirit. If I had known them when I was growing up we would have played Dress Up together. But we didn't meet until we were all 30 or older, so we play dress up once a year. But we take the entire month of October to prepare for the big night. It's like a rehearsal, working on our characters and costumes in preparation for the performance on Halloween.

In past years we have donned whatever costumes were left after the clients took the cream of the crop, making the best of the left-overs. More recently we have plotted and schemed and planned, with sewing and gluing and sewing some more to create group costumes of glamorous witches, a harem of belly dancers, a dead wedding party. We fantasized about being the Bulgarian Olympic Synchronized Swim Team. We even ordered the swim caps and planned to neglect shaving (yes, armpits and legs). But we couldn't find the time to choreograph, much less rehearse, our act to be executed on a dance floor in a bar.

This year, in the midst of creating pirate costumes (yes, we all love Johnny Depp's Capt. Jack Sparrow!) the spirit has moved us to be fairies. We've been watching the Bard's "A Misummer Night's Dream" and Drew Barrymore's "Everafter" to get ideas about fairy costumes and to figure out the mechanics of attaching wings to a costume.

We have decided to sacrifice several 1950's cocktail dresses adorned with tons of tulle to the Fairy theme. I plan to be a Tooth Fairy with a tool belt woven from dental floss and equipped with a door knob and string, a roll of quarters, a wand of tooth brushes, a box of baby teeth, miniature toothpaste tubes, bead-head for hair, and some dental whitening strips in strategic locations. I'm practicing my a buck-toothed speech pattern.

Mary is going as the Wacked Fairy, we're not sure if she crazy or loaded - but she'll be cute. Barb plans to be the Fairy Goth Mother in black - and her playful husband Mike avoided tights/leggings again by choosing to play Dracula to her Goth theme. Linda will be the flower bedecked and lovely Garden Fairy. Beth will be in stark and striking black and white gambling and giggling as the Poker Fairy. Phyllis, true to her nature, will be the Cleaning Fairy with a feather duster for a wand. We don't know if Janet or Kathy will join the Fairy Fun - Peggy is contemplating several options - she'll surprise us all with an amazing creation.

Friday night last, as this Fairy theme was sweeping up our collective imagination, I found myself upstairs with two of my closest friends, trying on costumes, improvising with accessories. We were playing Dress Up. I was transported back to 1972 playing the same game from the sanctity of my closet, pulling costumes from my mother's boarding school trunk with my best friend Margot, trying on a deeper level of character with each layer of whimsical clothing. I literally jumped up and down with excitement, thanking my friends for coming to my house to play Dress Up. Thank God that at almost 45 years old I still have the ability to play whimsical games. I am even more thankful for the friends with whom I have been blessed who also have a playful and imaginative streak, and a willingness to take the risk of playing, too.

We'd love to include you in the game. Come let us help you Dress Up this Halloween.

TIPS

The shop is clean and organized and we are SOOOO ready for customers to keep our costumers busy. We've had a little bit of traffic so far. But it never gets busy until the last 10 days before Halloween. We are a procrastinator's paradise.

It being our ten year anniversary, and my 11th Halloween of renting costumes, we offer the following TOP TEN things to consider when pondering a Halloween costume. We hope they are helpful. And please know these are observations from a wealth of Halloween costume experience that predates the shop, as well as the wisdom of many costumers and customers.

10. If you haven't started sewing your costume by now - it probably won't get done in time for Halloween.
9. If you haven't located all the pieces of your costume in your home (or your mother's house) by now, they won't be where you think they are the day before your costume party.
8. If you've never seen your husband/boyfriend in a costume before - get him to the shop soon so we can help get him used to the idea.
7. If you think you're too old or too mature for a costume, we're very sorry that you've given up on the playful side of life.
6. Consider your costume party environment (indoors or out - active or passive) before you decide what you want to be.
5. Which is more important - being unrecognizable or being able to eat and drink?
4. Do you want to be a scary, sexy, silly, or creative character?
3. Unless you plan to expose LOTS of skin - people will notice the full effect of the costume, not your figure flaws.
2. Cleavage is good and we can help.
1. Real men wear tights - but we have leggings for the rest of them!

MYSTERY

Electricity is a mystery. At least it is to me. During the Halloween season of 2003, at least I think it was 2003, we had an electrical mystery. The costume shop lights started to behave badly. One could turn on a switch in anticipation that it would turn on the closest light. At first this proved to be a reasonable expectation. As the days of October went on, the mystery began to manifest itself.

Light switches began to affect lights other than the one attached to the switch. What went off or on became unpredictable with each flip of the switch. The washing machine started causing an interesting Northern Lights-like pulsation throughout the downstairs. Some switches seemed to have become dimmers. As the week wore on the entire system became dimmer, and dimmer, and dimmer . . .

No light.

Beautiful sunset at 7 p.m. No light. Shop open two more hours. Time for flashlights, camping lanterns and candles, using extreme caution, of course! Not a good situation. Great Halloween atmosphere for a Halloween Haunted House, but not for a costume rental business. . . . "Ma'am, is this cape red, green, or black?" "Let me see- feel it. Oh, that's blue velvet!"

A friend suggested an electrician, who shall remain unnamed, who graciously came right over to investigate. I thought the issue was related to a short at the washing machine since the pulsing seemed to be the most noticeable problem from the start. He spent the better part of an hour digging around. He couldn't find anything wrong. He left and I was in tears.

Fortunately I have friends in far places with many talents. I knew it was a stretch, but I called my electrician friend in Illinois.

I've known John since I was barely ten years old. The summer our family moved into an old, abandoned farmhouse, John lived in the driveway in his bread-truck-turned-camper helping my dad plumb and wire the house. They had to install a furnace, create a bathroom in the old nursery, and wire every single room. There were no outlets in any walls and each room had a spin-switch that illuminated a light bulb dangling from a cord in the center of the ceiling.

I can say with confidence that my first girlhood crush was on John. He was a hippie, just like my mom and dad, but a younger and cuter hippy. His mustache was far more impressive than my dad's, and he always had a buck knife tucked into it's worn leather pouch on his belt. I used to dress like him, carpenter-style denim jeans and a white t-shirt, and follow him around, willing to run for whatever tool or beverage he needed. He handled it well and never treated me like a stupid little kid.

The greatest thrill was getting to sit on the step in his bread truck with the door open as we went hurtling down the road. I loved the wind in my hair and the thrill of the road racing by, just inches from my feet. This was a prohibited activity if my mother was a witness. But my father indulged the thrill-seeker in me and trusted John to keep me safe. We started calling him "John The Generator," after a Van Dyke Parks song. The refrain goes like this:

Who's that comin'?
John the Generator.
Who's that comin'?
John, John, John.
Who's that comin'?
John the Generator,
John the Generator with his work clothes on.

My sister, mother and I would break into a chorus as a way of greeting whenever he turned up. He had an uncanny way of arriving just in time for meals. My mother always welcomed him, even though he taught us to belch (and belch lustily, I might add) on command. Most of our friends called him Electric John, or "EJ."

So I called John, in tears, and left a forlorn message about the electrical problem in my treasured shop, so discouraged I couldn't even sing the song. John is familiar with our property, being a frequent visitor as well as advisor on electrical issues when we bought the farm, so to speak. He called back about twenty minutes later and asked me some diagnostic questions, just like a doctor trying to get a complete grip on the symptoms.

"Okay, Bronwyn," he reassured me, "I need you to go to the breaker box to re-set the power. Turn off the main switch at the top and flip it back on."

"We've already tried that," I snuffled and complained.

"Trust me," he coaxed. "Flip the switch and tell me what happens."

Click. Click. Nothing.

"I told you, John. Nothing happened."

"Bronwyn, did you flip the switch ALL the way off?"

"What do you mean?"

"Turn it off" click "Now push the switch all the way over." CLICK "Oh!" I exclaimed.

"Now turn it back on," he encouraged. CLICK Lights, radio, answering machine, BINGO! A cheer went up from the shop.

"Thank you, John. thank you thank you thank you! I knew you could make it better."

He laughed and congratulated me on turning on a switch! It seemed rather absurd. I guess it just needed to be reset. John promised that he would figure out a time to come up and go over the system and help Dale bury the overhead lines. We sent him a thank you card from all of the shop volunteers (they all know him from various visits here and from our annual retreat to Illinois each December).

So this week, when my trusty husband couldn't make the dryer heat up or the water heater heat, I had to make the call and sing The Song. We knew it was an electrical issue, having hauled the drier across the yard and drive way to plug it into the house line where it worked just fine.

"Hello, this is John. I can't answer your call right now, but if you leave a brief message . . ."

"Who's that comin? John the Generator . . ."

John called back and he and Dale and I played diagnostics. There are a very few people in the world who can play this you-be-my-eyes-and-I'll be-your-brain sort of game. I talked my sister through the threading and bobbin-winding of a garage sale sewing machine once. It took about 45 minutes and two beers. Fortunately Dale and John and I can play this game, too.

With the assistance of another handy husband, Barb's hubby Mike, Dale was able to follow John's hunch and locate the failing circuit box. The replacement will be installed today and we should be good to go. Unfortunately I may have to admit that the hot water heater really did die. But I won't have to sacrifice the dryer, too. I've become very reluctant about break-downs ever since my aunt and uncle bought a new refrigerator only to discover that the old one had simply become unplugged!

We'll be back up to a full service costume shop later today.

By the way, Danielle was our first paying customer of the year and won a free pumpkin. Look for her picture on the website! http://home.earthlink.net/~dmucostumes Thanks, Danielle. Your costume will look great and we hope you enjoy carving the pumpkin!

WILDLIFE

So the costume shop is in an old barn, a granary, to be specific. The family that staked the claim on this land built all the buildings we use, some sound and warm, others in various states of disrepair. The costume shop fits right in the middle of building ratings around here, having been converted once in the 80's to house people rather than store grain, and renovated again in the 90's to store costumes. It has no basement, some insulation and furnace pipes, a patchwork of plumbing which freezes, cracks, and is repaired annually, and plenty of room for critters.

Over the years I have become accustomed to sharing the space with a significant population of mice. I deal with this in two ways; resolving myself to inevitable cleaning tasks, and trying to refrain from screaming when I discover a live one that's probably even more frightened than I am startled. I also encourage any and all of our three cats to spend time in the shop. They are all great mousers and don't mind terrorizing the rodent population now and then.

Spiders also inhabit this shed in the midst of our Ten Acre Wood. My sons would argue that the spider webs lend a legitimate air to the Halloween decorations. I agree to a degree but still dust out the webs inside the building. The webs on the oustside of the building seem to be helping with the Box Elder Bug invasion, and I am therefore reluctant to limit their catch.

Woodpeckers love to drill holes into the painted blue exterior. It's an impressive sound when you're inside and one of the larger Woodpeckers is on a mission. They seem to lose interest once a perfectly round hole is formed and give it up to Starlings and Squirrels.

Now squirrels have never been a problem before. When our old dog, Midnight, roamed the 10 Acre Wood, there weren't ever squirrels any where near the buildings, dilapidated or otherwise. But we are several years past Midnight who met his death on the highway more than three Halloweens ago. We have chosen to keep a smaller but no less fierce dog, Nessie, the Jack Russel Terrorist. She is a fierce hunter, but in the hopes that we can save her from an untimely demise on the highway, she is not allowed to roam the yard at will. This canine restriction has allowed for the squirrel population to encroach upon the civilized areas of the property, and most recently red squirrels have been sighted in the shop. ARG!

Nessie located and caught the first one this summer when I was contentedly sewing on a warm summer evening. That freaked me out, but then again I was thankful for my trusty dog. The cats have nailed four more squirrels inside and out since then. I've been working in the shop for over a week, opened for business on Friday, and haven't been bothered by squirrels at all. In fact, I've turned up no evidence of them whatsoever as I go through the fall ablutions.

Today the damn rodents had their revenge.

After three days of wrestling with the plumbing, last night Dale finally got the toilet operational so that we don't have to run to the house to take a leak. This afternoon I was chatting up a storm with my friends Linda and Katie who were helping today when I walked into the bathroom and started to open the front of my jeans, leaning over to lift the lid of the toilet and . . . .

SSSSCCCCCCRRRREEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMM andalmostwetmypants!

There was a dead (perhaps drowned would be a better word) squirrel belly up, tail down-the-hole in the toilet. I ran to the house clutching my pants to find a safe toilet. Meanwhile, Katie and Linda, knowing my husband too well, checked the toilet in the costume shop to make sure my gutteral scream wasn't the result of a prank. Indeed, it was a dead, formerly red squirrel afloat in the toilet bowl. At least I hadn't screamed like a horror-movie-girl over nothing.

How the hell that thing got in there when the top was down is beyond me. Two of our cats did spend the night in the shop last night. I can only imagine there must have been one amazing chase that drove the squirrel into the bathroom for refuge. The door was closed so that cats couldn't follow, but there is a gap at the top of the door, and an even smaller gap at the lid of the toilet. So either the squirrel thought it was an escape hatch, or it was really thirsty. My mother lost a pet squirrel to a toilet bowl drowning once. She was pretty bummed and I thought it was kind of funny. Okay, so I have a twisted sense of humor and now the damn squirrels have taken their revenge. I hope that's the end of it.

So, if that doesn't make everyone want to come out and rent a costume I don't know what will.

Stay tumed for our daily blog coming to you from Dress Me Up Costume Rental, North Miesville, Minnesota!