Coll Writes

This year’s blog theme: Better late than never. We really did Halloween this year, so this is a long post. Hold onto your hats!

You had to have known that we were going to do some sort of Ghostbusters theme for Halloween, right?

Okay, so here is how it all came about. Naturally, Jay wanted to do a Ghostbusters theme. So back in the summer, we committed to doing it. Jay already had a Ghostbusters jumpsuit, so his costume was easy. He bought the Venkman patch over the Internet and I sewed it on for him. Next, we thought about what we wanted Zachary to be. We searched Google and Etsy to get ideas. We really liked a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man costume that we saw on Etsy. I contacted the shop owner about the sizing. Despite the fact that she was extremely active on Etsy and Instagram, she never responded to me. After 3 attempts in 4 weeks, (I started contacting her in August) I decided, “Fuck her. Obviously my business isn’t very important since she can’t answer me back, so I’ll just try to make my own costume.” And that was that. I bought him a long-sleeved organic cotton onesie from H&M and white pants from Target. For the actual costume, I got a bunch of felt from Michael’s and cut it out to the correct shape and size before gluing it on with a hot glue gun. After doing some searching locally, I ended up buying the chef’s hat from this shop on Etsy and glued the red and blue felt to it. The letters were iron-on letters also bought from Michael’s. The white socks were from a package of socks my mom got him for his baptism, so I have no idea where they were bought.  I was proud at how great it came out. I managed to surprise myself.

Next, we had to start thinking about Zoe’s costume. We originally weren’t sure if she was going to be a Ghostbuster or Slimer, but after doing some more Googling, we decided to make her a Ghostbuster as well. I’m pretty ashamed at how much Zoe’s costume ended up costing. I’m always pumped on trying to help small businesses, so once again, I decided to go through Etsy and get her a custom made Ghostbusters costume. The measurements were perfect except for the front legs, which were WAY too long. I ended up having to modify them myself, but I was happy they were too big rather than too little. Now that I see how to make that type of costume, I think I’d try to sew it myself in the future before spending the money on it. I am really happy with how it looked, though, so I can’t complain too much.

Finally, we had to think of my outfit. I originally wanted to do the Dana Barrett-as-Zuul thing. I searched and searched around to find a dress that I could alter into the one that Sigourney Weaver wears, but had no luck. About 10 days before Halloween, I decided that I was going to have to change directions and be a Ghostbuster myself. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea that the three of us (me, Jay & Zoe) were all Ghostbusters with Zach as Stay Puft. So, I ordered the costume online. It arrived missing a strap! I ended up having to buy black elastic banding and cut the original strap off to make it even and then sew both on. It was a pain in the butt because the material was so thin and crappy, but at least I did get a refund from the site I ordered it from. Again, it all worked out great in the end regardless of the extra attention paid to detail. I couldn’t be happier with how we all looked!

If you follow me or Jay on Instagram or are friends with us on Facebook, you may have noticed that Zachary actually wore three costumes for his first Halloween. Originally, we were going to have him wear his Stay Puft outfit to the Halloween parade at his school, but as our full family theme took shape, we got a little nervous about him getting the costume dirty or it getting ruined before the main event. So, we decided to send him to school dressed as Batman. However, the night before, we realized that we have a baby that has a lot of poopslosions and therefore, whatever we sent him to school in wasn’t going to be what was going to make it to the end of the day for the parade, haha. Luckily, Jay was able to score an adorable Tigger costume at the last minute.

Here’s Batman flying (just go with it, we know he doesn’t really fly lol) before school on Halloween morning:

And here’s Tigger at school. The first picture is a class picture, the second two are from the costume parade and the last one is him smiling and playing as we were waiting for the parade to be over so Jay could meet back up with us (the parade was blocking the entrance and Zach’s class went first).

Back to the Ghostbusters stuff! Once that costume idea was locked down, Jay and I started thinking about our method of delivery for this family-themed costume. We both like throwing parties, so we decided to have a little Halloween fiesta at our house this year. We had Jay’s family, my sister Katelyn, and our good friends Sara and TJ over. It was a lot of fun. Jay and I went all out to decorate this year. Once we decided to have a party, we decided we were going to commit to have some legit decorations this year. One of our neighbors put up some pretty awesome decorations early in October, so we wanted to get in on the fun, too. I can’t find the picture with the final outdoor decorations, but here’s one of the later versions. We added lamps to the tree and a doormat with a skull on it. You can’t see the door but I wrote “Trick or Treat” in gel letters and there are little monster and candy decals also on the door. We also had these glow-in-the-dark decals on the upstairs windows, too.

Next, we took care of the inside. I went a little crazy at Target, Wal-Mart, Michael’s and Dollar Tree and can’t believe that I didn’t take more pictures. I had decals on the windows, little pumpkin & skull shaped mats in the kitchen and a display when you first walked in and I didn’t get a picture of any of these things. Oh well, next year. Jay did an amazing job tricking out the front hallway with cobwebs. It was by far the best feature of the house. Here are some pictures, but they aren’t the greatest representations of what we did:

We had a really fun Halloween. Like I said before, my sister, Jay’s family and our friends were all here. I am so happy that my sister was able to be here! We wanted everyone to dress up and were excited that Jay’s sisters and their significant others did. My sister wore my old trusty standby: the devil ears. Everyone looked great! I’d love to make a Halloween party a tradition in the future.

And that, my friends, is how the Gs did Halloween.