Playing dress up

I have never been a fan of adult Halloween parties. Mainly because I'm not creative enough to invent an out-of-this-world costume idea and pull it together. I can't sew. I'm not clever. I'm not crafty. All reasons to avoid dressing up. My husband, on the other hand, enjoys all of the above. He use to attend a party every year before he met me, and in his photos he is dressed to a "T" in a handmade costume. Once we started dating I usually got out of going to any parties because my job required me to be a part of our recreation department's Haunted Halloween, which was always the Saturday before Halloween and also the time everyone held parties.

In the course of our togetherness we have attended three Halloween parties together. The first was to his annual Halloween party with his triathlon group. I'm not sure how I got roped into that one, but I was the love police and Tom was my prisoner.  I was young and thinner and didn't mind dressing up so much.

The second party was a last minute decision to attend as the city's Haunted Halloween was cancelled due to mosquitoes. Since it was last minute we didn't have much time to create costumes, and we each went as one of the baseball players in the World Series that year. I didn't even remember which teams were in it until I found the pictures.  Everyone kind of booed us for not being more original, but I thought it not bad for a last minute thing.

The last party was six years ago. Tom went dressed as a cow. I was the farmer. We actually didn't look too bad considering I was a porker, but I was happy because those overalls were some of my most comfortable clothes.

This year we were invited to a casino Halloween party. I didn't really want to attend because of the required costume attire, but I hit the "yes" button on the evite without really thinking it through. Then I proceeded to whine about it and moan about it and wonder why I hadn't declined the invite. Finally I decided to steal Kelly's idea for her party and dress up as Troy Polamalu. (Whenever we dress up for trick or treating around our neighborhood I go as a Steelers fan since I own all that crap anyway) I decided Tom should go as Mike Tomlin. That was as far as I got until two days before the party. Then, of course, I panicked.

Friday I drove to Party City intent on buying a wig as I felt that was the main part of my costume. Before I went I did some research on Party City's website so that I knew what was offered before I popped in the store. I had it narrowed down to two wigs; one was a DJ wig with the guy on the cover reminding me of Howard Stern, the other was a pirate. The pirate was ten dollars cheaper and so that was the one I wanted.  Once there I discovered that Florida has some weird law about returning opened packages containing wigs.  Thankfully the store offered to let you try on the wig if you asked.  Not wanting to do that, but wanting to see if I could make the wig work I asked to see it, saw that it would work if I cut out the bandana, and I bought it.  After that I went home, exhausted from that bit of creativity.

The day of the party I totally began to panic.  I had the jersey and the wig, but that was it.  I needed pants and socks and mostly, a helmet.  Darcy and I set off to look around.  We first went to a second hand sporting goods store.  We found a used kid's helmet, but it was too small and the wrong color.  We headed next door to Michael's where we wandered around and around the store.  I put a bowl on my head, but Darcy vetoed that.  Eventually we found this and when I saw it I suddenly got a vision.  Darcy did not like my vision, but I saw that with the right stuff (hadn't a clue what that stuff was) this would be my helmet.  I bought the $3.00 hat, some black duct tape (Darcy's idea), and yellow felt.  I came home and cut off the reindeer's antlers and ears.  I then covered the hat with the duct tape, made a Steelers logo for the side, a yellow stripe down the middle, and added the number 43.  I was totally pumped, but Madison wrinkled her nose at it because it didn't have the required face mask.  So back to the computer I went.  I found a Riddell picture of a helmet, blew it up, printed it, cut it out, and added it to my hat.  It was awesome!

My second vision was for the shoulder pads.  I had some pillow filler, but found it too itchy so while at Michael's I found some black skeins of yarn and used two of those inside my shirt.  We added some men's black sweat pants (yellow not being a color found here in Florida) from Target, some yellow soccer socks from the sports store, and I wore Madison's soccer cleats.  I wore gloves I bought in Pittsburgh for Kelly's costume, added a mouth guard and a football, and damn if I didn't almost look like Troy Polamalu!

Tom made his own costume with his black shirt I always said made him look like Bill Cowher back in the day.  He added the logo to the shirt.  He got a clipboard from the neighbor and made up a playbook full of naughty cheerleading pictures, added a headset and his Steelers hat.  I think we did a fine job in the end, and thought we should have won the costume contest, but alas we lost out to two sumo wrestlers in store bought costumes.  Whatever!