All Hallow's Eve'n in Pittsburgh

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Once a year, kids are allowed to indulge in the fine art of pretending to be someone (or thing) they're not.  (Parents, of course, partake in this all the time...)  For those too little to verbalize their costume wishes, it's up to the parents to either read their mind, interpret their cries, or just dress them up as parrots.

She's like Edward Scissorhands!  Felt be forewarned - CaraJane's in town...

We chose the latter.  In a fit of idealism, Tommy declared that wee Zoe Mae's costume had to be homemade.  A fine plan, but he had neither the means nor the spare time to take said rule seriously.  He did, however, manage to visit JoAnn's to buy felt.  Yards and yards of recycled multicolor felt.  Thankfully, Cara Jane stepped up to the design plate way ahead of the game.  Research was initiated, and before Tommy could say "prospectus" the dining room table was covered with Fiskars, felt, googly eyes, and wine.

 

SHIZZAM...  Baby Parrot Costume!  That's right folks, Cara knocked together what must be one of the finest parrot costumes in the history of parrot-costumedom.  In fact it was so good, Cara even tried to teach wee Zoe how to fly.  Unsurprisingly, Zoe decided that she'd rather work of crawling first...

And what goes better with a parrot then a pirate?  Using nothing but found materials and a healthy dose of genius, Cara raided Tommy's closet and emerged as a pirate.  The gauntlet was thrown down: What Would Tommy Do?

Wait a minute - who's ship is this anyway?

Mmmm... Bop.  A ship's captain.  With just minutes to spare before the party was to begin, Tommy desperately turned to the interwebs to come up with a costume idea to compliment Cara's pirate and Zoe's parrot.  A plan was hatched, felt was cut, an old baseball cap was destroyed, and a stapler was employed in various and sundry ways.  Greetings Captain Tommy: It seems that your ship was recently taken by a pirate with a parrot.  And then there was party:

This was, in fact, the first time that Cara and Tommy had ever thrown a party for children on purpose.  Lots of friends came together, but the kids owned the place.  There was a marvelous monkey; a ballerina dancing the night away; and a tiger (Tigger) with Kanga-roo and Poo Bear support.

There was also a firefighter lest the party get out of hand; a shark to keep Rocco on his toes; a pumpkin to keep the shark on its fins; and a Material Girl / ladybug transformer who rocked TWO costumes.  It was a fine, fine day -- we'll look forward to another next year.  Until then, we have piles of halloween candy to tide us over, because we only had one trick-or-treater this year.  (Down two from last year.)  Hmpf.  Perhaps the unruly pirate and her wee parrot scared off all the lesser landlubbers.