bkdelong

Well, my "Halloween Costume" shopping spree yesterday was an unmitigated disaster. My shopping list was fairly simple.

I needed:

One hollow, whole Emu egg
One stuffed dragon
One stuffed cupid or angel wings
A wide leather belt with large buckle
A round bouncing ball of some sort
A good pair of hiking/workmans boots
A black pirate-style shirt
Gold paint
Glue
A homemade broom
A pink parasol

I started the trip by trying to find a parking space closer to the center of town. Since I've spent most of my trips walking through Salem (I'm only a 5 minute walk from the town center) I didn't realize how much of a pain-in-the-ass parking is in October. (Duh)

I parked 2 blocks from my house. Worthless. So I walked towards the town common and hit every costume shop, witch store, antique dealer and arts/crafts place I could. The only thing I came out with was a beautifully smelling handmade broom. I was not a happy camper.

There were several things on my list I was *sure* I could get at some of the stores I headed to. However the place I remember seeing Emu eggs at discontinued them. So I picked up my broom there instead.

I went to a few renaissance clothing stores and several costume shops to try and find the belt, shirt and parasol. No one had real leather belts and all the black shirts were upwards of $80 to $200. I'm not paying that much for a Halloween costume. My belt search was no better. Stores either had regular leather belts or wide, crappy plastic ones from "pirate costumes in a bag." And no one had a pink parasol in site - not even the antique shops. One woman told me it's because the old ones have rotted away. However my mother had one up in her attic before she moved and must have given it away at a yard sale.

So I walked back to my car with the broom in a large bag and then, tired and dejectedly, drove home. I decided to see what I could find on the Web since I had already ordered my beard, wig and mustache set on one site. Sure enough, I found a great black shirt that was just my size. I should be getting both the beard and shirt by Saturday.

All that was left was "Norbert" and the "Golden Snitch". So I called around to a few crafts stores (AC Moore, Jo-Ann's Fabrics and Crafts, and Michaels) to see if they had an emu egg. No luck - but they did have Styrofoam ostrich eggs. Good enough for me. I headed over to the mall where I found the rest of my supplies.

From AC Moore, I got my Styrofoam ostrich egg, a Styrofoam ball for the "Golden Snitch", gold and black Styrofoam spray paint, 2 different types of angel wings for the snitch (in the doll section) and Styrofoam-safe glue. Finding the stuffed dragon that I could steal the wings and tail from was far more difficult. The first mall I went to had two educational toy stores. I had to go to the second local mall where the KBToys and Toys R Us were to find what I was looking for.

After I picked up my dragon, I started looking for a place to find a good pair of boots. The 3 shoe stores I went to were charging huge amounts of money for shoes I'd wear out in six months. As it turns out JC Pennys (a place I wouldn't have been caught dead in as a kid), had a great pair of Big Mac oil-resistant, waterproof, tan work boots with a 6in steel toe. Ahhhhhh and they had a 13W. I was in heaven.

I'll put a series of pictures up as I'm making the various costume parts and props. I know I get annoyed when people talk about doing stuff but leave no information about HOW they did it for the artistically-challenged like me.

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