This was the best Halloween.
We have a short but fun history of dressing up as Disney couples for Halloween. When we lived in Virginia, we participated in our church's Trunk or Treat for two years so we had to have costumes and a trunk theme. The first year we were Carl and Ellie from UP, and the second year we were Gnomeo and Juliet. It was a blast! This year we had to dress up, because coming up with a pregnant costume sounded like way too much fun...and how many chances like this will we get in life?
We decided a long time ago that dressing up as Pacha and his pregnant wife Chicha from The Emperor's New Groove would be perfect. I couldn't find much online in the way of costumes, so we figured it was a pretty original idea. We were thrilled when Colin and Victoria were totally on board with dressing up and walking around the small town of Blowing Rock during their Halloween festivities. They showed up with their Yzma and Kronk get-ups, and we were totally giddy. I love our friends. Victoria and I made our costumes (with the exception of my dress, which was a lucky find on Amazon for $20!). She actually found a blog which had pretty great instructions for easily putting together costumes for Kronk and Yzma. I made the poncho for Pacha out of fleece from JoAnn's, and my mom whipped up the weird little Pacha hat. I made my necklace out of the same material as the hat for a geometric collar, and then made the earrings out of wooden discs from Michael's that I painted dark brown. I also bought the bright green headband at Michael's. All in all it was really inexpensive and very fun to put together.
It was incredibly entertaining seeing who recognized The Emperor's New Groove and who had no idea who or what we were trying to be. We began to realize that this movie seems to have only caught a handful of people in our exact age group. Any younger or older and it seems to have passed them right by. Which is a shame, because it's the best.
Kronk, pull the lever!
Blowing Rock was decked out for the festival. There were hay rides and decorations around every corner. Once it began to get dark, most of the little shops were passing out candy for trick or treaters. The streets were soon full of kids and adults alike, and the temperatures began to drop drastically. We walked around and grabbed some coffee, and heartily enjoyed the many stares we received.
We shopped around a little bit, buying some local spices and wishing we could buy every little bizarre trinket and Christmas ornament we came across. Towards the end of the night we jumped onto the tail end of the Main Street parade (which was basically just everyone in costume walking in a big line down the street). We counted it among our more prouder moments of life.
Squeak, squeakin'.
The night ended with us back at the house, delaying getting out of our costumes for as long as possible. After taking a few more pictures, the lure of pajamas and s'more-making finally won out. We settled in and made a fire and got cozy with s'mores and freshly made fudge. It was a fantastic day. Best Halloween ever.
It also signaled the end of Frocktober 2015. Another great month of dress-wearing. I wasn't sure how this year would go, being pregnant and growing steadily out of all of my regular clothes... but I feel pretty good about the challenge! In honor of Frocktober I will be donating quite a few clothes in the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to having a much simpler wardrobe and being a lot more intentional in what I buy and what I allow myself to keep over the years. Cheers to Frocktober, friends, festivities and the best Fall yet.
