HOMEMADE HALLOWEEN No. 5: Reno 911

I’m not so sure I should be sharing the photo of Jeff and I in our Halloween costumes from last year, but what the heck, here it is. We wore these to an adult party. I promise I didn’t show up to the kid’s school like this!

I had seen several episodes of Reno 911 and it always cracked me up. So I went as Deputy Clementine and Jeff went as Lieutenant Dangle. It wasn’t until well after Halloween that I actually saw Reno 911: Miami, the movie. Someone gave it to us as a gift and I literally threw it away after watching less than 20 minutes of it. So, my disclaimer is that we aren’t really portraying R rated charactors here, just the PG13 ones.

We have a good friend in the Sheriff’s department that gave us a few of his old shirts. Another friend in the Highway Patrol loaned us the belt I’m wearing. I bought Reno 911 badges and Jeff’s gloves off of eBay, and had name badges made through the trophy shop. I ironed brown fabric stripes to my khaki pants, and hemmed up some clearance-sale shorts for Jeff. I bought my wig and his mustache at the costume shop and his wig at the thrift store.
There was a close-up shot of the actor’s uniform online so referring tho that I was able to recreate the arm patches in Adobe Illustrator and print them out onto fabric which I then sewed onto the shirt sleeves.

The cop car used for this photo op was courtesy of a police officer we found on our way to the party. This was the most fun we’d had in a long time! And just for a point of reference, this is what we really look like:

Small speech bubble17 Comments | Tagged ,
JSIM Post Divider

HOMEMADE HALLOWEEN No. 4: The Diver

This one really cracks me up. Bennett has grown up with a father that dives for abalone any chance he gets. So being a diver for Halloween was a natural choice.
Click on photo to enlarge.

A dig through his toy bin for his firefighter apparatus and summer swim-gear, basic black socks, a little thievery from his sister’s gymnastic-suit drawer and some extremely basic sewing with lycra and gluing with foam sheet cut-outs & ribbon, we came up with this darling little suit!

Here’s the basic concept for the parts of the costume I made from Lycra/Spandex, Yellow grosgrain ribbon and foam sheets. The socks were put on over his shoes to simulate diver’s booties.

I’m surprised he took that mouth piece off long enough to eat his candy. He felt pretty cool in this get-up!

Small speech bubble4 Comments | Tagged ,
JSIM Post Divider

GUEST BLOGGER: Jennifer Farquhar

Jennifer Farquhar is an amazing and creative woman. Wife, mother of 2 lovely young women and now grandmother. Jennifer was so kind to let me swipe a favorite entry right out of her blog and post it to mine. Enjoy the read!

Writing – Journal Cigar Box
by Jennifer Farquhar

I’ve always enjoyed writing but when it came to keeping a baby book on my girls I failed miserably. I remember as a kid looking at my older brother, Tim’s baby book filled out so nicely. When I looked at my big sister, Shelly’s baby book it had a few details written in. But no matter how hard I looked there was no baby book for me or my baby sister, Cathe. What happened?

When you have your own baby you soon find out what happens! You can document in your prettiest handwriting the baby’s first sneeze and hiccup or you can sleep.

I have kept a journal most of my life and just couldn’t NOT write about the fun things my little darlings said, got in to, caused, or created. The journal cigar box was born.

I picked up the cigar box at a local humidor because I thought it was pretty not to mention free. I sat it on my night stand next to my bed and filled it with little snippets of memories. Regardless of where I was or what writing resources I had I would write about whatever my little girls did.

In my cigar box are dated entries on paper coasters, napkins, torn box tops, scratch paper and receipts. Here are some of my favorites:

This is a little entry I wrote 20 years ago when my daughter Stephenie was five. I hope you can read the dialogue.
One night while tucking my little Elizabeth in she informed me that she didn’t like potatoes and that’s why she hadn’t eaten them at dinner. I called out to Daddy to make a note that she didn’t like potatoes. Just then Elizabeth yelled out, “And write down that I don’t like fruit-n-cotton-tail!” To this day, 14 years later we still call fruit cocktail ‘fruit-n-cotton-tail’.
This is a little card Elizabeth filled out in school when she was 10 years old.
I love that she was ‘usually happy’.
Don’t let formality hold you back from documenting your children’s life. When you get to my age you will be happy for any nugget that links you to those chubby cheek children of yesterday!


Editor’s note:
In case you didn’t figure it out, Jennifer is my beloved big sister and best friend that is missed dearly. Thank you for reading her story.

Small speech bubble9 Comments | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , ,
JSIM Post Divider