Even more than sparkly purple spiders.
This year Inara dressed as a flower.
She was pretty excited about it. And then of course, the rest of us built our costumes around her to go as a theme, as we always do. I went as a butterfly.
I was pretty excited about it. Possibly even more than Inara.
Back to Inara. I loved all the little touches that her costume had, like these gorgeous little butterflies (that I found in the clearance bin at our local craft store - bonus!):
And also her flower hairband, with accompanying stink-eye. It pulled the whole ensemble together (especially the stink-eye).
This was the first year that Inara expressed concern over things that might be "too scary" at Halloween. Up until now, she has been happily oblivious to the more frightening aspects of the holiday. So we made up a rhyme together: "It's not spooky, it's just kooky"...
...and after that little pep talk we were ready to go off on our first Halloween adventure of the day!
Our first stop was the Storybook and Spooky House at the School of the Arts (SOTA) here in downtown Rochester, where we got to meet students and teachers dressed as storybook characters. It was a magical experience and the school was beautifully transformed for the occasion. The proceeds from the event went towards raising funds for the talented students in SOTA's Drama Department to attend the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the world's largest and most prestigious arts festival. We were happy to help them out, and they pulled out all the stops. Inara got to meet so many characters, but she particularly enjoyed discussing the magical transformative properties of spun straw with her buddy Rumpelstiltskin:
She needed to take off her beard in order to enunciate the words, "it's just MAKE BELIEVE, KID". I'm kidding. Rumpelstiltskin was very sweet to Inara. Especially after Inara told her that Hansel and Gretel were far more convincing.
Ahem.
Moving right along, our next stop was visiting The Witch. Inara asked which witch she happened to be, to which the witch replied, "Which witch? Why I'm THE WITCH, of course!"
Inara seemed satisfied with that answer. Of course.
And lastly, my big girl decided that she reallyreallyreally wanted to go into the Spooky House. I told her that as it's very name implied, the House might be a bit too...Spooky. But she insisted. So we waited in line and just as we got to the front a little boy raced out of his spot right in front of us, sobbing. He was scared. Inara got nervous. And then the Knight was calling us, ushering us towards the entrance. Inara looked up at him and said in a trembling voice, "Mr. Knight, is this House Spooky or is it Kooky?".
Mr.Knight leaned his head into the House and boomed to whatever denizens were lurking therein:
"DID YOU HEAR THAT? WE NEED KOOKY NOT SPOOKY FOR THE LITTLE FLOWER COMING THROUGH"
I almost kissed him.
Inara said that it was the Best Most Fun Kooky House Ever, because Humpty Dumpty was put back together again and smiling, Hansel and Gretel were not lost at all and Little Red Riding Hood never got eaten by a wolf. All of the characters went out of their way to kookify the spooky house and we so appreciated it. The only troublesome spot came at the end, when we walked out onto a cemetery. They had turned up the lights and there were no spooky characters, but it was still a cemetery.
Still riding her kooky-not-spooky buzz, at first Inara didn't notice where she was.
And then she started actually reading the headstones - and her arms started spreading out in stiff surprise...
...she turned around to me and said, "Mama...what exactly IS this place?"
And I said - "Hey look! There's a clown over there!
That's not spooky! IT'S SO KOOKY!"
Then I grabbed her hand and ran for the exit.
Crisis averted.
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