Hanging out on the Schembre’s back porch before trick or treating on the top of Queen Anne. Annabelle (Princess), Sophie (Mermaid), Josie (Kitty cat), Simone (Good and Evil), Naomi (Smaller Good and Evil) and Lucy (Clown). The second photo shows Josie’s cat and the horrifying skeleton on the underside of Simone’s costume. Naomi has a bony creature under her hoop skirt too.
When Simone was trying to decide what to be this year, she sketched some costumes in her journal. One was a gruesome skeleton and one was a lusciously pretty goddess in a ball-gown. We merged both. She called it a two sided “good and evil” doll. Naomi and I followed suit and sewed similar costumes. At the time I had a cast on my leg so Simone was in charge of the sewing machine petal and cutting out of the many fabrics. The mad scientist inside the dress below only can be seen if the front of the skirt is pulled up. We created swirling dervish dance for “trick or treating” that included spinning around and then stopping right in front of our audience and lifting our skirts to reveal the monsters and then roaring and chasing them with the skeletons or mad scientist. It was so fun!
Naomi was afraid of these costumes when we were first assembling them. If she had to walk past the closet where they were hanging, she would walk along the edge of the opposite wall singing to herself a cheer-up song and keeping her eyes on the closet door the whole time. She would tell me, “Those are NOT real monsters,” but the way she said it you knew she was asking not telling. So I replied, “Those are pretend monsters Naomi. We created them to be super scary for Halloween. (pause) Did we do a good job?” “Oh yes! We made very scary monsters!”
