All Hallows' Eve is over. So I built this LEGO vignette.

It was inspired by another vignette I saw recently created by a friend of a friend. It featured the two of them and another friend drinking tea in their living room.

I went to a Halloween party over the weekend.

My friend and I went as purgers. I'm the one in the stylish cardigan.



Don't worry, we were polite.

LEGO Daniel is dressed up as a pirate for Halloween!

And he used his cutlass to carve that pumpkin into a Jack-O-Lantern!

Let's take a look at some Halloween costumes.

I'm probably not wearing a costume this year as there aren't any parties planned and I don't have any good costume ideas this year anyway. I have been looking at costumes in stores though, and have taken pictures of a few that I'd like to share.

"Sexy" Halloween costumes seem to have gotten more and more popular over the years. I went to Spirit recently, and while they had many "sexy" costumes for women, these two stuck out to me:

Sexy Edward Scissorhands and Sexy Betelgeuse. I think they should complete the series with a Sexy Jack Skellington.

Hmm, you know, I have the DVD of Beetlejuice and an Edward Scissorhands action figure on my Halloween mood table.

Also at spirit, I found this Incredible Hulk child's costume.

It doesn't indicate it anywhere in writing on the package, but I think it's actually a sleepy child Hulk. Look at that ferocious yawn. You wouldn't like him when he's sleepy. Sleepy child hulk costume includes ripped purple pajama pants and for some reason a mohawk. I guess I see children with mohawks quite often these days though.

The final costume was found at a flea market.

It's an old Ben Cooper costume of the moustached Masters Of The Universe character Man-At-Arms. It's perfect if you love Masters Of The Universe and if you love getting your eyeballs sliced up by sharp plastic. Only one of those is true about me.

My GERTY Halloween Costume 2010

Every year for the past 3 or so years, my cousin Megan has had a Halloween party. Megan made a theme for this year's party: movie characters. I came up with the ideas for everyone in my family going to the party. My parents were Nurse Ratched and McMurphy from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. My sister was Ellen Ripley from Alien. Her costume was really cool. She borrowed a real flight suit, bought an actual Nostromo patch, and she and I (with the help of my dad and his tools) heavily modified an Iron Man 2 Nerf gun to make something resembling Ripley's flamethrower. Since I haven't gotten really into preparing a costume in many many years, I decided to get really into it this year. I had a few ideas, but after I had this idea, I couldn't not do it. I decided to be GERTY from the movie Moon, one of my favorite movies from the past few years.

Growing up, I was really into science fiction and robots. Building a robot or a robot costume out of cardboard seems like a pretty common experience for kids that were into science fiction. Although I remember spending a lot of time making things out of and playing with cardboard boxes when I was a kid, I don't recall ever making a robot. When I thought of the idea to be GERTY, I realized it was my chance to finally have that experience.

I spent several weeks brainstorming how I was going to make the costume, creating plans for it, and acquiring the materials needed. I wanted it to be a little more special than just a cardboard box strapped to my torso, so I decided I needed to make the screen and the camera "eye" light up. The eye part itself is the bottom of a Gatorade bottle, which I thought looked perfect.


Here's my sister and me as Ellen Ripley and GERTY.


Here's a view of just the costume without it strapped to me. I couldn't read one of the post-it notes, so I just amused myself by writing a grocery list with space and moon related items. Freeze-dried ice cream, half-moon cookies, and Tang. Notice the eye is lit up.


Here's a photo better showing that the screen is also lit up. It showed up much better in the dim lighting where the party was.


One of my favorite details on the actual GERTY is his cupholder with the mug. I knew I needed a plastic mug because a regular ceramic mug would be much too heavy and fragile. It seems like I see cheap plastic mugs in stores all the time, but then when I actually needed one, I couldn't find one anywhere. My mom finally found this perfect one at a second-hand shop. I carefully scraped the original logo off, and made a stencil to put the Lunar Industries logo on instead. The mug is held into the cupholder with magnets, so it can easily be taken out of the cupholder, but won't fall out while I'm wandering around the party.

There was a costume contest at the party. Of the three categories, my sister won "Best Overall", and I won "Most Original/Creative" and "Most Effort/Detail".

Annual Halloween Party, Annual Todd

I wrote an entry about being excited about Halloween this year and trying to make it special. My cousin Megan is having her annual family Halloween party on the 30th, and this year I'm actually putting some effort into my costume. I've been working pretty hard on it, and it should be pretty cool, but for now I'm keeping it a secret. Look forward to seeing it though, because after the party (maybe even the day of Halloween) I'll definitely be writing an entry all about it, with photos!

This weekend I'm going over to my good friend Todd's house. I realized the other day that I haven't hungout with him in a year. The last time we hungout was the weekend of the AFI concert last year. In fact, when we hangout this weekend, it will be exactly a year after that concert, as it was on October 16th 2009, and October 16th 2010 is this Saturday. Time goes by really fast.

The NBC Thursday night shows are on tonight. I'm looking forward to the live episode of 30 Rock. Now I'm going to go take a nap until the shows are on. :)