We don’t generally celebrate Halloween. Giving our religious background, we don’t feel right worshipping Satan and hahah yeah that’s not it. Honestly, in-office Halloween celebrations were the only real “celebrating” we did, and once the office went away, October 31st was just another day. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Halloween – I just didn’t have an excuse to dress up, because I had nowhere to go. For the last 6 years, my default costume has been “Sexy Technical Writer”, because I wear it so well.

My last actual attempt at a Halloween costume was in 2014, when I went to work dressed as an anachronism: Han Solo outfit, Star Trek crew badge, phaser, and Starfleet Academy class ring, Firefly’s Independents flag, a wooden stake, an ADAM syringe from Bioshock, and a dozen other nerdy bibs and bobs from assorted universes. I thought I was brilliant and hilarious, but I had to explain it a lot and any costume that requires a lengthly explanation is probably not the success you’re hoping for.

Last year for Halloween we were on Salt Spring Island. This year we have no plans that don’t involve sitting on our balcony, but for the past year or so I have been all about the overkill: let’s do something, but let’s do it BIG and COMPLICATED. Things that start out as a simple “wonder if I could do this” turn into productions, with logos and labels and quality control and databases. Forgetting simple things led to digital display boards and spreadsheets. Reorganize the spice cabinet? MAGNETS. So, when I decided I wanted to do Halloween for realz this year, shit got chaotic.

It started out kind of simple: if I got a specific wig and dress, I could call it a day and it would be a low-effort but decent costume.

Then I remembered a) we have a door, and b) the door is yellow. It, like everything else in my life, snowballed from there.

All I needed to do next was stand in front of the door:

I did a pretty good job standing, but it was missing something:

WAIT this is Halloween – where’s the candy?!

Pumpkins are not just for Halloween, but you can’t have a Yayoi Kusama costume without at least one pumpkin:

.. or a dinosaur:

Or everything all at once:

I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to spend most of November attacking my door with a paint scraper and some Goo Gone, but I don’t care – it was worth it. I may never do another costume – this was surprisingly expensive to put together because I kept having ideas – but I did the heck out of this one and the pictures make me laugh.

Also did I mention that I BUILT A FUCKING INFINITY ROOM BOX?

Thank you to Ed for indulging my idea and helping with the picture taking and grosser parts of the pumpkin carving process!

I wonder how long I could keep my door like this.

Happy Halloween from #halfwack!