All in a Hallowe'en Afternoon

The Bean was the topic of some mild twitter hoopla yesterday. You see, this year her hallowe'en costume was based on the adorable super sneezing panda Chu from Neil Gaiman's and Adam Rex's picture book for preschoolers Chu's Day. It's a big favourite in our house, as is Fortunately the Milk and all other Gaiman books and Adam Rex illustrated books.

As I have posted before, I like to make the Peanut and Bean's costumes. The more every day use items I can find to concoct their hallowe'en costumes the better. This year I hit the jackpot at Old Navy in the toddler boys section with a super green stripped shirt and again at the Canadian Superstore with a Joe Fresh aviator cap (again from the boys section because I'm all non gender specific with the girls) I Added a pair of black leggings, a pair of her sisters clean white underwear over top. Black face paint (with added sparks) on her nose and eyes with a pair of bear ears pinned on to her cap and she was Chu.

After her costume was complete; at around 10am she refused to take any of it off until sometime around 3pm. On top of that she carried her Chu book around the house all morning and pretended to sneeze every few moments with an, "ah ah ah ahhhh no" peppered in every once in a while.

I snapped a picture of her in full Chu gear and tweeted it to Adam Rex and also to Neil Gaiman. I didn't expect anything to come of it, twitter posts are buried almost as fast as they are typed up, and then nothing happened.  Until about two hours later when Mr Rex re tweeted and then oh holy of holies Neil Gaiman re tweeted. Using all caps. And my brain exploded, well not literally but Caps! My Bean all done up as her favourite book character got my favourite author excited enough to tweet in all caps.

BEST COSTUME EVER! LOOK! ALSO I'M TYPING THIS IN CAPITALS AS IT'S IMPORTANT! RT @PeanutButterPie: pic.twitter.com/y9XiF8BC8S @MrAdamRex #ChusDay
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) October 31, 2013

To add some extra sweetness to the Gaiman Rex excitement we went to the Peanut's Hallowe'en Assembly and watched the spooky performances, and costume parade, then we went in with the Peanut's class and helped celebrate with the class party. The Peanut dressed as a gorgeous Phoenix. We used an old red tunic of mine with flowing sleeves for wings, I painted her face with flames and topped it off with a hand made fire feather. She looked stunning and her face paint stayed pretty close to unmarred all day and into the night.

We went out trick or treating for an hour and then it headed home amongst the bangs, pops and booms of fireworks. The candy stash is huge and we haven't even dived in just yet, so our sugar hangovers are pretty nonexistent today but I'm sure that will change over the weekend.

Did you buy costumes for your littles or yourself; or were you able to get a costume together from your tickle trunk? I love to hear about costume concoctions.