The Annual French Halloween Bash

I look huge in this picture, oh well, I'm over it (I swear I'm not this big in person)

A 'hind view of my antlers.

As you might have guessed, Halloween is a pretty important holiday for me. In fact it's a family tradition to have an Annual Halloween Bash.

I grew up on a rather secluded, converted farm. Our house was at the end of a long dirt road with only two neighbors, and we were in the middle of a particularly industrial area--a loud and somewhat dangerous area that people tended to avoid. So, the outside world tended to stay--well--out. Because it used to be a farm, the front and back yards were quite large, we also had two side yards (one of which held the tree in which I spent the majority of my time).

Every Halloween, we would build a huge cemetery in our front yard with very realistic gravestones that my dad made himself, from our tree we hanged a life size skeleton (I'm not sure why my dad knew how to tie a noose) and, underneath that tree was our huge coffin. I remember climbing into that coffin with our giant and soft Frankenstein's monster and taking naps--or pretending to take naps, so I could be alone.

The whole spectacle was extremely realistic, so much so that once, when we had ordered pizza, the delivery man refused to get out of his car. My brothers and I ran gleefully to pay for our pie, so happy that we had managed to scare a grown man.

Though I now live more than 3,000 miles away from my family and certainly can't build an entire cemetery to scare the neighbors, I try to--or rather can't help--keeping our family tradition alive with my own Annual French Halloween Bash.

This year--as I do every year--I did a lot of research on my costume. I decided to be an Ancient Druid or Dryades from shortly after the iron age. So, I made a cloak from curtains, bought some huge earrings and weaved a pair of my antlers into my hair.

The antler weave took a considerable amount of time--about an hour--and I ended up having to use all of my hair to do it. My hair, because it is very straight, is also very slippery. So, the night before our Halloween Bash, I slept in pin curls to give it enough waves to accept bobby pins. From there I wrapped my hair around the antlers, switching between twisting the hair towards and away from my face for better structure.

In the end, the antlers stayed on my head for around four-ish hours and did not come off until I removed them myself.