The Halloween costume

Happy Halloween dear readers! Hopefully, wherever you are, you're having better weather than we are here. It seems like this happens every year, Halloween weather is always wet, cold, and miserable, forcing kids to put heavy coats on over their cute costumes.

Not my pumpkin, but thank you Pinterest.

I grew up in Toronto and I can remember very few Halloweens where this was -not- the case. Here in West Michigan, the overall climate is pretty similar to that of Toronto, and so it continues. It's really too bad that yesterday's weather is not today's weather. Yesterday was unexpectedly mild and sunny. I went out to Zumba last night with just a light hoodie on over my costume instead of a heavy coat. Yeah... You read that right. I said "costume" and "Zumba" in the same sentence. For some of you out there, maybe this isn't such a wacky concept, but for me, this is the first year that I've done this.

About two years ago, I borrowed an issue of Z-Life (the magazine by Zumba) from my friend Don. I'm pretty sure it was the Summer 2011 issue, and in the back were a bunch of pictures from Convention of groups of people in costumes. I guess Convention does a costume party, but when I first saw them, I thought they were Halloween photos. I'd never considered the idea of dressing up in a costume for Zumba before that moment, but those people in the pictures sure did look like they were having a great time. Then again, they -were- at Convention... Someday people, someday... But I digress. I decided that I would like to dress up for Halloween, however, having already spent one Halloween week at Zumba the previous year, I knew from experience that nobody in my class dressed up and I guessed that they probably wouldn't again; so I let it go. I let the next one go by too (that was last year). As it turned out, I was right, nobody dressed up either time.

This year has been a year of some pretty big changes for me and if you've been reading along since I started in July, you know what all I'm talking about.
So I decided that this Halloween, I was going to dress up for Zumba. I planned to wear a costume with the full knowledge of two things:
1) That I would most likely be the only person in my class who dressed up.
2) That all my classmates would look at me and go, "Oh my goodness, look what that crazy girl from the front row is wearing tonight!"

I knew that I might face these, but decided that I was going to do it anyways. I'd always wanted to, and what better year for it than this one? I was right about the first thing, I was the only one dressed up. And that's okay! Not everyone loves costumes, or even has the time to mess around with putting one together. But I was really wrong about the second thing. Really wrong. I was surprised to see how many smiles me and my costume put on people's faces last night.

They complimented me on it and asked where I got it. A couple ladies came over and wanted to touch the fabric, they also wanted to know if it was making me too hot. It wasn't, I did a practice at home wearing it just to make sure I could actually dance in the thing. So you can see at the left, I'm rocking a Wonder Woman look. I bought both the top and the tutu at Wet Seal. I was in the mall and saw it in the store through the window. I just pulled the the tutu on right over my Feelin' It cargoes. You can barely see them in the picture, but I'm wearing some gold bangles on each arm because of course Wonder Woman had gold bracelets. I couldn't actually find more authentic looking accessories, so I improvised. I bought these at Party City while shopping for an Iron Man costume for our oldest son. It's superheroes all the way this year. I've got our baby dressed in a red Spider Man romper right now. There was a gold tiara thing at Party City that matched the bangles, but when I got it home and took it out of the box to try it on, it didn't fit so I took it back to the store and just went tiara-less. I will say this for the bangles, not all of them made it through class in that great of shape. At least none of these ones broke (like my poor pink set...), but I had several ovals by the end of the night. So that's twice, and I'm not doing bangles for Zumba again. Let that be a lesson to the rest of you: bangles + Zumba = no bueno!

"I am ZIN" dog tags

A last minute addition was the necklace that you see me wearing in the picture above. Those are my ZIN tags, and they arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon. Not wear them to class? I don't think so. But... Yeah, there's a "but". Having worn them, let me tell you that dog tags are noisy! So I tucked them into my tank top during the second song. Problem solved? No, not really. They were -still- too noisy under there so I tucked them into my sports bra when the second song ended. That finally took care of the jingle-jangle.

I am definitely going to dress up again next year, and I'll say that a tutu is an easy costume. I got some advice in advance about tutus from someone I know who runs marathons and makes her own tutus to wear for them. Tutus are lightweight and flexible and durable enough to stand up to vigorous physical activity (unlike bangle bracelets...). I also didn't feel like it got in my way at all. Some of the other women in my class said they wished they'd dressed up too. How about that?

Best advice: Be brave because you never know who might be watching, and who you'll inspire with your confidence. I've had people in my life inspire me this way, some who continue to do so regularly in fact, so I kind of think maybe it's my turn now.