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Oklahoma Halloween Events: Here's the trick to costumes
Think outside the box for a creative DISGUISE

BY DAVID ZIZZO Comments 0
Published: October 30, 2008

Cut holes in your pockets, stuff them with concrete chips and gravel, hang pigeons under your arms and go as the Crosstown Expressway. Or make dinging noises, collect money from people around you, blow smoke in their faces and go as a casino.

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Wimgo.com features a comprehensive listing of events and activities for Halloween: festivals, pumpkin patches and haunted houses, barns and forests.

There are plenty of ideas for last-minute Halloween costumes, some better than others. When all the Incredible Hulks, Batmans (or is it Batmen?) and Sarah Palins are gone from retail stores, it’s time to come up with your own costume. Besides, costumes are more fun and interesting if you design and create them yourself.

"Thinking outside the box makes the best Halloween costume,” Danyel Siler said.

That’s why Siler urged her 7-year-old son to think inside the box and go Halloweening as a Lego block. Siler, longtime theater costume designer who works in the business office at Lyric Theatre, has the box with the head hole, she said. "We’re in the process of finding little things that can work for the knobs.”

In addition to her experience at several theaters, she also works around a lot of creative people, she said, so making costumes comes naturally. She did it last year when her 4-year-old daughter got an outfit of Dorothy (the Wizard of Oz).

"My son wanted to be the scarecrow,” she said. So Siler went to the thrift store and bought an old shirt, stitched on patches and stuffed the legs with straw from a crafts store. This year, Siler removed the patches, dyed the shirt dark brown and used it as part of an Indiana Jones outfit for her son. She made a butterfly outfit for her daughter.

"This is kind of what you learn from being in the theater,” she said.

COSTUME IDEAS

Many common materials are useful for costumes, said Sherri Osborn, family crafts guide for About.com. Styrofoam, cardboard, cloth, string, wire hangers and, especially, a sweat shirt can come in handy. "With a hooded sweat shirt and a few basic craft supplies you can make a large variety of almost instant costumes,” she said. With felt ears and a tail, you’ve got an animal; felt leaves, a tree; pink or blue tulle, cotton candy; Fiberfill on top, Q-tip. Some other costume ideas:

→Attach a yellow dashed line of tape to a black sweat suit and attach an old stuffed animal — road kill.

→Cut four head holes in a sheet and go with three friends with flour on your heads and faces — Mount Rushmore.

→Paint two large boxes white, cut head holes and go with a friend — David Letterman’s front teeth.

→Toss a sheet over yourself — Continent of Antarctica.

→White sweat suit with dozens of horizontal lines of varying thickness — universal bar code.

→Want to avoid the party? Become the invisible man.

Haunt the Zoo, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. through Friday, Oklahoma City Zoo, 2101 NE 50, $7 for trick-or-treaters. Free for adults, 424-3344; www.okczoo.com.

Camp Fire USA’s Haunted Forest Hayride, 7 to 9 p.m. today, Camp DaKaNi, 3309 E Hefner Road, $5, 478-5646; www.campfireusa-ok.org.

Choctaw Firefighters Association Haunted Trail, dusk to 11 p.m. through Saturday, Choctaw Creek Park, 2001 N Harper Road, $5.

Terror on 10th Street Haunted House, 7 to 11 p.m. through Saturday, 2005 NW 10, $5, 232-1816.

Bricktown Haunted Warehouse, 7 p.m. to midnight through Saturday, 101 E California Ave., $10, $12 or $20, 236-4143.

Trick or Treat on the Street, 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Second and Broadway, Edmond, free.

Arcadia Lake Storybook Forest, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. through Friday, Spring Creek Park, 2.5 miles east of Interstate 35 on 15th Street in Edmond, $5, 216-7471.

Trick or Treat at the Library, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, Midwest City Library, 8143 E Reno Ave., free, 732-4828.

Chester’s Pumpkin Patch and Mystery Maze, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Friday, Chester’s Party Barn and Farm, 5201 Cimarron Road NW, Piedmont, $6, 373-1595.

Ultimate Terror Haunted House, 6:30 p.m. to midnight Friday, 1500 SW 74 (former Burlington Coat Factory location), $8.