Superhero Stickmen

It’s Fall, the leaves are changing, the days are getting shorter, and best of all... Halloween is near!

We had many queries about our Halloween plans, and our answer has been consistent: “Last year was our last big hoorah”... and TBH, last year was A LOT. It was multiple weeks of very little sleep for both of us, busy work schedules, and two very young kids. We had a totally out of this world run for the last four years (2012, 2013, 2015)

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But, despite wanting to hang low, October 2016 has been BUSY for other reasons; over the last few months we have all been supporting Jeremy as he trained for the NYC Marathon at the beginning of November, he also had a relay race in Hawaii mid-month, and we had a family vacation planned just last week. But... as creatives, Jeremy and I never stop thinking of ideas. We often get carried away in our own heads, dreamers at heart, we find ourselves committed to projects well beyond our means; fueled by our passion to see our vision come to life, we run on reserves and fumes (avg 4hr/night sleep in the last week).

This ‘need’ to create coupled with us bearing witness to the explosion of creativity in Cooper (age 5) over the last few months, had me thinking a lot about Halloween. He has become completely obsessed with drawing and building (when less than a year ago I had naively resigned myself to the fact that he may never enjoy drawing the way I had as a child). This kid is FULL of ideas (I’m legitimately jealous of him at times), and I really had this desire to collaborate with him; I wanted to honor his independence (all any Kindergartener wants, right?!) and let him make some decisions, but really to conceive an idea as a team. So we TALKED and TALKED and TALKED, every day he had a handful of crazy ideas, some good, some great, and some just downright weird (I’m talking about you, cowboy with crab claws who likes hamburgers).

Eventually, reality sunk in and I realized I’d have to harness his creativity and direct his true passions toward an end result, and I would also need to come up with something that would be fun to build (incentive for Jer and I ;)) So... Cooper loves drawing and he loves superheroes, and Jeremy and I have been wanting to make something with EL wire ever since seeing this and playing with EL on the DeLorean, circa Halloween 2012.

I showed Cooper the same video that inspired Jeremy and I, explained the costume as ‘being a drawing’ and with that... He was totally SOLD.  I wanted to try and take the simple stick figure to the next level, and to program the ‘suit’ in some interesting way. This is where the idea of being multiple superheroes in one was conceived; and to be honest, being multiple people all in the same costume really felt like it was channeling Cooper’s authentic creative self haha. So, I started sketching and brainstorming with Jeremy about the technical details. 

After some iterations, Jeremy and I agreed we would take a stab at bringing our vision to life, we placed an order for EL wire and electronics components, jumped on a plane for a week of vacation, returned last weekend, and have been working into the wee hours of the night every day this week after work. We spent a few hours filming the end result in the street in front of our house, and Jeremy really sealed the deal with the music selection and video editing.

I hope you enjoy this year’s costume, it is always a labor of love. Halloween is a good reminder for me of how lucky I am to be part of this amazing creative little family. I get to do things I love with my best friend+husband+creative complement; and now we get to share our ‘joy of making’ with Cooper (who did an amazing job helping us get video footage, trying on the ‘suit’, and having a positive attitude about it all). 

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