Families, friends team up for laughs
Five pumpkins walk into a church.
Sounds like the setup for a joke — but for Marlene Snyder, the topic is serious.
The walking pumpkins are among many group costumes the Grove City woman took part in creating.
"They call me the costume Nazi," said Snyder, who collaborates with her mother, Eleda, her cousin Rita Vincent and Vincent's daughters Kathy and Debbie. All members of St. Anthony Roman Catholic Church in Forestville, the women have worn the costumes each year at a party hosted there.
Often working in papier-mâché, the family has dressed as life-sized bingo daubers accompanied by bingo players with giant cards, and as bowling balls and pins. To create a bowling pin shape, the women used hula hoops covered in fabric. Like the pumpkin heads, the bowling balls were created with laundry starch and paper layered over giant bouncy balls, which were deflated and removed once the papier-mâché hardened.
"We bought all the starch they had in Grove City that year," Marlene said, describing the pumpkin creations that began one July for a party the following October.After some coats of glossy orange paint, the women used foam insulation to line the pumpkins' lips and eyebrows. The insulation also brought texture to the bright, green stems, formed around toilet paper tubes.Although last week the women modeled the pumpkin heads with spray-painted matching Tyvek suits, the pumpkin costumes are ancient history. After their initial debut at a previous year's party, the straw-topped cardboard wagon that "carried" them has long since been burned, making way for future creations.The women are working on new ideas to distinguish them this year as a group.
Although the Snyder-Vincent group often takes first place at the annual party, the women share a good-natured rivalry with their friends, the Tonelli clan.This year, Ed and Joyce Tonelli of Forestville will pose as John McCain and a moose-toting Sarah Palin. Other family members will tag along as Barack Obama, Joe the Plumber and a pig wearing bright red rouge and lipstick.With ratted hair and a red T-shirt, Joyce Tonelli's sister Debby Shearer will impersonate "crazy woman with the mic" — from whom McCain withdrew a microphone recently when she called Obama an Arab.
Halloween parties aren't the only venue for adults to dress up. Members of the accounting and engineering staff at T.W. Phillips Gas and Oil Co. on Main Street have enjoyed the tradition for numerous years.Although the Village People, Ghost Busters and sport fishing are among their previous group costumes, this year's theme is Scooby-Doo.For the sake of photos, Suzanne Warheit used her dog Mugsy to stand in as Scooby, but the cost of a mask deterred anyone from playing that role. This group strives to stay thrifty."I got this at Kmart," said Harry Reinhart about his Shaggy wig, complimented by fake eyelashs used as a goatee.Cindy Anderson found Thelma's orange cowl neck sweater at a thrift store, and Hayli Bowser paid $2 a yard for purple stretch velvet to make her Daphne dress.Bowser finished the ensemble by using purple spray paint to adapt a pair of pleather boots.
Spray paint also came into play for friends of B.J. Herr of Butler, who will dress as Snow White.Armed with a custom-made dress and cape, B.J. will travel with a group of 17 adults and children to Florida, where they will spend Halloween at Disney World.Dressed as the Seven Dwarfs, others in the group will wear polar fleece hats and vests, on which B.J. used her sewing machine to embroider each dwarf's name in the official Disney font.With help from her friend Eileen Stroup of Clearfield Township, B.J. fitted and lined the faux suede dress bodice, which fastens up the back with laces strung through hefty grommets.Swatches of curly fur fabric were cut as beards for the Dwarfs, whose vests were secured with makeshift pleather belts. Scraps of pleather also were cut to size and spray-painted to become the showy buckles."There are so many cool things you can do at the last minute," said Stroup, who holds a degree in costume and set design and spent 15-plus years working as a wardrobe supervisor on Los Angeles movie sets."If you want to look like a group, you need something that unites you," she added.
Although using the same color can unify group costumes, Stroup cites shapes, fabrics and styles as other possible shared components."I've done a family of dinosaurs. They were all different colors, but they were all made out of fleece and had big, sparkly, contrasting dots on them," she said."Another group I did was renaissance costumes for four children and a dog. Again, Iused different colors, but they all had the same sort of ... rich jewel tones. One had a purply maroon dress and the dog had a purply velvet coat."
Although dressed as a group, a handful of students at Knoch High School used neither color nor fabric to unite them. Instead, the girls used the Candyland board game, each dressing as one of the characters.Creating a crown by sticking light orange lollipops in her hair, Audrey Scott will dress as Princess Lolly. Audrey also cut a scalloped bottom into a homemade orange, yellow and turquoise skirt.To dress as Lord Licorice, Laura Gray found a red blouse with ruffles at a thrift store, then paid $4 each on a clearance rack for a black vest and pants. Her Spanish teacher, Senora Davies, provided a matching hat — black with red dingle balls lining the brim — and red licorice for a mustache."I made it out of Twizzlers," she noted.Also participating are Olivia O'Connor as Queen Frostine, complete with tiara and tulle-covered gown and Jenna Gannon, donning a bibbed denim jumper to portray one of two children on the box.
The teens originally planned to wear the costumes as part of Knoch High School's annual Senior Dress-up Day, but have since made plans to wear them to the Butler Country Club, where they will help with a special children's event.Like many of the costumes created each year, the girls say sharing the costume theme also rekindles a pastime of youth."Pretty much everyone knows what it is," Audrey said of the Candyland game."We all used to play it as kids."<br></br><br></br>
