The Lean Mean Green Ninja Team Of Halloween 2014

You may not realize this about me, but I am a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Like, way more of a fan than any grown mature woman should be. I faithfully watched the 80s/90s cartoon for many years in my youth. I drew ninja turtles in my notebooks. I *may* have written fan-fiction about the Turtles in years past. I watched all the live-action movies from the 90s many, many times (in fact, they were one of my first rentals from Netflix, back when we started our service a decade ago!). I also watched quite a bit of the 2003 cartoon reboot, although not as faithfully as the original cartoon (I was a "responsible" adult by then and didn't have as much time for Saturday morning cartoons).

from moviepilot.com

Why do I love the Turtles so much? Heck if I know, but I have a few guesses. I have a bit of a soft spot for martial arts shows (I went through a Jackie Chan phase in high school, for instance), and I love seeing cool ninja action...especially in a goofy sci-fi setting, since I also love goofy sci-fi. I always enjoyed the self-aware weirdness of the Ninja Turtles cartoons; the original cartoon, in particular, was fully aware of its wacky, off-the-wall premise, and it embraced its own silliness. It was one of the first shows I ever watched that often "broke the fourth wall" to make fun of itself, and I really enjoy that sort of self-deprecating, "meta" sense of humor. And at the end of the day, the Turtles themselves (when done right) are cool characters, who are fun to watch and root for. They have a nice brotherly bond that manages to ground all the goofiness in something more meaningful.

I haven't paid much attention to the Turtle franchise in many years, since my girls were babies. But then, in a hotel one night, I caught an episode of the Turtle's newest incarnation: a computer-animated series shown on Nickelodeon. I was mildly interested, but not very. I found the new animation style unattractive & off-putting, and I thought some of the changes made to the plot & characters were odd (for example, the Turtles' friend April O'Neill has been "de-aged" into a teenager in this version, which makes for some startling romantic tension). Mostly, I thought my "girly girls" wouldn't really be interested in a sci-fi martial arts action show.

Fast-forward a year and a half. My girls are a little bit older and more interested in finding new shows to watch. At the same time, I have more time to myself during the day since the girls are gone at school much of the time. On a whim, I decided to check out the DVDs of the Nickelodeon Ninja Turtle show from our local library. I can't help myself, I guess. And what do you know...I was pleasantly surprised by how clever & fun this new show is. It did take me a while to get used to the animation style (which still looks pretty cheap at times). However, I soon got over the design aesthetic when I realized how great the voice actors were...and how well the show understood and developed all the characters...and how funny the jokes often were. I also enjoyed the ongoing plot arcs, something the original series never had. It's a very lighthearted show most of the time, but the action scenes can be surprisingly intense, and it's not afraid to "get dark" when the situation calls for it. It's far from a perfect show, but it's a show that caters well to both kids and their geeky parents (many of whom are previous-generation fans like myself).

Here's what the Turtles & April O'Neill look like in the new show; from thecredhulk.com

And to my delight, my girls ate this show up. After sitting through a couple of straight years of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (to be fair, not a terrible show), Littlest Pet Shop, Ever After High, Barbie, and the like, watching a "boy cartoon" (especially one with half a brain) was a blessed relief for my sanity (I'm kind of a tomboy, in case you couldn't tell). Who knew my girls would like a show with ninjas fighting human ninjas, robot ninjas, mutants, and alien invaders? Best yet, I could watch the show with them and enjoy it! Another thing the Nickelodeon incarnation has going for it is a (slightly) more prominent cast of female characters. There is also more romance in the show; more than one turtle has a "crush" on a female character, and my girls love the dimension that adds to the show. The romance (usually) doesn't overwhelm the plot, but it's enough for my romantically minded girls to appreciate it.

So, long story short, I now have a house full of Ninja Turtle fans. Hooray! Even Nathan says he wouldn't mind watching the show someday. Good thing, since I plan on buying all the available DVDs for the kids this Christmas. I've already gotten Season One, with Season Two on the way at the end of the month.

And to tie this all back to my family, I was very surprised that all my girls chose to be characters from Ninja Turtles this Halloween. After the movie Frozen was such a big hit last fall, I thought for sure one of my princess-loving girls would want to dress up as Elsa or Anna (heaven knows, the rest of America seemed to have that idea; I saw little Elsa's and Anna's everywhere this Halloween!). But good on my girls for wanting to be something different!

The only problem: I'd vowed to make all my girls' Halloween costumes this year. Last year, I bought Lorelai & Celeste their costumes from Party City, and it put me back more than a few dollars. I'd vowed not to do the same thing two years in a row, and I assumed they'd want to be a witch...or a princess...or a mummy (as Lorelai had originally claimed), which involved toilet paper or some equally cheap fabric. Imagine my dismay when they said they wanted to be ninja turtles...I initially worried that my sewing/crafty skills were not up to this challenge.

Luckily, my job was made easier by a few things. First, only Lorelai actually wanted to be a turtle. She chose Michelangelo...hooray! Mikey was always my favorite. Celeste and Aurora both chose female characters from the show. Celeste chose Karai, Shredder's adopted daughter with a mysterious past (who also happens to be an awesome ninja). Aurora wanted to be April O'Neill, who is also in training to be a ninja (at least in the current Nick cartoon).

Another thing that made me breathe easier was that Jasmine, a friend of mine (who is a better seamstress than I am) had made her daughter Alissa a turtle costume for Halloween last year...and she'd made a stuffed "turtle shell" that Lorelai was able to borrow. The shell was the part of the costume I'd been the most worried about, so that was a huge load off my mind.

From that point on, much of my October consisted of buying up costume supplies. Some of the "supplies" were regular articles of clothing, and some supplies were from Hobby Lobby & other craft store, including colored duct tape, felt, and fabric glue. In the end, I'm not sure I ended up spending a whole lot less this year than last year; but at least I had fun putting the costumes together.

Here's Lorelai's Michelangelo costume, complete with "extreme" hero pose. After getting hold of the shell, this costume actually turned out to be pretty easy to put together. I bought a green sweatshirt and green sweatpants, and then "padded" the elbows, knees, wrists & ankles with brown duct tape. I made the plastron (a turtle's "breastplate") out of a larger piece of yellow felt that I cut out and embellished somewhat, then glued to the shirt. I made the orange mask out of felt as well; cutting the eyeholes out turned out to be the hardest part of the whole costume.

I completed the look with some plastic nunchakus from Walmart, as well as some green hairspray. Originally, Lorelai wanted to shave her head, and paint herself completely green. Yikes...that's commitment! Luckily we talked her out of it and she settled for the hairspray. I hadn't anticipated her fair blond hair retaining so much of the color, though...as of today (6 days after Halloween) her hair still has a distinct greenish tinge. Lorelai actually likes the green though...I suspect it makes her feel "punk."

Celeste's costume ended up being a little more complicated than I anticipated. Here's what Karai looks like on the Nick show:

From TMNTpedia.com

Obviously, I wasn't going to bob her hair and dye it (I actually tried two different "yellow" hairspray cans for Celeste, and neither of them showed up well on her hair). I ended up putting her hair in a tight bun and calling it a day.

 

It was easy enough to find black leggings & a black long-sleeved shirt; that could have been automatic "ninja garb," but Karai has silver armor all over the top of her leotard. I ended up cutting out almost two dozen pieces of gray felt & "armoring" Celeste's top and bottom. When all was said and done, she had some trouble bending her arms. I didn't want to look for black flip-flops at this point in the year, so Celeste just wore black socks & black Sunday shoes to complete the look.

After that, we borrowed a plastic "ninja sword" from a friend, and I copied Karai's severe eye makeup by looking at pictures online. I thought my sweet girly girl actually looked pretty bad-ass, when all was said and done. The only drawback to her costume? Not everyone has seen the new Ninja Turtle cartoon, and so most people don't know who Karai is. Poor Celeste kept having to explain her costume to everyone, and she was complaining about that after a while. Otherwise, she seemed pretty happy with her look.

Aurora's April O'Neill costume was probably the simplest to assemble, since only one article of clothing needed any modification. I was able to find a black long-sleeved shirt and black leggings easily; I borrowed some old jean shorts from Aurora's drawer; I found the right color of T-shirt and some cute black boots at a discount clothes store; and I even found a yellow headband in our drawer upstairs! After that, all I needed to do was add striping and a large number "5" to the yellow T-shirt.

I also needed to make "April" a fan. In the new cartoon, April is not just a teenager...she is also a novice ninja-in-training. She chooses this fan as her weapon. It's a metal fan with a sharp edge, but it also happens to have a pretty design in the middle. Here's what it looks like in the show:

from de.tmnt.wikia.com

It was easy to find the right piece of old cardboard and paint it:

Aurora thought the fan looked awesome, and spent the next week or two "attacking" people with it.

I was getting kind of jealous of the girls' "ninja" costumes, so for my birthday, I decided to treat myself and buy a couple of Ninja Turtle-themed T-shirts...thus proclaiming to the world that I am a gigantic nerd (as if there was any doubt). The first shirt I wore as part of my "nerd" costume, that I wore to our church trunk-or-treat and to another party:

Me, embracing the weird

The second shirt was more obviously a "turtle" shirt, so I wore that one for Halloween itself, so I could best match the girls when we went trick-or-treating:

Don't we all look awesome? I'm not sure I'll be able to make costumes every Halloween, but I'm glad I had the chance to make some costumes for a property I love anyway; it got me more invested in their outcome. All the girls were happy with their looks, and in the end that was the most important thing. Next blog post, we'll show them off in action!

Cowabunga!