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This part is bulkily subtitled, "Not Entirely Awesome, But With Potential."

As discussed previously, one of my main priorities for Halloween costumes is cheapness, and not requiring me to spend my precious free time rounding up components. This year's costumes reflected that ethic.

For starters, Farm & Fleet was having a sale on overalls. Score! Since we didn't have the time to troll thrift stores, this was the next best thing. Plus, they had them available with a size 30 waist, which was baggy enough to give me a rotund, Mario-esque figure, but not so large as to risk being indecent. In other news, finding red and green shirts / hats is a cheap and easy prospect when you live in the land of the Badgers and the Packers, respectively.

I had big plans in my head for accessories that would make these costumes awesome. Big, big plans. Following the summer's Mario Perler madness, I still have plenty of gridded Mario sprites and accessories floating around. So, I thought that I'd pencil in a grid on some foam-backed poster board and use Sharpies to draw out large, pixellated versions of accessories like coins, question blocks, and fireflowers. These would be cut out and mounted on sticks.

As it turns out, I was tired and lazy, and opted to spend the hours otherwise occupied doing this by sitting on the couch and knitting. So, we just made some fireballs instead with red Saran wrap and black elastic.

As much as I hated having to brave one of those stupid, overpriced Halloween specialty shops for them, the mustaches really helped with the overall effect. I never realized just how tactful one of my friends was until she blurted out, "Wow! That mustache really changes the whole, uh, character of your nose."

Despite the lack of awesome accessories, this costume also led to lots of animated conversations about 8-bit Nintendo nostalgia as well as the awesomeness of the Tanooki suit. It also fulfilled the necessary requirement of comfort, even after consumption of large amounts of candy. Mission accomplished.

Well done. Two years ago, the fam went as the Mario's. Daddy was (of course) Mario, Mommy was Peach and little baby was Toadstool. Of course, we didn't have super cool fireballs. Maybe we'll have to revisit the land of NES soon.

Those awesomeness of the Tanooki suit is without doubt. It probably would have been hard to pull off a costume that let you turn into a statue though :(

Once I saw Pete in the Luigi costume, I fully expected to see you in pink with an impressively styled blonde wig. Alas, we will have to wait until next year for Princess Katie. The Mario Bros. are a great classic though, nice tough with the fireballs.

I also heard that there were a Mario and Luigi downtown who spent their night tearing up and down State Street in pursuit of a friend dressed as a big star, who was bouncing ahead of them singing the Invincibility song. I thought that was a very nice touch. I love the idea of going as a Mario family, too.