The Last Halloween Post

As per your request Trish, here is Bender! Blair is also a Smoking Lily model. His robot fiancé is Christina, our Saturday shop girl. The Mermaid is Rebecca, who has been a regular fill-in girl in the Vancouver shop in the past.

And with Erin is her husband, and Smoking Lily model, Scott - or "The Bearded Lady of Dubai".

Look who we bumped into while Trick or Treating with my 8 year old niece - The Scooby Doo Gang! Nicely done!

And finally, where's Rhonda?

Her Swamp Creature costumer was awesome (she walked throughout the neighbourhood in flippers covered in moss and leaves - nice effort). I was really happy to hear that she won $50 in a costume contest. The call out in the bar was "and Best Costume goes to.......Plant Lady!" You can see why!

Halloween House

As promised, here are a few night shots of my house all decorated up for Halloween. With a ton of help from my neighbours we got the house looking pretty spooky. It was so much fun!

Before and After: Costume

Here's my boyfriend Christopher wearing the second-hand finds that were the start of his Halloween costume, including vintage Fox and Fluevog shoes! He says that he looks much better in person (my apologies for the terrible photo quality).

and now,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

may I present the Dead Rotting Corpse of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart!

Happy Halloween from the Vancouver staff

Lily Inspiration: Halloween

Holidays are great for inspiring new creativity. Rather than pull out the same decorations year after year, we like to reinvent the wheel here. Sometimes that involves as much frustration as excitement, but we get that giddy sensation of trying to figure out some grand new scheme and that keeps us hooked.

I don't usually do Halloween decorations for the store, but this year my house is Halloween Central (photos to be shared with you soon) and I figured a little creepiness would be fun in the store too. And I mean "a little". While in Seattle Trish and I spied a shoe in a window with a bat wing attached, so simple... and yet it caught our eyes. That inspired me to cut out and paint some big bat wings yesterday. I attached one to each mannequin and to a few other things in the shop. Cute and creepy!

Vancouver Update: Spooky Drift

Every year Glenda signs herself up to participate in the Drift, a community arts event, and every year it sneaks up on her somehow. She always manages to come up with totally amazing installation pieces, but usually not without a little last minute panic first--but don't tell her I told you that!This year she was all geared up to make her Halloween costume when she realized the Drift was almost upon us. While lamenting the fact that she didn't want to take time away from working on her spooky attire, she realized "Hey, wait a minute....my costume can be art! Sweet!"

I'll skip the gory details (pun intended--ha!) about the hours Glenda spent slaving away--with a little silk screening help from Ms. Trish--transforming an *incredibly* ugly polyester wedding dress into the monstrously beautiful gown it is now; suffice it to say this one isn't for sale! ....I can't wait to see all the photos of Glenda and her man, Chris, done up as the corpse of Mozart and his lovely wife, Constanze.

On another note, I should let all the Vancouver Lily-ers know that we've just gotten our very first Nightingale Capelets in and they are fabulous. We also received three wool vests--just three!!--and apparently that's all she wrote for those cutie layering peices. One's already on hold to satisfy a request, so if you're thinking about these, come on down quick--or, better yet, give us a call!