Stein’s in Milwaukee had their second annual FrankenStein’s Fest, where they partnered with Variety to provide an accessible trick or treating, cookie decorating, and face painting event. Last year we volunteered, but this year we simply went for the treats, but no tricks.
This year — both at Stein’s and then later on Halloween — Namine is dressing up as a bee. Jessica had bought her a bee costume to match the bee costume she has for one of her American Girl dolls.
Namine has been on a scary movie/show kick lately, so she wants to be a zom-bee: dressed in her bee costume with her face painted as a zombie, courtesy of yours truly. (I’m no professional, but I can get the job done.) In this case, however, Namine agreed with me that it might not be a great idea to go as something scary, so she just dressed in her costume with no face paint.
When we got to Stein’s, the first order of business (of course) was to make the rounds getting candy. Each station was a cardboard house with a different theme. Namine’s favorite was the clown house (that’s a nope from me), but ours had painted skulls in line with the Day of the Dead.
After we finished trick or treating, we went inside Stein’s where they had other things going on. They had some animals to pet, which Namine loved. She got to pet a long-tailed chinchilla and a box turtle. We found out later from another family that they had a hissing cockroach out earlier, which Namine was sad to have missed.
Next up was cookie decorating. They had pumpkin-shaped cookies, so it stood to reason that Namine would want to make it look like a jack-o-lantern. (It did not survive the trip home looking like that, however. By the time Namine had it for dessert, it was a true horror.)
As it turned out, it was a good thing that I didn’t paint Namine’s face. Suzy Sparkles, the professional face painter whom we saw at last year’s Stein’s event (and many other special needs-related events besides), was there. Namine got her face painted as, you guessed it, a bee.
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