costume ideas for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Before our singalong Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party, we sat down and watched the movie, with pencil and paper in hand, jotting down ideas. One of the things we were especially looking out for was costume ideas. And so I give you this, a long list of costume ideas for those who take dressing-up seriously:

1) Truly Scrumptious. This is a fairly obvious one for any girl, and we had two Trulys at our event. This character has a number of ridiculous cupcake-style dresses and hats which are easy to mimic, and it is easy to find ridiculous clothing in any op shop (also known as thrift stores in the US of A, I believe?). She also has a number of distinctive hair styles like the one above which will always stand out.

2) Race car driver (opening credits scene). All you need is an appropriate pair of goggles - which, I grant you, are not always easy to find - and some kind of suit.

3) Wear an old-fashioned swimming suit, like Dick van Dyke's costume in the beach scene.

4) Grandpa. Find a dilapidated old suit, a pipe, and either borrow a real medal or make a fake one.

4) The executioner, who appears for about three seconds in the scene where Grandpa arrives at the Baron's castle. I suggested this to a friend, and she seemed quite offended, but I thought it an excellent idea! All it requires is black clothing, some sort of eye covering, and a fake axe made from cardboard (or even a real one).

5) The dolls, which are the disguise of Truly Scrumptious and Caractacus Potts. If you want to be the raggedy doll played by van Dyke, all you need is a clown-type costume.
If you want to be Truly Scrumptious, do what my flatmate did. Hair into plaits with yellow bows. A white blouse of some kind. Get an old green top and cut it up, and lace it with yellow ribbon or fabric. Find a little half apron and a red skirt. Paint your face with lots of make-up and red cheek spots. She looked gorgeous!
6) In theory, I thought this could be a costume. It's one of the Baron Bomburst's spies, as he arrives in England. I'm not exactly sure how it would be made, and it would be very difficult to sit down or watch the movie in. But if it appeals to you... go for gold!

7) Dick van Dyke's costume from the Old Bamboo scene. You would need a waistcoat, a straw punter's hat, and funny shaky things to strap around your calves. And of course a bamboo.

8) The Baron or Baroness Bomburst.

9) The child catcher. This terrifying man may upset small children. But a friend of mine came as the child catcher, which was pretty hilarious. He wore all black, with a black hat, and carried lollipops in his pocket. Pretty easy, but could you pull off the creepy manner?



10) Cyril and/or his wife. The very funny couple at the fairground - the husband's hair is ruined by Caractacus Potts' machine.

11) The Potts family: Caractacus, Jeremy or Jemima. Shabby chic.

12) Big brown bear. I really wanted someone to come as the big brown bear who comes lolloping over the mountain, in the story read by Grandpa to the children.

13) Caractacus Potts as we first see him, wearing his rocket backpack. Ambitious, but this would launch you to the forefront of party attendees. (Heh heh.)

14) A pirate. Pirates get mentioned very briefly, when Jeremy requests a story about them. My flatmate came as a pirate, because we recently threw her a pirate-themed birthday party and provided her with a hat, an eye-patch and a sword. This looked awesome with a striped shirt and lots of jewellery. She ended up coming as a girl pirate, because her boyfriend was a bit creeped-out when she painted stubble on her face.

15) A sweet factory worker. Another flatmate came dressed as one of these. She got a little half-apron, and put a paper doily in her hair as a little cap, over a grey top and black skirt - it looked very cute!

16) One of the old prisoners from the scene in which Grandpa is thrown into the dungeons. All this requires is a long grey beard and black clothing.

Finally, my costume:
17) I was: the roses of success growing from the ashes of disaster. (It's from one of the songs.) A trip to the op shop --> a loud top covered in roses. I wore earrings that were flowers, and I made myself a garland of fake roses. I wore dark jeans/shoes for the ashes part of the costume.

How to make a garland of (fake) roses:

I used:
- about a metre of florist wire, in several pieces (very, very cheap from a florist's)
- green tissue paper and sellotape
- fake roses - not too big, with long stems that are easy to bend
- some pink ribbon (not necessary)

I begun by twisting the florist wire together to make it a little stronger, and the correct length for my head. At one end, I made a little loop so that eventually I would be able to hook the other end in.

Then I covered it with green crepe paper, rolling pieces around the wire and holding them on with sellotape. (If you don't have many roses you may want to find a more attractive way of holding the paper on.) Don't cover the little loop you have made, but cover the other end of the wire with paper.

Then I began winding the stems of the roses onto the garland. I had about 24 roses all together (which cost about $18), but I started by placing them intermittently and then filling up the gaps evenly, so that they were evenly spread along the garland. I left about 12 cm space at each end of the wire so I could hook it up easily. This meant that the roses only went around to just behind my ears.

I wrapped a little pink ribbon around the garland, but this was pretty unnecessary and didn't really show up.

decorations for a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party

Last night, we had our singalong Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party. It was superb. It really was!

We had a bunch of people who know the movie really well, others who have never seen it before, and others who haven't seen it since they were children - and the impression I received is that everybody loved it.

We spent the day getting the house ready - and as we worked we got more and more excited. Before the day, we only had components of our decorations, but when we put them all up we saw how awesome it was going to look and it was quite thrilling!

I will update you on all the components of the evening - costumes, food, activities - at different points over the next couple of weeks but I will start with the ideas we had for decorations, what worked, what didn't work, and what we didn't try but would probably work!

The space we used: a large lounge for watching the movie, with a white sheet pinned on the wall as a screen. Our dining room for congregating/eating/drinking beforehand, after, and during intermission. We also decorated our conservatory, which guests have to walk through in order to enter the house.

The Scrumptious Sweet Co. sign, with yellow and white candy stripes and balloons. This really was the most striking decoration we had. It's also very easily recognisable in the movie - lots of "aaaahhhhs" from the audience when it appears on the screen for a few seconds.
You can find the sign on the movie, or from my image a few blog posts back, but I copied it off the images on this website.

Complicated story to this particular piece. I painted the entrance and admission signs intending to put them on the door into our house. And my flatmate R. wanted to make one of those little striped beach tents for changing clothes - a bit like these - which feature on the movie in the beach scene. We didn't want to spend much money, but we remembered we have some striped shower curtains which we use for protecting tables/floor when we paint things, and so R. used them to create the beach tent.

Well, it turned out not looking like a beach tent at all. Instead, it looked a heck of a lot more like a fairground tent - which happen to be a feature of the movie, luckily! And so we experimented to create the above, which can also look like this:

(By the way, there are glimpses of the entrance and admission signs during the Old Bamboo scene at the fairground. You can copy them from closer-up images from another of my blog posts.)

The table-car was very easy to make. We just grabbed some free cardboard boxes from the local supermarket and cut them up with a Stanley knife and then painted them. The wing is made from crepe paper. Much easier and quicker than they look, and a decoration that definitely evokes the movie.
Then we painted the racing car flags as well. One of our guests asked why we had chessboards on the walls, so perhaps if we had a second chance we'd attach sticks to the flags to make it a little more clear!

This particular decoration was a lot less clear! It's supposed to be Caractacus Potts' workshop, with inventions. But the closest we could find was an upside-down bike and a sawhorse!!

More candy stripes are in keeping with the theme and fill up space and provide colour.

This is the room in which we watched the movie. You can't see it all but it's packed with as many couches and chairs as we could fit in! Hanging on the roof is a big red and yellow Chitty Chitty Bang Bang wing, made from crepe paper. In theory this was a good idea, but crepe paper rips really easily, so it was difficult to make this hang exactly how we wanted it to.
And round the rest of the room, bunches of red, yellow and white balloons. We didn't want to over-decorate this room because we knew it would be so packed with chairs/people already.

This is our "beach", in the conservatory on the way into the house. Complete with sand (tidily spread over newsprint on the floor, beach chairs, picnic baskets and a huge beach umbrella which also handily hid junk.

These decorations were fantastic for us, because everything we used was borrowed or already owned, except that we had to buy a few balloons, some crepe paper, and a couple of rolls of newsprint. But in case you have found this blog in search of ideas for your own party, here are some other ideas which we did NOT use:

- a windmill cut out of cardboard, as in the windmill on the Potts' house.
- more fairground-themed items: simply watch that particular scene, there's plenty to work with
- if you can somehow find blue and white-striped or yellow and white-striped fabric or shower curtains, the beach tent would be a very cool thing to make.
- boxes with "dynamite" written on them.
- we completely forgot to make a sign saying "laboratory" and stick in on the bathroom door.
- Baron Bomburst's ship? Out of cardboard?
- find a stuffed toy like this dog - sorry, I don't know the breed, but I always think of it as the "Muffin McLay, like a bundle of hay" dog from the Hairy MacLary picture books. In the movie, its name is Edison.
- if you are more mechanically-minded than us, or have access to large amounts of metal junk and cogs and wheels, try creating Caractacus Potts' workshop.
- big colourful lollipops for the walls, like the ones offered by the child catcher.

sneak peek

I was going to wait until The Event was over before showing you the decorations we have been working on... but what the heck, here's a sneak peek at some of them!

Candy stripes.

Signs. I am particularly proud of the sweet company one.

And of course - the car.

Only a few days to go! I am getting quite excited!

I think we've done a good job this time of being more aware of what we can cope with, and making decoration/food plans to fit our capabilities and budget. Last time, we spent almost every evening, in the two weeks leading up to our singalong Sound of Music, painting scenes from the movie. They looked awesome, if I do say so myself. But they were huge time-suckers, and this time we've gone for more simple, eye-catching ideas.

party food

As part of my series on ideas for throwing a sing-along Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party... I give you... CCBB-themed PARTY FOOD.

These are just initial ideas. It's very unlikely we'll get around to serving every single one of these things - however, there's nothing wrong with providing future party-goers with ideas.

1. Vulgaria, the fictional location for the wicked Baron Bomburst's castle, filmed at Castle Neuschwanstein in Bavaria.

Obviously, there is no such place as Vulgaria - but I figured it sounds fairly similar to Bavaria and Bulgaria, besides having been filmed in Bavaria. And so I found some promising sounding recipes with the help of google:

From Bavaria:
This website has recipes for Bavarian cream puffs, rum balls, apple strudel, marble cake, etc.
Bavarian pretzels
Spitzbuben (Christmas cookies)

From Bulgaria:
Decadent chocolate cake (this is supposed to made several days before it is eaten, which is ideal)
Cinnamon puffs
Apple cake
Cheese bread

2. Apple strudel. As the song from the scene pictured above says, 'You're my little teddy bear, my lovey lovey dovey little teddy bear, you're the apfel strudel of mine eye...'
(We will probably be leaving this out, because we served crisp apple strudel for our Singalong Sound of Music and it would seem a bit too similar!)

3. The sweets of the child-catcher. 'Here we are, children! Come and get your lollipops! Come along, my little ones!' As wicked (and downright terrifying) as this horrid man is, even for adults, you have to admit that the sweets he offers sound pretty good.
Treacle tarts, ice cream, cherry pie, cream puffs, and, of course, lollipops. All free today!

4. Tea with the Maharajah. Everyone loves Grandpa, ex-army bootcleaner who spends a lot of time exploring the world in his 'laboratory'. And I know this is a tenuous link to food, but he does, after all, announce that today he is off to India, to have tea with the Maharajah. Easily incorporated!

5. Toot sweets - cunning little tubes of deliciousness with conveniently-placed holes that produce a high-piched whistle adored by dogs. As demonstrated in the scene pictured above. 'A mouthful of cheer, a sweet without peer, that musical morsel supreme,' as Caractacus Potts would say.

6. Car cookies, somewhat like those above. [photo via] They'll probably be much less perfect to look at, but they have an obvious thematic link and are reasonably easy.

Besides all this, we will have popcorn, of course. Mini pretzels could be a good way to add something savoury, munchable and thematic to the mix. I will keep you updated after the event with how the food situation panned out.

Any ideas to add?

sing-along

In about a month's time, my flatmate and I are throwing a Sing-along Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party! We are very, very excited.

You may remember that last year we hosted a sing-along Sound of Music at our flat. It was a pretty amazing experience - so much fun! I had been to a public version of this event once before, so I already had heaps of ideas from that for ways to encourage audience participation (e.g. party poppers to let off when they kiss, edelweiss to wave in the air, whistles to blow, etc etc). There are also heaps of ideas online for costumes, activities, party food and so on.

And there's something about The Sound of Music that is very easy to work with - all those songs full of random lists. Brown paper packages tied up with string; do, a deer, a female deer; a flibbertigibbet, a will o' the wisp, a clown; cream coloured ponies and crisp apple strudel... and so on.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is rather different. My attempts to find anything online have been woeful. It is hard to believe we are the first people to do something like this who thought to chronicle the experience online, but nevertheless we are going to have to come up with most of the ideas ourselves. It's a fantastic, imaginative movie (did you know Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay?), and so there's plenty of material to work with. I am sure we'll do just fine.

But in the interests of future singalong-holders, I would like to announce my plan to provide the internet with a blog series about holding a sing-along Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party. Over the next couple of months, I will pass on to you the many ideas I am sure we will come up with, on:

1. Decorations
2. Party food and drink
3. Costumes
4. Audience participation: ideas and props
And more!

To see the progress of this idea, see all my blog posts under the label sing-alongs.

the hills will be alive

We are having a Sing-along Sound of Music at out flat next week! Finally!

There'll be crisp apple strudel and pink lemonade and Austrian beer. There'll be costumes! (Eek - still haven't thought of a really killer idea for me!) There'll be singing, shouting at the TV, booing the Nazis, hissing at the baroness, and a goody bag filled with things to do during the film - edelweiss to wave in the air as we sing; party poppers to let off when they kiss; a whistle to try our hand at calling the children. It's going to be awesome!

In preparation, we are turning our flat into Austria. We're thinking pine-scented air fresheners, we're thinking Christmas tree sans decoration, and we're PAINTING. I found some really cheap poster paint at a bargain store, and I borrowed a huge roll of plain newsprint paper from my father. My flatmate R. has painted a huge mountain and lake scene, probably about 3 metres by 1 metre, and I have been painting these scenes:

Recognise this? The hills are alive!
That was my first scene and I'm really quite proud of it. My second was taken from a background from the Lonely Goatherd puppet show scene, including the puppet prince.

Step 1: Paint the scenery - mmMm, lovely sixties' browns and greens. (By the way, the stripey material under the paper is one of the super-cheap shower curtains we bought to protect the carpet/table from paint soaking through cheap newsprint paper!)
Step 2: the prince.
Step 3: the castle, a few little touch-ups here and there, and here is the finished product:
I am particularly proud of my puppet-prince: (A prince on the bridge of a castle moat heard, lay ee oh a lay ee oh a lay EE OOO)

It is SO MUCH FUN painting again. I haven't really painted since I did Art at school when I was fourteen-ish. And the size of the paper we're using is very forgiving, because you stand back at a distance and everything looks grand. It is so relaxing coming home in the evening and doing something as therapeutic as pushing paint around on paper.

My next scene will be one of the frames in the opening credits of the movie, I think - something architectural from Salzburg - while flatmate R. is planning a scene from the abbey.

I can't wait until the night!