And now for the PopCap party people:

A fun-loving Joker gleefully menaces a broody Batman.

This duo was a walking reminder to all of the profound importance of partying on.

Winner of Scariest Costume...the girl from the Ring. Not in fact a brunette Cousin Itt.

While both these couples clearly coordinated their costumes, they did not actually coordinate with each other! This is a cosmic cosplay confluence of Nickelodeon devotion.

Winner of Best PopCap Costume: our beloved attack dog, Noni, caught in the act of foraging for food around the office. The one flaw in the execution is that Noni never actually looks sheepish when she gets caught.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 win for best costume to wear for crashing parties on Halloween--seriously, how do you know who's in there?

Another gorgeously crafted costume from Katie, who brought us last year's Medusa. How does she do it? What might she charge to make something for me....

The grand prize winners were a trio. Everyone seemed very excited about their costume. Something to do with "L'Homme de la Famille," I think.

If you’re looking for inspiration this year, here are a few of our past favorites:

Crazy Dave & Zombie Carmen Miranda go Wabby Wabbo at Pride!

In the riot of color, you may recognize the orange of road cone headgear!

Our humble truck was dressed to the nines!

PopCap is proud to have been a part of this joyous celebration! And as a PopCapper myself, I am proud to work for a company that shows such Pride! It was a beautiful day in Seattle.

Anyway, that headline is no lie, and you are not dreaming: Plants vs. Zombie t-shirts are now finally for sale at select retail stores in North America, allowing you to proclaim your love for the game to the world in the most stylish and fashionable way possible this side of a Paris or Milan runway!  You’ll turn heads, stop traffic, and quite possibly even cause multi-car collisions as you saunter down the street in one of these brand-new beauties.  Check ‘em out:

Look how happy they are in one of our new shirts! This could be you!

So. You may be wondering where you can find one of these shirts. Your best bets for now are at Sears, Wal-Mart, and Kohls, but don’t worry if you can’t find one yet – this is just the first salvo, and we have much more to come. And if you are lucky enough to find and buy one, take a photo of yourself and share it with us on our Facebook wall! We may even reward you in some yet-to-be-determined way!

Yay!

So here’s a batch of dandy Plants vs. Zombies costumes from a few daring and creative souls. And this is just the first bunch. We’ll have even more in the next few days. Because you guys are awesome.

From Roy S. comes Young Dr. Zomboss

Back when he was still an intern.

From Terri H. we have Sunflower and friend.

No idea who the guy on the left is.

And from Brian C. we got the whole family involved. First, a tiny Sunflower.

We are getting cavities just looking at this.

A Jalapeño you do not want to cross.

I am large, I contain multitudes.

An apprentice Gargantuar.

Look in the bucket. LOOK IN THE BUCKET!

And one of the whole gang.

There is awesome on your lawn.

Thanks to everybody who sent in pictures (and, again, stay tuned for more). We’ve been grinning like idiots at your fantastic costumes!

It’s Lex – everyone’s favorite erudite invertebrate!

In addition to how super-cool Lex is (how about those Bookworm Adventures, right?), this costume had two other big things going for it: I’m much more adept with a needle and thread than with a hot glue gun, and I love neon.

A riot of color!

You will need: at least a yard of neon green fleece, a matching top (look in the athletic wear section), a red bow tie, some seriously dorky glasses, and various sewing supplies — needle, thread, one big button, and a bunch of safety pins. Oh, and a few rubber bands.

Like fitting yourself for a wedding dress... for a marriage to a Martian!

I started by wrapping the fleece around my midsection to measure where to put the button.  Place the button about an inch from the edge in each direction. Use a safety pin to mark where the button goes on the side of the fabric you won’t be cutting. Then use a second safety pin to mark where the overlapping fabric will hit the button — that’s where you’re going to make a buttonhole. It’s also where you should cut a triangular swath of fabric off the top.

Why triangular, rather than just cutting straight down? Because you don’t want this to be a straight-legged dress; it should get wider as it moves down. Also, that triangle of fabric will make you a nice scarf (if you don’t wind up with a big enough triangle for a scarf, there are other options for head decorations that we’ll cover later)!

Now sew the button on and make the buttonhole. This is simple enough, but don’t rush it, because an oops while cutting the buttonhole will be hard to fix.

A buttonhole should be just wide enough to accommodate the button. Stitch around the edges to keep them from widening.

Now, lay the skirt flat on the ground and button the button. Align the edges of the fabric from the button all the way down to the place where the triangular cut you made ends.

Starting a few inches below the button, use your safety pins to hold the fabric in this exact position.

Then take your needle and thread and make your seam along the path of safety pins.

Step back into the skirt and button it to make any final adjustments for length. With the button situated at the back, and the gradually flaring skirt dropping down, you will see that you have a long “tail” naturally forming at your heels! Gather it into a “ponytail” shape and use rubber bands to hold it in place at a few key points to better define the tail.

Thereby hangs a tail...

Once you’re in the shirt and skirt, put on your red bow tie, and your incredibly dorky glasses, then tie the extra triangle of fabric on your head like a bandana. If this won’t work because the triangle is too small, you can buy a bandana in this color, or you can try using the spray-on temporary hair color they sell at costume shops. I considered that myself, but the warning label said not to use it if you already dye your hair. (What, you thought this was my real color?)

This is a great costume — by far my favorite yet. It’s so comfortable, and the fleece will keep you nice and warm while you wander around on a chilly Halloween night! Plus, if you’re going trick-or-treating, the day-glo color is totally in line with pedestrian safety recommendations! And I kid you not, just try not to smile while draped head-to-toe in neon green. It’s impossible.

Have fun, Blog Riders and costume-makers!

If I started photosynthesizing last Halloween, I still wouldn’t be able to pull this off without some serious cosmetic surgery.

When you’re intimidated, it’s best to break things down to components and start from there. For this costume, you will need: a plain hat (or at least a hat you don’t care about), Styrofoam balls, green paint, green wire, green felt and black felt. Tools: hot glue gun, wire cutters, paintbrush.

I used a plain old baseball cap as the foundation for my little felt sculpture. Look just to the left of the cap for a happy accident brilliant idea: that is a piece of cardboard that comes with a new baseball cap! I was all set to have to improvise a piece of rounded cardboard or use an empty soup can or something to make the mouth of the Peashooter, and then I looked inside the brand-new cap to find a perfect little piece of cardboard there already, holding the shape of the hat.

Use hot glue to affix the cardboard into the bill of the hat, making the nice round shape for the front part of the peashooter.

Next, you want to cover the entire baseball hat in green felt. This is a little difficult (ever wrapped a stuffed animal or basketball as a gift for someone’s birthday?).

Start by cutting your felt to the approximate size of your baseball hat. I cut a piece of felt that would cover the hat from ear-to-ear with a few inches extra to glue the felt to the inside of the hat.

You also want to leave extra felt on the front part of the hat, as you will use this felt to cover the bottom part of the hat’s bill as well. After you finish gluing, you should have a hat almost fully covered in green felt.

Cut the green felt so you can glue it to the hat's bill

This is what the fully-wrapped peashooter base will look like

Next, cut out little circles of black felt and glue them on for the eyes.  You may feel a little silly at this stage if you bought a full yard of black felt… not that I know anyone who did that.

Once it was all neatly glued into place at the front, I built myself a leaf to attach to the top. This was done in the same way the sunflower petals from Tuesday’s post were constructed: I cut a leaf shape out of thick paper, then cut two pieces of felt that same shape but just slightly larger.

Make like a tree and leave

I glued the paper to the bottom piece of felt, then glued the top piece down as well. To finish it off, I used a black magic marker to lightly draw on leaf vein patterns. I glued that to the top of the hat at the back.

The real magic of this is it allowed me to cover up the imperfect back seams I made (did I mention how hard it is to cover round things with flat things?).

Finally, I took the balls I’d painted green the day before and cut myself a length of wire roughly three times as long as the mouth of the peashooter.

Poke the wire through the felt and bend the short end tight against the cardboard as an anchor. Push the long end all the way through so it sticks out of the mouth.

String the balls on at equal distances along the wire.

Use the wire cutters to twist the wire back on itself so it’s poking into the front ball. This keeps the ball from falling off and the wire from injuring people!

Finally, dress in green from head to toe. That part’s easy! See you again next week for more costuming fun!

Hey Zombie, come closer... closer... closer...

Then, after all that, I finally get our T-shirt model here for a quick photo shoot and, well… he was a bit difficult to direct. It was like he was dead or something, but still stylish.

We got one good picture, and here it is:

Zombie is wearing fabulous sunglasses and a T-shirt that's to die for.

“What’s the t-shirt?” you ask.

“This old thing?” we reply. It’s just a little tribute to a brand-new Plants vs. Zombies video — a pretty awesome video that you’ll get to see in just a couple days. So stay tuned!

Here’s a close-up of the t-shirt:

Zombie medallion, yo.

Most workplaces have some sort of dress code. That’s not to say we don’t have an appropriate code of conduct (hi HR!), but ours is much more relaxed. Without the limitations of a designated set of “work clothes,” we’re free to be more creative with our clothing choices.

When this creativity is stifled… well just look at what happened when we tried to be like everybody else:

Our version of the corporate Casual Friday -- Formal Friday.

That’s the purpose of this column, to display PopCap’s unique fashion choices. And we wanted to have a little fun with it as well, so we thought we’d get your input on what people are wearing.

Thus… we present you with our first installment of “Who Wore it Better?” Tell us readers: who wore this spectacular outfit of a navy, 100% cotton, dressed up but not too dressed up, classic polo shirt better?

Two extremely stylish men

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