I'm Not Going To Make Another Costume.......

Today is the dreaded Halloween.  I loved this day when I was a kid. My mom and dad (mostly my mom) helped us make really cool costumes or else mom sewed one for us.  We had parties at school, a community club meeting with costume contests, and went trick or treating in the little town where my parents were born.  It was all so sweet and innocent.  


It was so fun to be creative with costumes and to spend time with my cousins trick or treating.  Community club was kind of like PTA I guess.  I think it met once a month at our grade school gym. It was a great time to get together with all the families in our community and share a potluck meal, have a program and just fellowship with other human beings.  Too bad we don't do that today.  Of course, as a kid it seemed so simple to just go and play all evening (after the program was over).  I'm sure for my mom it was stressful to prepare food, get the kids ready, and just get there.  I know this now that I've been a mom for a while.


Anyway, one year I decided I wanted to be a McDonald's trash can.  For those of you who are young, there was once a very cute TV Mickey D's commercial with singing and talking trash  cans.  So, my dad helped me find a box and paint it up to look just like the ones on TV.  It  was so simple.  But I actually won a prize at community club that year.  I'm pretty sure the prize was a 50 cent piece which tells you how incredibly old I am.


Over the years we've tried to make some fun, creative costumes for our kids.  My husband made an awesome R2D2 one year for our Zach.  He was pretty little.  The only down side apparently was that he couldn't move well in it and he didn't have his arms for balance so his brothers told me that he fell down a lot while out treating.  


Another year my boys wanted to be characters from Narnia.  We used to borrow some old videos from our church with episodes from different Narnia books.  So I made them knight costumes or some such one year.  One kid was Peter Pan that year too.  I think they mostly liked it because daddy made them sweet looking swords out of the plastic he used to make sleds for his combine header.  


My mom made some great costumes for my kids too.  She took an old fake fur coat that we found in the basement of our newly bought house and made the coolest leopard costume.  Of course my kids also wore a couple costumes that mom had made when I was a kid and kept for all eternity.  When Katrina was in first grade she made the most awesome Dorothy costume that will live on in our minds forever.  Anna and all of the girl cousins as well as a friend have worn it.  You can see it
here.

Probably the best costumes I ever made were Furby and Larry Boy.  Furby has been worn by one of my kids or a friend's kid almost every year since I made him.  This year he languishes in the box in the store room.


Larry Boy was a labor of love by both Craig and I.  I made the costume and Craig jerry rigged the innards. I think there was a helmet involved which held up the two real plungers that stuck out of his head just like the real thing. 

Sadly, Larry perished in a box in our basement when some hungry mice found him unsuspectingly without his super powers.


Last year my Anna wanted to be a hummingbird.  I spent countless hours and thought it was okay but it was no Larry Boy.  No pictures available due to the fact that one person at a costume parade thought she was a cyclops.


This year it seemed so simple.  Anna wants to be Bugs Bunny.  So I bought some gray sweats and found what I thought was a cute mask on ebay.  Alas, she wasn't overcome with joy over the mask so last night Daddy helped her to overhaul it a bit.  Now I just need to stick a tail on her pants and be done with it.


Katrina, however, wants to go trick or treating with her friends even though she is almost 17 years old.  So yesterday morning she and I went to Walmart to buy fabric, a pattern and all the extras to make her a costume for tonight.  I haven't used a pattern for years and I have never made a costume with one.  So we laid it out, cut it out and she began to sew it late last night.  By the time we went to bed she could try it on.  There is a lot of detail work yet to do today but she is diligent and I know will get it done.  She is really an amazing sewer for having never been trained by either my mom or 4H.  


Though I was hoping to never have to make another elaborate costume again it has been fun and kind of satisfying to see my daughter do most of the making.  It didn't hurt that Zach and Adam came home last night and entertained us with their personalities while we were working.


I'll try to get a picture of the costume when it is done.  For now, its identity is a secret.  And after this year, surely, I'm never going to make another costume again.  


Right.