When I was a young mom (read: one child, career on hold), I made the decision to bypass the store-bought costumes (with those cheap masks that cracked and broke and made me sweat) that I'd had to wear as a child, in favor of the homemade variety.So I took a white sheet, cut eye-holes in it, glued black felt around the outside of those holes, draped it over my four-year-old's little body and cut it off at the ankle. It was even roomy enough for a coat underneath. Perfecto, I thought. Well, almost.
Okay, not even close.
I didn't allow for little feet that might get caught up in all the folds of the sheet as he walked up and down porch steps. I also didn't allow for the loose sheet shifting away from his eyes as he grabbed the folds to hold them up so he could traverse those treacherous steps. It was a total disaster. He couldn't walk for all the material, and he couldn't see anyway. I ended up giving him the candy I'd bought for our trick-or-treaters.
I got smart after that. I used actual patterns for the costumes, and if I may say so, I made some really cool ones. A pirate, a clown, Peter Pan, a witch, a black panther, and more, all of which my daughter wore several years later. The costumes even got handed down to nephews. I really enjoyed those Halloweens.
Nowadays, I barely have time to dash out to buy the candy. Deadline coming up fast and I'm not finished with the book. AACK. But my children still love Halloween, and I'm convinced one reason is that they felt AWESOME. Not that I'm proud or anything.
How about you? Have you ever made a costume or are you strictly off-the-rack? Do you get into costume yourself?
Happy Halloween!
Kate
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5 comments:
When my kids were small, we lived in a upscale yuppie area where NO ONE would send their kids out in store bought-unless it was from an actual costome shop. So I made clowns, dragons, pirates, fairies, witches and who knows what else. When we moved here (University City-a decidedly left leaning suburb of St.Louis) the kids friends and classmates wore cheap store bought, lovingly made homemade, thrown together out of the dirty laundry bag costomes and everything in between. The pressure was off and I relaxed. The kids wore parts of our assembled stuff from years gone by and scraped together the rest of the cosumes themselves.
We were all a whole lot happier.
Caryn in St.Louis
Mostly I made them, when my daughter was young. Her first was a Siamese cat (her only memory of that was that the kids at daycare kept trying to pull her tail). One year I was laid off and with time on my hands I crafted a magnificent satin, jeweled princess costume. And there was that year she and a friend went out as Fuzzy Dice--that was fun.
When my daughter was young I made her fairy, angel, princess costumes etc.. We got away from celebrating Halloween by the time our son would have been old enough (his health problems made it unwise anyway) but DD says she still remembers those lovingly homemades with fondness. I think she may still have that one halo with the antique ribbon on it. It was a hand-me-down with semi-precious stones in it. She actually won a local contest that year. I enjoyed making them for her too.
You know, I just wrote a whole comment about Halloween costumes and ccreating them from whatever was there in closets, garages, etc. But this annoying Blogger comment program zapped it YET AGAIN. This is SO lame, Blogger. Step up your game.
When I was young, we came up with our own costumes. If you wanted to be a cowboy, someone in the house (8 kids) had a hat, and a gun, and you probably had jeans already!
We were hobos a LOT, as the blackened cork and whatever raggedy clothes you had worked well for that, but we had FUN figuring out what we wanted to be within the limitations!
And it didn't seem to matter to the adults handing out the candy, so we were happy.
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