I caught this article, entitled “Costume Ideas for Parents Who Hate Their Kids”, on Cracked.com (which almost always lives up to it’s name for me) and, even though I’m a DIY-gal, I had to laugh, because I know how right they are. My kids would have rebelled at all of these and I would have died of embarrassment myself!
It got me to thinking, though, about all our costumes over the years, because I remember one particular meltdown by The Girl Child about ten years ago. This costume I had handmade for her oldest brother a few years before caused all hell to break loose:
Yeah, she’s smiling there. Don’t let that fool you. I probably bribed her with candy. Anyway, she had to go to preschool as a jack-o-lantern and I had a full-out rebellion on my hands. She wanted a store-bought princess costume! I wanted to utilize the costumes I had already made!
I’ve made some awesome costumes over the years – a skunk, an astronaut (with authentic patches I bought at the Science Center!), a cow, the jack-o-lantern, Casper the Ghost, and several others. Big projects with batting and stuff sticking up and all that! I could have given Heidi Klum a run for her money!
(Those were the days when my kids were little. I would love to show you them all, but most of those pictures were from before I had a digital camera. I’ll be honest. I’m no scrapbooker. Drives me up the wall! The finished product is as stinking cute as it gets, but I would rather poke a hot needle in my eye than sit down to do it. I need to hire a scrapbooker to go through the boxes of 35mm pictures I have shoved in every nook and cranny. So, I can’t find the pictures from when the kids were itty-bitty right now.)
Anyway, it was the jack-o-lantern costume that brought down the wrath of the then-four-year-old Girl Child. After that, I put the costume choice in their hands completely. If they wanted me to sew, I sewed. If they wanted to put it together themselves, they had free access to any closet in the house. If they wanted store-bought, well, I paid.
But, I thought I would share some of the costumes that I did manage to capture digitally. LOL This is one of my all-time favorites that the males of our family did a couple years ago:
The Hubster made the hats and the rest was store bought. I needed stockings for my costume that night, so the whole crew went up to Target for me dressed in full Mario Bros. regalia! I heard little kids were coming up to hug them! LOL
This was the year The Little Brother was Axl Rose and The Girl Child was Red Riding Hood. We had a real 70% wolf in those days, so it was kind of a no-brainer. I still the L.R.R.H. cape my mother made for me when I was little and Jack the Wolf provided the accessories. (He was a great dog! We adopted him out to some country folks who had more room for him. He was almost 6ft tall on his hind legs! That’s probably bigger than my living room. LOL)
That’s my mum-in-law as a surgeon and The Big Brother as Neo from the Matrix. That was another costume made from things we already owned. BB is the least costume-y of my lot. He has to wear stuff that he can morph back to “normal” in one second. LOL
That’s The Little Brother there on the right, dressed as The Dude, along with two of his best buddies (Rocky and Hannibal Lecter). LB had the long hair then and he is definitely Dude material. LOL
That’s me and The Hubster (before he lost his 100lbs!). That’s one of my favorite ghost costumes and he’s Sonny Corleone, after he decided to go for that drive…
That’s me again as a gypsy (it’s my stardard go-to)
and as Holly Golightly from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” one of my favorite movies.
Like I said, though, our dress-up fun isn’t restricted to Halloween!
The Girl Child volunteers to dress up as Santa’s Helper for a children’s Christmas Party every year!
And that’s me with Captain Barbossa at RenFaire – my home away from home!
This year, I may just use my pirate gear from RenFaire or I might be a Jack-The-Ripper victim, since The Hubster is going as Jack. I’ll decide at the last minute and tear my costume stash apart to make it up. LOL
Are you dressing up this year? If so, what are you going to be?

Great costumes! I LOVE dressing up, and am so bummed that we don't have a Halloween Party to go to this year 🙁 My kids were batgirl and superman though 🙂
ohh, by the way, thanks for following! I'm returning the favor 🙂
You guys have great fun! Love all the costumes!
TracyAnn from http://www.crochethappy.com and http://asktracyann.crochethappy.com
I love little kids dressed as pumpkins! So cute!!
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