kindred imaginations

We have already had 6 Halloween parties and we still have the actual day and a “day-after-Halloween” party to come. I’m so glad the kids have stayed happy with just one costume and haven’t wanted a different one for each event! Whew!

I think I mentioned that all three kids wanted to be dragons this year.  Well of course they didn’t like any of the commercially made dragon costumes, so we got a pattern and yards and yards of fabric. It turns out that the pattern was the hardest to follow, most cumbersome commercially produced pattern I’ve ever used AND in spite of all my best trouble shooting, my faithful old sewing machine refused to consistently stitch and it kept breaking the thread. GRRRR! Anyway, I started with AJ’s costume and got far enough into the miserable experience that I felt I had invested too much not to finish it, but it was pretty clear that it was "a foolish sacrifice". 

AJ is THRILLED with his blue dragon costume. He is a happy blur in most of the photos I've tried to get of him in it.  He wants to try it on a couple of times a day and likes to stuff a pillow down the front and belly flop on it, giggle and squirm around on it. As you can imagine, I think it is adorable and ALMOST worth the tears, near cursing and lost of sleep the dreaded costume has cost me.  My idea that I thought was brilliant for his costume was that I made his wings so that they would button on and off so he could easily be put in his car seat’s 5 point harness.

S graciously gave up her dream of being a dragon this year since my sewing machine HATES the fabric she chose. Instead we made a splendid pair of wings and an uber-awesome wand; added them to last year’s costume and voilà, she was a fairy witch. 

The wand is going to get a post of it's own, but the wings are also pretty fun and something I've been cooking in my head for about a decade (it's a little scary to admit how my bizarre brain works.)  I took a dollar store umbrella, busted all the spokes off the center handle, and cut the fabric across the middle to make the two wings.  You then have to sort of tie each wing's spoke ends back together to make them rigid and pad the ends a bit because there are nasty wicked sharp edges on them.  (It took some photos along the way if anyone is interested, let me know.)  I built a sort of harness with fabric covered elastic loops for her arms to go through, attached in back to a rectangle of nice stiff plastic cut from something in the recycling bin.  (I will neither confirm nor deny that it was a doughnut box)  To that I attached the wings, and covered the messy details with some black felt.  The dragon pattern had wimpy little Care Bear-ish wings, so J's & AJ's wings were about the same process, minus the harness business.

J DID get a dragon costume since, instead of a metallic knit, he picked out a green satin which my machine seemed to tolerate. I also shortened the production time by using one of his feetie jammies as the body instead of starting from scratch. He was a little bit afraid of the fierce headpiece at first, but he might have just been teasing. I spray painted his umbrella wings a metallic gold; they look good and J loves the smell of spray paint, so BONUS! The dragon tails needed to be stuffed and I really did NOT want to go to the store again and spend anymore money on these costumes. So I decided to use plastic grocery sacks for stuffing as they are free and need to be kept out of the landfill anyway. Stroke of genius or pathetic cheap-o? I’ll let you know when I try to clean these costumes next week.

The week’s first party was a playgroup party, and I was in charge of setting up a backdrop for photos of everyone’s costumes. I made one of the ubiquitous mustache-on-a-stick (in AJ's hands) and chalkboard word bubble for props and it was fun.

Now our orchid is sporting the mustache and word bubble. (oh, I am just so funny!)

Yesterday we had our annual favorite, the Museum of Geology Halloween party. Same old games and crafts, but we love them.

From there we headed straight to the church trunk-or-treat and chili cook-off. We always hand out glow bracelets and kids seem to like them a lot. Next year, remind me that 100 isn’t enough. Lots of people stayed for the chili and games. There was a huge plywood Frankenstein with its face cut out that M and various other leaders stuck their faces in. Then you got a piece of candy for hitting their faces with a beanbag.

M was game enough to wear some of the kid’s plastic armor and be a knight for our 2 dragons. (yeah, we recycled the backdrop from the playgroup party.)  I was going to be a princess for the knight, but didn’t get it pulled together in time. I had a pair of fake eyelashes with feathers (AJ calls feathers “bird leaves”). and I wore those and a Halloween t-shirt and called it good.

AJ thought it was so fun to wear our costumes to the church building, that it was hard to convince him this morning that we needed to wear Sunday clothes. He finally agreed to bring his costume, but leave it in the car.  Serendipitously we read a passage quoting Isaiah 51:9 last night after the party that referred to Christ as the one who "wounded the dragon"!!!!!  That got some kids' attention for sure!