Let's do this.Costume planning for Halloween usually began in September for my family. It was an unspoken rule that all costumes would be made from scratch, so they required a fair bit of forethought, lots of materials, and time to assemble. I decided what I wanted to be and Dad would figure out a way to transform me using cardboard, paint, fabric, and random household props. The result was a spectacular array of strange homemade costumes.
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The best was the Knight in Shining Armour. Using varying sizes of sono tubes (the cylindrical cardboard molds used for pouring concrete footings), Dad made a set of hinged armour that fit my torso, legs, and arms. We painted it silver. I had a wooden sword, a cardboard shield, and a helmet with a movable visor. That year I won the prize for Best Costume at the local Halloween party. Over the years, our family costumes have included a paintbrush, a carrot with a leafy top, a sunflower, a traffic light, a fiddle-playing gypsy, a clown, an old woman and old man, a cat, a witch with a green Vaseline-smeared face, a princess, Cleopatra and Tutankhamen, the Invisible Man, and a Kit Kat bar.
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In my preteen years, I felt self-conscious about my homemade costumes. My friends wore perfectly put together costumes that were exact replicas of whatever they were trying to imitate - no makeshift substitutes with whatever's at hand. I'll never forget the year my best friend was a go-go dancer, with a tight sequined body suit, white pleather boots, shimmery mask, and twirling baton. I was horribly jealous as we walked together in the school's Halloween parade. I was bumbling along in my yellow painted sandwich board, shining a flashlight through coloured cellophane. I was a traffic light, significantly less cool than a go-go dancer.
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Despite those passing moments of jealousy, I'm so happy for my family's homemade Halloween tradition. I wouldn't trade my memories of those long nights of costume planning for anything. I realize now that making them myself gave my costumes a deeper meaning that my friends' store-bought outfits likely ever had.
This year, my three-year-old son wants to be a witch. I was tempted to grab a witch costume off the rack at the store because it would save me lots of time, but then I realized that I'd lose out on the satisfaction of showing him how to make a costume from scratch. Instead, I'll pick up some black Bristol board to make a pointy hat. I can use safety pins to turn a black bed sheet into a cloak. With a rough broom of twigs and my old black wig, no doubt he'll be the funniest-looking witch in town, but I bet he'll have the most fun putting it together. I can't wait to see his little face fill with joy as he witnesses his slow transformation.
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