I sit and stitch yarn onto green corduroy fabric and can’t stop myself from thinking how completely ridiculous it is. Little did I realize that my many years of tying quilts would pay off in such ways as making Halloween costumes.
I never remember enjoying Halloween as a kid. I recall being terrified, not by the scary costumes, but by being out in the dark and knowing that other people were out there too. The harder people tried to make their house scary, the less scary it was to me. I was afraid of things that were “REAL” or at least the scary people out there that are real. We had a blue spruce tree in our front yard that was quite large and for years every time I was outside in the dark I was sure someone was hiding there, waiting to get me. Halloween brought me through the neighborhood in the dark and the porch lights cast strange shadows that unnerved my feelings of security.
One year the city decided to put lampposts up throughout the neighborhood, which just made everything worse. I’m sure the intent was to provide more light and, therefore more safety, but the lamp by our house was placed so that the blue spruce now cast an enormous shadow right across my house. Now the ONLY place without light for six houses on either side was behind that horrible tree or on my front porch. Now if there really WAS anyone scary in the neighborhood the best place for hiding was right between the tree and my house. I despised these street lamps for making it even harder to see into the darkness where they cast shadows and I felt much more safe on the days that they were not working. I will admit that the lamps did make Halloween less scary because the majority of the neighborhood had more light.
So, back to costumes. I don’t really remember any of my costumes as a kid (sorry, mom). I am sure if I thought really hard about it I could think of some. I found myself dressing up for years as a soccer player. Gee! That’s creative!! I just wore the same thing I wore every day and labeled it as a costume. I think the only thing out of the ordinary there was that I wore my soccer socks all day instead of just at practice.
Then the day came that I had a little girl old enough to actually dress up and walk around. All kinds of possibilities opened up. Halloween suddenly became fun because of the unlimited prospects of costume making. I am all about making costumes myself and spending as little money as possible. My favorite year was when we lived in California and we all dressed up as “The Incredibles.”
I made five awesome costumes and the only things I bought were red tights and hair coloring for Savannah and myself. These costumes created quite a stir as we had many people yell into their houses for their spouse to come see (of course no one in that area had ever seen a family with three kids, so maybe that was what the commotion was really all about).
I never remember enjoying Halloween as a kid. I recall being terrified, not by the scary costumes, but by being out in the dark and knowing that other people were out there too. The harder people tried to make their house scary, the less scary it was to me. I was afraid of things that were “REAL” or at least the scary people out there that are real. We had a blue spruce tree in our front yard that was quite large and for years every time I was outside in the dark I was sure someone was hiding there, waiting to get me. Halloween brought me through the neighborhood in the dark and the porch lights cast strange shadows that unnerved my feelings of security.
One year the city decided to put lampposts up throughout the neighborhood, which just made everything worse. I’m sure the intent was to provide more light and, therefore more safety, but the lamp by our house was placed so that the blue spruce now cast an enormous shadow right across my house. Now the ONLY place without light for six houses on either side was behind that horrible tree or on my front porch. Now if there really WAS anyone scary in the neighborhood the best place for hiding was right between the tree and my house. I despised these street lamps for making it even harder to see into the darkness where they cast shadows and I felt much more safe on the days that they were not working. I will admit that the lamps did make Halloween less scary because the majority of the neighborhood had more light.
So, back to costumes. I don’t really remember any of my costumes as a kid (sorry, mom). I am sure if I thought really hard about it I could think of some. I found myself dressing up for years as a soccer player. Gee! That’s creative!! I just wore the same thing I wore every day and labeled it as a costume. I think the only thing out of the ordinary there was that I wore my soccer socks all day instead of just at practice.
Then the day came that I had a little girl old enough to actually dress up and walk around. All kinds of possibilities opened up. Halloween suddenly became fun because of the unlimited prospects of costume making. I am all about making costumes myself and spending as little money as possible. My favorite year was when we lived in California and we all dressed up as “The Incredibles.”
I made five awesome costumes and the only things I bought were red tights and hair coloring for Savannah and myself. These costumes created quite a stir as we had many people yell into their houses for their spouse to come see (of course no one in that area had ever seen a family with three kids, so maybe that was what the commotion was really all about).Every year in early October I pop the long-awaited question, “what do you want to be for Halloween?” Savannah immediately busts into millions of ideas of different themes we could follow as a family and I find myself once again saying, “I really don’t think you could talk daddy into being King Triton” although deep down inside I am already thinking of how to make my own “Ursula” costume. This year Sid answered with a resolute “I want to be a cactus!!” Yes, a cactus. I was hoping he would forget the idea and go with something a little less unusual by the time Halloween was closer, but he stuck with it. The good news is that we had a green corduroy shirt we were getting rid of, so I cut it to shreds and pieced it together and came up with a cactus costume. The quilt-tying expertise came in handy when I was making “pokies” on it with white yarn. Savannah decided to be an angel and we already had all the things we needed to put that one together. Austin and William are both too young to really want a certain costume before hand, but I think we have Austin convinced to try out the cowboy costume and William will fit into the lizard/dinosaur/dragon (depending on who you ask) costume…thanks, Lisa for letting us borrow them.
We are looking forward to a fun Halloween night!! I hope my kids feel safe from scary people lurking behind dark trees since our subdivision is so new that none of the trees can cast shadows…yet.
We are looking forward to a fun Halloween night!! I hope my kids feel safe from scary people lurking behind dark trees since our subdivision is so new that none of the trees can cast shadows…yet.
3 comments:
I, also, was so scared of that great big tree and it's dark forbidding shadow. I would walk in the street and around to the driveway to avoid the shadow that had bad things or bad people that may or may not be there. They have lamps on my street. They then had the nerve to plant a tree right by the one at my house. I said to my scared self that if it starts to cast a scary shadow, that tree will be comming down. That's funny... we also have no large trees here to scare my kids.
I'm intrigued! You will have to post a picture of the cactus costume. I told Cameron about it and he laughed and said next year he wants to be a rock. That will be pretty easy... gray sweats... of course he will have to tell everyone what he is. :)
Lisa-I am glad I am not the only scaredy-cat in the family!!
Melody-I will get the cactus up for you. It is pretty funny, but he loves it, so who cares?!?
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