Listen all you crafty mamas out there...it's time to stop. Stop whipping up these elaborate outfits with your nifty little crafty magic fingers. No more homemade ladybugs, creatures from Finding Nemo (saw this one at Ethan's daycare yesterday...the kid had a light bulb coming off an antannae on his head...his parents are engineers I think), made from scratch dinosaurs or pretty princesses. There's a reason big companies manufacture Halloween costumes - so we will buy them! And right now, with the economy the way it is, we must buy buy buy our costumes! Heed the call, ladies!
OK. Yes, I admit. None of this really has anything to do with the economy. It's just that, well, I could not make a Halloween costume if my life depended on it. Crafty I am not (although i can talk like Yoda).
Every year, as Halloween looms closer, my stress level rises. I don't want to spend money on a costume, but I know that trying to make costumes is just not in the cards due to lack of time and artistic ability. Ethan's first Halloween I ran out and bought a kangaroo costume last minute and even that didn't go so well. Everyone thought he was a bear. Come on people! I thought. Do bears carry their young in pockets on their bellies??
This year, my husband took the lead and tried to save us some money by being crafty. He pulled out some old white sheets, cut them down and attempted to make some eye holes so the children could be ghosts. It was a decent attempt ( and he's quite sensitive about it so I won't go on about the lopsided eyeholes and the way the boys nearly tripped over themselves due to the length of the sheets).
But when it came time to dress up for their school's halloween party yesterday, nobody wanted to be a ghost. What then would we do? I pulled out the old costumes - the fireman, the turtle donated by our neighbors next door, the construction worker. But they refused.
"Mama, Justin's going to be a transformer," Ethan said.
I wasn't sure why he was telling me this. We were running late and I started to lose patience snapping "You have all these great costumes...now pick one out! There are chcildren all over the world who are starving for Halloween costumes!"
Ethan looked at me blankly. Then he started to cry, which made me feel awful. Which made me, during my lunch break, get crafty with my credit card, scooping up a Buzz LightYear costume and a Super Why costume at Toys R Us for Ethan to choose from.
So again, as fate will have it, there will be no homemade costumes for our family this year. And I will rave about your homemade this or that, "How did you do that? WOW"...swallowing my envy along with too many piece of candy.
Happy Halloween everyone.
