FYI: I'm a Halloween Slacker

Happy Halloween everyone! We have been busy with lots of Halloween fun: school parades, pumpkin patch visits, neighborhood parties, a straw bale maze, and a hayride. Seems Halloween gets bigger and bigger every year. It is certainly more fun for me as my children grow older, and I love doing seasonal things with them, but in general I haven't been a huge fan of the holiday. This past Saturday, I was talking with some friends at a great kids party they throw every Halloween and confessed, "I am a Halloween slacker." They didn't believe me, and most who know my love of sewing and other creative things, don't believe it, but I promise you, it is true.

I guess it should be different, but I have never sewn a Halloween costume for my girls. I love seeing the amazing things other moms and dads do for their children, but I just can't seem to make the investment of time and money, and more importantly the trade-off of the costume instead of another project.

I thought I would turn the corner last year and make a beautiful Little Red Riding Hood costume for Audrey. I couldn't wait to make a red wool and satin lined hooded cape and dirndl style dress, and even bought a pattern, but alas, Audrey wanted to be Count Dracula. "The Count?" I asked, hoping for the Sesame Street version, and thankfully the two were a bit mixed in her mind, but even then, I was not inspired. I would just rather sew a beautiful dress or work on styling a birthday party!

I did end up making a black and purple satin lined cape for Audrey's "Count" costume last year. I'll have to blog about it sometime, because it's fun. But I lost steam after that. I should have appliqued numbers on the cape but I didn't. Just found some plastic fang teeth, put her in some black leggings and a white t-shirt and called it good.

At the party Saturday, one of my friends saw Audrey in her purchased pirate costume (looking pretty cute I thought) and said, "oh, that is just wrong!" I am still laughing at her honesty. You should see the amazing costumes she makes for her children. This year they were gnomes and toadstools. She is right of course. I could make Audrey a pirate costume, which would be much nicer and much cuter, but then I wouldn't have had time to make Tess the cute criss-cross smock. Or maybe I would have had to purchase the baby shower invitations instead of making them. Anyway, I think I've stated my position on this thing.

I did sew a white feather boa to a black witch's hat I bought at the grocery store and donned it with my (purchased) black and white spider skirt to get in the spirit. Our house is decorated, although a bit sparingly compared to some. And I love how excited Audrey and Scarlett have been to wear their costumes, even though they're off-the-shelf. They don't know the difference. Maybe when they do, and they're really excited about something, I will put in the late hours to sew some fabulous Halloween costumes. It would be fun to develop some costume concepts with them.

I did get an unexpected boost in celebrating the holiday with this flower arrangement. Now this is something I could get into--holiday arrangements. How fun. Especially if I had access to flowers as nice as these. My neighbor had a bunch of flowers leftover from doing a weeding, and about a week later they were still looking beautiful. So I accepted the offer to take some out of her garage, carried one of my favorite vases over, and came away with this! Isn't it fun?! Orange gladiolas and roses, white roses, chartreuse bells of Ireland (one of my favorite flowers!) and some orange blooms that look like a relative of the billy ball...no idea. The glads were a bit droopy so I thought I'd try them this way, arcing over the lip of the vase. It was so much fun playing around with the arrangement, and even more fun to place it on my orange Halloween tablecloth.

Well friends, maybe next year I'll pick up the speed with some handmade costumes for Halloween, but this year, I'm going to enjoy trick-or-treating with our girls, tuck them into bed on their sugar highs, and then get back to work on my "instead of" project: a baby blanket I've almost finished.

My "FYI" posts share news or a perspective about something that's been on my mind. You can read them all here.