This post was most recently updated on May 18th, 2015
I don’t like to be scared. I don’t like scary movies, scary situations – I even read books with a semi-scary plot in the day time only. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that I don’t like to dress my kids in scary or gory costumes for Halloween. Most often, I let them have the final say on their costume ideas and I just do the grunt work of making their vision reality. However, this year was special as it’s the last year my oldest child would be trick or treating and the first year my youngest would be doing so. In honor of this auspicious and fleeting moment in history, I decided to take costume design into my own hands and leave the “kid input” factor out completely.
This caused some minor disgruntlement in my household. Both my daughters had already decided (between themselves, of course) to be princesses with magical powers, wings, copious amounts of glitter and high heels. My just-turned-13-year-old son decided he wasn’t going trick or treating because he’s too old. Or so he said. I think the real reason was that he has braces on his teeth this year and he didn’t think he would be able to eat any of the candy he collected. And my just-turned-one-year-old son is only beginning to walk without calamity so his costume would have to be something that would still look adorable if he was being held or strolled down the street. I knew I wanted a theme, but what would it be?
First, I considered The Hobbit – I love the book and so do the kids, plus … the costume possibilities are insanely awesome! But due to budget cutbacks that quickly became a pipe dream – do you have any idea how expensive all that faux fur, pleather and those weapons are?? My husband suggested his favorite band, KISS, which was extremely helpful because locating platform dragon boots for a toddler is easy peasey nice and cheesey. And getting the 13 year old to dress in pleather pants, don fake chest hair AND Kabuki makeup is a breeze. The girls would have been thrilled, but I felt, in the interest of family harmony, we should find another idea. Considering that my son didn’t even want to go in the first place, I knew I had to come up with something that would require the absolute least amount of costuming (at least for him) and not be embarrassing should he encounter any of his peers.
Eventually, I came up with (what I thought) was a great concept. A hunter (requiring my son to dress in his regular clothes with only the addition of an orange vest) and his faithful hunting dog (my baby in a puppy costume) in pursuit of two woodland deer (the Sissies). Coming up with the hunter’s costume was no problem – my lovely neighbor and friend, Carolyn, has a lot of hunting gear that she was happy to share. And the puppy costume was pretty simple – brown sweat pants and hoodie, colored polar fleece and some fabric glue would provide spots, ears and a tail. Plus, he’s adorable in anything so his actual costume didn’t have to be that impressive, right? But for the deer … well, I thought about the girls and knew they would balk at a costume that didn’t look girly and cute, so that ruled out any kind of animal suit. In the end, I used nude-colored leotards and polar fleece to fashion some very sassy deer suits. I couldn’t talk either of them into brown noses, but I was able to bribe the 10 year old with some makeup and the 6 year old with her fake dance hair. I think they turned out pretty good.
I was especially proud of myself for figuring a way to make the tails both accurate and comfortable … yay for elastic!
Though it was only for one night, I’m content with the way everything turned out. They got a lot of candy, I got a lot of compliments on their costumes, they were happy (or at least tolerant) with they way they looked and even Lunky got some candy he can eat. Happy Halloween!
