trifecta!

I don't consider myself to be all that creative, and it's a known fact that I was born without the crafty gene that is seemingly so prevalent in my generation.  Considering that, I'm taking a moment to brag a little about my recent accomplishment of finally reaching three for three status on Halloween costume contests.

Let's look back to 2006 for a moment.  JAM and I really liked a costume idea that we saw in a family magazine, and with a few adjustments, I figured out how to make it work.  We personalized the idea of being a road to being the major local route through our city, also named for our city, and I was so stinking proud of his costume as "Greenbelt Road."  Some electrical tape, some velcro pieces, a sweatsuit and some matchbox cars, and voila!  A contest winning costume, custom-designed to our area.  How could the mayor not vote for Greenbelt Road?  (Baby Red was a traffic light, which actually was an original idea.)

Fast forward to 2009, when JAM finally refused to wear a coordinated costume with his siblings.  (They had all submitted to his Star Wars wishes in 2008, but he wasn't ready to move on a year later.)  I was convinced that I could still do it for Red and Pudge, and then came Red's insistence that she wear a mermaid costume that she saw at Target.  Whatever.  I wasn't excited, but then I thought of a simple and completely FREE costume that Pudge could wear and match up with her- fisherman.  I borrowed a pair of rain pants from a friend, put on his matching yellow rain coat, slapped on his rain boots, and tied a couple of pool toys shaped like fish to a stick from the front yard.  A little cheesy, but he was so stinking adorable that he must have wowed the judges on the cuteness factor.  I mean, look at this little guy!

And then there was this year.  Months ago, during a time in which books about the human body were a big hit with Red, she declared her Halloween costume desire with the statement, "I want to be inside of my body."  Um, okaaaaaaay.  Eventually, I worked out the plan to get a pair of fitted pants and a shirt and attach some parts to it.  My search for clothing lead to the purchase of a pair of long johns, but the only ones that I could find in a solid color were for boys, and this detail did not go unnoticed by someone who is so very attached to her girlishness.  Thankfully, she recovered from that issue fairly easily, and we also bought a few pieces of felt.  Earlier this week (nothing like waiting til the last minute, huh?), we laid out all the human body books we had, and used a neat apron that showed some organs that my friend loaned us from the school where I used to work to create the parts that she wanted included.  This consisted of an hour and a half of her wearing the long johns while doing some drawing, and me calling her over every few minutes with comments like, "I've got to measure your heart now," and "Come here so I can pin on your liver, please," and "Where should your kidneys go again?"  When she was all pinned on (with some pieces having to be attached with masking tape, since I ran out of safety pins... I'm not crafty remember?  I had maybe 8 pins and some thread and a needle in my "sewing kit."), I took this picture of the living room workspace disaster.

The following few days were spent sewing these insides on, which amazed me on a couple of fronts:

• That tiny little needle actually hurts when it pierces your skin 7,941 times over the course of three days.
• I had thread that matched the pink lungs, the red heart & kidneys, the green liver & large intestine, and the blue stomach and small intestine.
• But I didn't have any white thread to match the arm and leg bones.  How in the world??

I was happy to announce to Red that I had indeed finished sewing on all her parts, and Pudge's costume got pulled together with a borrowed white dress up coat, pieces from our own pretend doctor kits, a headband, a piece of cardboard and some foil.  Ta da!  I present to you, "The Inside of My Body" and "Doctor Pudge."

And at tonight's city sponsored Halloween costume parade, I completed my trifecta with what was the most elaborate costume that I've put together.  (I have the holes in my fingers to prove it.)  In no way would I declare this to be medically accurate or "to scale," and the handiwork definitely could use a whole lot of improvement.  BUT.  I'm so happy that I was able to take her somewhat odd request and make it work-- she's so frickin happy with this costume.  And I'm ridiculously happy with these memories.

And JAM was happy with his scary ghoul/dead knight/I-just-grabbed-a-bunch-of-scary-looking-stuff-at-Kmart costume, too, so it was a win-win-win situation all around. 


Happy free candy holiday to you all,