Ghosts of Halloweens Past

What do wooden dowels, a cardboard box and safety pins have in common? They are all key materials composing each of the boys' Halloween costumes this year. If you haven't guessed yet, we are those people that actually enjoy spending the whole month of October brainstorming costume ideas, searching the internet for unique concepts and then trying to pull off whatever we've come up with. It's my fall obsession hobby.

We weren't always like this. In the beginning, we bought Jacob a costume just like the majority of normal people out there. Jacob has been a puppy, Batman, Garfield and a pirate, and I, or my mother, bought all of these costumes. And for Benjy's first Halloween, I bought him a darling monkey costume. But that was all before Jacob got an opinion.

Two years ago Jacob announced that he wanted to be a Fraggle for Halloween. For those of you who grew up in the 1980s like Chris and I, you'll know who Gobo Fraggle is and how awesome he is, and you'll understand instantly why Jacob would want to dress up like him. You see, one of Jacob's first DVDs was Fraggle Rock, and he had ditched Elmo, Barney and Mickey to watch our favorite characters from childhood. The only problem with Jacob's Halloween demand was that a Fraggle costume hadn't been sold since 1987, and no amount of Ebay searches could bring me any closer to making his dream come true.

So, not wanting to disappoint a four-year-old Jacob, I decided that I would make him a Gobo Fraggle costume. However, after searching for patterns and still coming up empty-handed, I finally realized that (1) I was going to have to improvise a complicated muppet costume, and (2) I really wasn't that great at sewing. So instead, we set about to change Jacob's mind about what exactly was the ultimate Halloween costume. Since I had already gotten it into my head that I was going to make costumes, I began researching more realistic costumes that I could actually make, you know, with boxes and tin foil and things lying around the house. I settled on a robot, which wasn't too far of a stretch of the imagination since Jacob was, at that time, infatuated with robots. In fact, once a week we had to concede to a prayer in robot voice before dinner. If Jacob had had his way, God would have received a robot prayer before dinner every night, but we decided that once a week really was enough. The only thing cooler than a Fraggle or a robot would have been a Robot Fraggle.

In the end, Jacob ended up with a one-of-a-kind, homemade costume that got him tons of attention, which he reveled in. And even though he complained that his costume hurt, he suffered through trick-or-treating as a robot and scored enough candy to leave five children comatose for at least a week.

Before...


After...

I made Benjy a scarecrow which basically consisted of me hand-sewing patches onto his clothes and making him look stuffed with hay. Overall, Halloween 2008 was a great success.


Once you start making homemade costumes, you really can't go back to buying them in the store. (At least, this is the pitch I've given Chris). So last year, I made a Mario costume for Jacob and a Mickey Mouse costume for Benjy. It would have been easier to just buy these, but then half the fun of Halloween would have been lost.


So, despite all the chaos of moving apartments and the preparation for the imminent move to Mexico, I have set about to make Halloween costumes for all three boys, with Chris's help of course. Jacob's challenge to me this year was to make him scary. We'll see if we can pull it off. This year's costumes could be the most uncomfortable yet. I better get a lot of candy. Oh, I mean, the boys. Right. The boys. I want the boys to get a lot of candy for them, not me, to eat.