Halloween Costumes

At some point as I grew up, I took up sewing. I was never great at it; I can be impatient at times and that is a skill that does not go hand in hand with sewing. But it was fun and I made several cosplay costumes and a few Halloween outfits. (It counts as a Halloween costume if I don't have to spend the night explaining, "I'm this person from this video game and this outfit is from when....")

I'm 100% positive my inspiration came from my mom, who routinely would sew together 6 Halloween costumes each year; one for me, one for each of my siblings, and one for my dad. It was like magic. You could tell her what you wanted to be and then for Halloween, there would be a costume.

Only now, as I continue to work on my own costumes, do I ever sit down and wonder how the heck she did it. She must have had special days with extra hours, because just making mine and my husband's costumes is an exercise in angst for me.

For example, despite being very careful to cut the pattern pieces out slowly and evenly and to make all of the correct markings, I still managed to almost sew the pockets on a full two inches different from each other.

But I remember Halloweens from years past, where my mom just made things work. I'm not even kidding. One year, the "it" costume was to dress up as an M&M. Do you guys remember this year? I think I was in middle school and that the majority of my siblings were in elementary school and M&M costumes were just everywhere that year.

When inevitably asked to have M&M costumes, my mom scoffed at the idea of spending $50-some dollars on a Halloween costume and instead made them herself. I wish I had a picture to show, with my two brothers and youngest sister all in their matching costumes that were only about a hundred times cooler than the store bought ones. (I might be a little biased. But only by like fifty times. The other fifty are totally unbiased times).

I'm really hoping that by the time I have kids, this "just making it work like magic" thing will start working for me, because at this point, the only way I would react if my kids came up to me demanding to be M&Ms would be to start trying to persuade them that they really wanted to be ghosts with last year's old sheets instead. Right?

(Also, if anyone is curious - my goal from last week was to try to include art work with each post for the week. That failed miserably.)