Flashback Friday: “Halloween Costumes- A New Look”

* originally this was posted on October 3, 2009, found here on the old blog!

These days people are willing to pay obscene amounts of money for crappy Halloween costumes with licensed cartoon characters on them and it is so sad! I am not against store bought costumes as a whole, don’t get me wrong- I just don’t like plastic made-in-China costumes that cost upwards of $40! I get my kids their costumes the day after Halloween and try not to let them pick characters from TV. Instead of being a Transformer why not just be a robot, instead of Tinkerbell let’s make you a woodland fairy….

When I was little my family was pretty poor… I mean really poor. But at least my mom tried to make it appear as if we were ok by coming up with really cool costumes for us. One year I went as a Q-tip, unused of course! Black tights and leotard (easy since I was a dancer), with tons of cotton balls on my feet and on an old hat we found. Another year it was leftovers, complete with the Olive Garden logo!

I love looking at all the ideas at Martha Stewart for costume ideas that are really easy to do and don’t involve sewing. Here are some of my faves and here is the link!!!

What are your kids going to be for Halloween? Do you have rules about what they can and can’t be?

When Craftiness Goes Wrong

Do you ever get a picture in your head of something and then when you try to make it a reality it goes woefully wrong? Usually it isn’t a problem for me… I can see things, take them apart in my head, and then recreate them pretty easily. However, there are times….

Remember this project?

Well, I decided to do something similar, but with a fall twist since I am replacing all of our decorations. In my head I imagined using a whole bunch of brown crayons on a tall canvas, melting them like the other project but letting the drips look like branches. Then I would glue faux leaves onto the branches and viola! a wonderful fall tree scene! But… what I didn’t count on was the wax not behaving and splattering all over the canvas… leaving my “trunk” looking more like, well smeared poo!

I just couldn’t move forward with the project with the poo-ish looking trunk! So see, even the most craftiest people can make crap- literally! Well, back to the drawing board… =)