Trick-Or-Treat

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. As a child I would get so excited for the occasion. But it wasn’t really for the candy; for me, it was always about the costume.

Every year my mom sewed our Halloween costumes. And they were the most creative of the bunch—though sometimes, a bit too outside the box. There was the time in second grade my twin sister and I dressed as Laurel and Hardy despite being in two different classrooms and people thinking each of us were Charlie Chaplin. We didn’t know who Laurel and Hardy were, and neither did the other kids or even our teachers. That’s a costume fail.

Any given Halloween one, of the four of us kids could be a California raisin fashioned out of black garbage bags, a Rubik’s cube assembled from a perfectly square cardboard box, a bunch of grapes made out of purple balloons attached to a leotard, or a daisy with poster board acting as petals and my sister’s face poking out of the center.

Two of my favorite costumes were when the four of us went as a collective group—a caterpillar made from a green bedsheet in height order with me taking the tail and my older sister (who happened to be taller than my older brother at the time) having the head duty. It was a cumbersome outfit, all of us walking in a straight line all night long, but we got a lot of comments about how we were the best costume anyone had seen.

My other favorite—and the story most often told about me within my family—is the infamous mouse costume. When I was about three, my mother made this amazing mouse outfit out of gray sweatsuit material complete with a little pink tummy and an awesome hood with tiny rodent ears. I wore that thing for weeks leading up to Halloween. I loved it so much, and if memory serves, I even slept in it.

In all my excitement though, I managed to make myself sick when October 31 rolled around (it didn’t stop me from dressing up and posing for photos). I had to stay back with my mom while she passed out candy to all the revelers, my dad took my brother and sisters trick-or-treating, and my twin sister carried around an extra plastic pumpkin bucket to collect candy for me.

And it’s still sort of like that—me, sick from excitement on big occasions. Do you know what you’re dressing up as for Halloween this year? I’m betting that Honey Boo Boo costumes will be in full force. Bleh.

For creative inspiration, check out these adorable artsy kiddo costumes … Frida’s my favorite. Actually, the entire homemade costume series on ohhappyday.com is fantastic.