Dear Whole Wide World, I Have a Small Request
If you wouldn’t mind, I would be very grateful if we could all agree to postpone Halloween by a week. Even a few extra days would do. Tuesday is just too soon. I can’t locate my salt and pepper shakers at the moment, much less the supplies necessary to concoct five costumes in forty-eight hours. Even if the baby just goes as a Cute Baby, that leaves four costumes I’ll have to whip up from, say, recycled moving boxes and blank newsprint. And yes, I’m well aware that a Google search would probably turn up at least a hundred websites specializing in instructions for constructing Halloween costumes from recycled moving boxes and blank newsprint. It’s just that I doubt Belle, Felicity, and St. Joan of Arc are among the many, many fabulous costumes that can be assembled from cardboard and crumpled paper.
So what do you say? Can we all agree to put a temporary freeze on turning the calendar, and let it be Monday, October 30, for the next four or five days? That would be swell.
xixi says:
dress em in black, stick some socks on em and have em go as static cling!
On October 29, 2006 at 9:30 pm
Mary G says:
Dear Lissa,
You know I’d do it if it was in my power — sounds like you’ll need to solicit help from a bit higher power, though 😉
On October 30, 2006 at 5:12 am
Lisa says:
If you can get Belle, Felicity and St. Joan of Arc to comply . . . Sarah Hutchins dressed her girls as the cutest gifts you ever saw yesterday buy painting cardboard boxes and attaching bows to their heads. . . . now that . . . I think you could pull off!
On October 30, 2006 at 5:38 am
Mary Beth P says:
As usual, I’m copping out and heading to OLD NAVY for a lion costume and Wal-Mart for “something scary” . I think I have an old bluberry hat for the baby to wear (if I can find it in my “perpetual sliding puzle” of a home.)Aaron will have to wear a hand-me down crocodile or Teenage mutant ninja turtle.
On October 30, 2006 at 5:44 am
Andrilie says:
How about opening up the biggest boxes, cutting out dress/armor shapes and painting them? Then adding some of the painted crumpled paper as festoons and sashes? Or–we once made a suit of armor for my son from aluminum baking pans and foil from the grocery store. Add a paper fleur de lis and you’re set!
Happy Halloween!
On October 30, 2006 at 6:52 am
Courtney says:
Okay, this one is really bad…my husband and I went one year with blackend eyes and a big letter P around our necks.
On October 30, 2006 at 10:35 am
Anonymous says:
Okay, this one is really bad…my husband and I went one year with blackend eyes and a big letter P around our necks.
On October 30, 2006 at 10:36 am
Jennifer says:
Old Navy did have some good costumes for only $10 and that was last week.
My children are still too young to follow the calendar so I fairly regularly celebrate feast days whenever I feel like it.
On October 30, 2006 at 10:42 am
Karen E. says:
Just have them go as homeschooled children. That will nicely complement your costume of a homeschooling mom.
🙂
On October 30, 2006 at 11:00 am
Anne V. says:
Are you SURE they celebrate Halloween ON Halloween out there? We went out to T or T last year, our first Halloween here, to find out they did it another night. We are VERY rural so drove the 5 minutes to the closest “village.” Funny, no one out in costume, hmmmm, no lights on. Apparently the communities here decide when THEY want it–even to the hours. We went last night with some friends between 6pm and 8 pm in their neighborhood. Nice. Now we can go to Mass Tuesday night and not have to zip back, feed kids, get costumes on and out the door in about 5 minutes!!!
As strange as it seems to me-I think I might like it 🙂
Happy Halloween to you all!
On October 30, 2006 at 11:41 am
J says:
I went to a hippie/bohemian Halloween fest sponsored by an acrobatic-puppet-stiltwalking-African Druming and chanting theatre group, yesterday. I was very impressed by the hippie/bohemian kids’ costumes. There’s something to be said for turning the kids loose and letting them make their own costumes out of found objects. I saw the most wonderful fish princesses, ballerina cow girls, pizza cutter robots, alley cat pirates and donkey genies.
We don’t seem to have Trick or Treating here either. I guess it’s a bit dangerous for kids in the big city. But we have quite a few haunted houses and harvest/spooky parties and festivals.
On October 30, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Summer Jones says:
The Hutchin girls have a cool costume that would only require a little paint or construction paper. Make Jane, Rose, Beanie, and possibly Wonderboy a big box, and they can be presents! Just a quick suggestion.
On October 30, 2006 at 3:27 pm
coffeemamma says:
I feel your anxiety! We once moved to a new neighbourhood on October 30th! I pulled out some fancy dresses, and the girls were princesses.
On October 30, 2006 at 3:35 pm
Melanie says:
check out familyfun.go.com for last minute ideas…some are very silly and low-maintenance, including attaching a quarter to the back of their shirt (quarterback, get it?) and taping rolls of Smarties candies to their pants (smarty pants, haha). 🙂
On October 30, 2006 at 7:09 pm
anon says:
One year I remember when I was a kid I saw a couple of the neighborhood teens had put some good imagination into their homemade costumes. Their family(actually our whole neighborhood)was “economically challenged.” But they didn’t let that stop them. They took a lidless cardboard box, turned it upside down and cut a hole just big enough for their head to fit through and draped a sheet with a similar hole over it. They then glued salt and pepper shakers, plastic silverware and paper plates to it and went out as “tables”!! It was so simple yet beautifully obvious what they were. Everyone was delighted to see them. That is something you might be able to pull off with all those boxes IF you could just find those salt and pepper shakers! Good luck to you and God bless!
On October 31, 2006 at 9:00 am
Melissa says:
wrap the boxes in gift wrap, slap a bow on their heads and send them out as packages. (arm holes and head holes are helpful 🙂
Happy Halloween!
On October 31, 2006 at 3:42 pm