Halloween Costumes I Have Known & Loved

The race to prepare for Halloween began October 1. My siblings and I had a matter of weeks to come up with and put our costumes together -- my parents were strong believers in "making our own," so we didn't run off to the store and grab the nearest princess or superhero costume. Preparing for trick-or-treating was a painstaking and creative process. If our costume was more clothing-based, we spent afternoons rifling through our dress ups bin and our parents' closet, looking for pieces that would add to the realistic quality of our get ups. If it was materials-based, my parents would provide us with the necessary cardboard boxes, trashbags, or egg cartons and help us execute our masterpieces.

Over the years, I was a reporter (dad's trench coat), a princess (in the pic above -- my mom altered her gorgeous lace dress to it fit me), a die (yes, my sister Erin and I were a pair of dice. Picture skinny legs and arms sticking out of square cardboard boxes fighting to get out the front door... it was awesome), and, in turn, The Purple Crayon (my sister's sporting it in the above picture. Mom made it for my older brother, and growing up, it was a rite of passage to be the Purple Crayon for Halloween. Every single one of my siblings has worn it, and my mom still has it waiting for the grandchildren to grow into it.).

As I got older, my modus operandi year after year was to come up with an initial plan at the beginning of the month, and then at about 5 o'clock on October 31, change the whole thing. My ever-patient mother helped me come up with last minute costumes many times (the trench-coated reporter was one such costume... another involved a kimono and some eyeliner). One year, I wish I had changed my idea last minute. I was 11 or 12 and getting cocky, so I came up with what I thought was a fool-proof plan to throw on an easy costume in order to get the maximum amount of candy with the least amount of effort. I got one of those goofy pumpkin leaf bags that people use for outdoor decoration, cut leg and arm holes, stuffed it with newspaper so I'd look like a jack-o'lantern, and trussed it up around my shoulders and neck with tape or something. I hadn't thought through the fact that as I gallivanted from house to house, the leg holes on my second-rate costume would begin to widen. I slowly lost newspaper throughout the evening like an incontinent child, and by the end of the night, I looked like a jack-o'lantern after it had sat on the front porch weeks past Halloween. That was the beginning of the end of trick-or-treating for me.

I love that my parents saw Halloween as an opportunity for us to build and create. My siblings and I collectively have worn some incredible homemade designs (robots, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, bags of jelly beans...), and I think we anticipated trick-or-treating all the more as we plugged away at making our costumes here and there, day after day after school. I hope to give Violet the same kinds of Octobers as she grows up: creative, anticipatory, and full of memories.