I pulled out “The Hat” and found it was in good shape.  I think I’ve been wearing this hat since Kelly was 1?  Made with a generic hat, a strip of velvet scrap, and pieces I bought at a craft store. Unfortunately, it’s poorly engineered and even with ribbons, doesn’t balance well; and there’s the problem of not being able to see out from under it.  BUT, that never deters me from wearing it.  It’s sick awesome, and the girls beg me to wear it.  The year they stop asking is the year I’ll know the Great Pumpkin has died. I will cry, fill my belly with Starbursts, and mourn their passing childhoods.

Kelly wanted to wear Sara’s old Ariel costume, and who was I to argue with free?  She asked for the wig and tiara, and I am happy to report she did wear them at school, and managed to walk her FIRST School Costume Parade.  Not a single tear, despite a few costumes I would deem as pretty darn scary.  She held her teacher’s hand tightly, and I was hovering about, as promised.  It was her bravest afternoon of the year, no doubt.  The wig and tiara were discarded by the party, never to arise again.  Oh well…I had a redhead for a moment in time.  Honestly, I prefer her as a blonde Ariel anyway!

Sara asked me a long time ago to turn her into a “Girl Ghost”.  Pink sheet?  No Mommy.  Ruffle on bottom of costume?  No Mommy.  Flowers on the head where a headband would be?  No Mommy.  Eyelashes?  YES.  OK…so white sheet with eyelashes and Halloweenish appliques it is.  She LOVED it.

I drew a template, but when I outlined the eyes with pink thread, they somehow went wonky.  Per Sara’s report, they were way too small, and I agreed.  Is it ever easy to see out of a ghost costume?  Probably not, but it’s a lesson all kids must learn at some point in their costume careers.  It’s on the SAT.  I sewed in the eyelashes, trying to make them look “organically real”, which is to say, I screwed up the first one, and decided to screw up the rest on purpose so they’d match.  Do you know how hard it is to screw up the SAME WAY 10 different times?

The eyebrows I loved.  I don’t know why.  Maybe because it’s a better arch than I have right now.

I just chopped up the bottom, and tried to roll it into a hem.  Ha!  You cannot roll choppy fabric cut in a circle.  Well…you can, but I don’t recommend doing it on October 30th at 9:30 pm, when you’d rather be in bed.  I put in an orange curly stitch at an attempt to find the essence of “girly ghost”.  I even added pink piping to her arm holes. What did she mean by Girl Ghost?  Not overly scary?  She’ll probably tell me the day AFTER Halloween.

So much for avoiding creepy.  Even I was scared of Sara after she put on her winter wear.  Frankenstorm did not bring snow to our city, but the air is far colder than our average Halloween nights.  We can usually manage with a turtleneck and a costume, but this year even I wore my parka and a hat.  The girls put in a good hour: a lifetime record.  They even kept up with their fast-paced neighborhood friends for a while.  Kelly eventually stumbled and fell, and a few houses later saw a scary creature hanging from a tree.  3-2-1…Let the Meltdown Party begin!!  There were gloves flying and me trying to carry her…it wasn’t pretty.  But we made it home in one piece, and she declared “At least I didn’t cry at school. I wish I could have done better.”

Sara told her to practice putting her Trick-Or-Treat bag over her face to block out “scary stuff”.

Not me Baby Girl, not me.  I think you did great!  After all, this time 2 weeks ago she swore she’d neither walk in the parade nor trick-or-treat.  My favorite part of the day was Kelly’s Graph Analysis of the day.  She drew a multi-part mathematical representation of Scary Vs. Not Scary.  According to Kelly Math, she saw “3 Scary Things”, and “1000 Not So Scary Things” (which she acronym’d “NSST”), equaling “1003 Halloween Things”.  There was a quadrant, a 2-sided graph, and a section for Expanded Notation.  She may not love Halloween, but she sure loves Math.  In the end, I think that qualifies as winning.

Happy Halloween Everyone.  Tomorrow we get to wake up in November.  And not to be a party pooper, but really…thank God.