Costumes

Fall is here. There's a crisp feel to the air, the nights are finally cooler (although the days are still HOT) and the leaves are beginning to fall. I really miss Missouri at this time of year. There are no spectacular colors here in South Texas to enjoy....only greens turning to brown and trees becoming bare. I guess our colorful springs make up for the drabness of fall and winter!

With this time of year, thoughts begin to turn to fall festivals, carnivals, county fairs, hay rides, Halloween, and costumes. I've been going through old pictures and came across some Halloween costume pictures of Heather and I decided to post them. We rarely purchased Halloween costumes for her and I always tried to make them, even trying to make them with whatever we could find around the house when possible.

One year she was the tin man. I spray painted a box silver and strapped it on her. I rolled thin cardboard tubes and spray painted them and put around her arms and legs. I cut gray fabric (I think from a pair of her old long-johns) and stapled pieces of that to the pieces of cardboard to create joints so she could bend her arms and legs a little. I found silver make up and put it on her face. This costumed turned out to be a very frustrating one for her! She couldn't sit in the box well and it had to be removed each time she got in and out of the car. She couldn't bend well despite the joints we made. She carried her daddy's oil can in one hand as part of the costume. We took her to the dance studio for a costume contest and parade and she won a prize. She was adorable! But, to retrieve her prize she had to walk up the steps to the platform for all to see her costume. She couldn't get up the steps so her gym coach Mr. Chris picked her up and set her on the platform. At one point during the evening she sat down on the sidelines with all the other kids...and she fell over backward....and could not get herself up! It was so funny and we all laughed so hard. She was not at all impressed with her mom's costume making abilities that year!

Here's my "tin man". Notice the duct tape is beginning to peel off her legs???

Another year I sent her to school as a bag of jelly beans. I recreated the logo from a bag of Jelly Belly and printed it really big and attached it to a large clear plastic bag. I cut a hole for her head and 2 for her arms and we blew up ballons and stuffed inside the bag she wore. She didn't like this costume at all either. At the time I worked for a company in West Plains that colored comic books. Several of the employees there dressed up for Halloween every year. I was one of them. Mostly we dressed up as comic book characters (imagine that!) and I went as Cat Woman one year and Huntress another year. The day Heather dressed as a bag of jelly beans, I dressed up as a scarecrow with some help from my sister Regina. At the end of the work and school day Heather saw my costume and said, "Mommy, can I just wear your costume tonight when we go trick-or-treating?" I told her of course she could and we proceeded to make it work for her. She was a GREAT scarecrow and these are my absolute favorite Halloween pictures:

We of course have a huge assortment of dance costumes in our closets (because I can't bear to part with any of them! Silly, I know, but that's just the way it is.) The following costume was originally a black unitard for a solo tap dance routine Heather performed to "Twilight Zone." Miss Suzi had been watching Circ de Soleil at the time this costume selection was made and approached me about watching Circ with her and painting Heather's costume to look like something from there. I agreed to see what I could do. Because painting the fabric would cause it to no longer be stretchy, Heather had to sit for hours in the costume as it was being painted. There's even a face painted on the back of the hood for the parts of the routine in which Heather's back was to the audience. Miss Suzi even wanted her to put red food coloring in her mouth just prior to each performance so her tongue would be bright red as there's a part of the routine where she had to stick her tongue out. The judges at the competitions LOVED this number!!! Of course we had to keep tissues on hand to wipe the food coloring off her teeth!!! Then green make up had to be purchased for her face. Then it was decided she needed some sparkle on her face. Thank God for eyelash glue!!!!! Works wonders for sticking things to your hair and face!!! This turned out to be the MOST EXPENSIVE COSTUME EVER!!! But didn't she look awesome (if not a bit freaky???)!!! We even had to have a separate pair of tap shoes so they could be painted green!!! All in all, Heather was a pretty good sport for all she endured for this dance!!!!

Heather's next tap costume definitely made up for the expense of the previous one! The wig was borrowed from a fellow dancer. The top was from a costume from Heather's first recital in Texas a few years prior. Of course back then it was not snug and the fringe hung way down to her thighs! The pants no longer fit at all so I took a pair of her jazz pants and cut patches from the old pants and sewed them on the jazz pants. Then because these jazz pants were too short I cut off a strip from the bottom of the old pants legs and attached them to the bottom of the jazz pants. It turned out great and she even won a platinum trophy for a costume contest at the dance competition! Heather is an amazing tapper and I sure miss watching her tap performances!!! (and ballet, and jazz, and lyrical....sigh)