Halloween Costumes

This time of year when I see all the ads for Halloween costumes, I remember back to my own childhood when we wore those rigid plastic masks with the rubber band across the back, two eye holes, and a mouth hole.  We're lucky we all didn't suffocate.  We had the obligatory black cat, Mickey Mouse, and a devil mask.  We would just rotate them each year, so every three years we were the same thing.

However.

Later on when we were more middle school age, we had the BEST costumes because Mom was crazy brilliant and creative.  If you gave her some chicken wire, paper mache, twine string, and paint...I'm pretty sure she could build the Taj Mahal for you.

Oh my gosh the costumes she made!  One of them was for herself.  It was an outhouse, and she wore it over her shoulders (suspended by twine string) so that when she opened the doors of the outhouse, it looked like someone was sitting in there.  She won first place in the Viola Halloween costume contest that year.

She also made, at various points in time, a slice of cheddar cheese, a witch's hat, a headless horseman, and a set of dice.  Every one of them made out of chicken wire and papier mache and built with twine string to wear over the shoulders.

This is me under the hat at our church Halloween party

This is Baby Brother as the Headless Horseman at the church Halloween party

If she had been in Hollywood or on Broadway, she could have made a fortune as a set designer and/or costume designer because she could not only come up with the brilliant ideas, she could create them also.  She could sew, she could swing a hammer, and she could run a drill.  The only thing she couldn't build with was metal and welding, and she had to go to Big Brother for help there.

One year she came up with the idea for a spook house for our church Halloween party.  She wrote the script because it was going to be a guided tour.  She sewed the costumes and pulled a Scarlett O'Hara thing and made monk's robes for the guides out of our old living room curtains.

She had dry ice, she had props, she supervised the set up of everything.  She had it all timed down to the millisecond because she had sound effects that she had recorded earlier that were triggered by motion.  It was freaking awesome! She made an alligator head out of a pair of salad tongs, some baling wire, and heavy duty plastic garbage bags.

She made a knight's armor out of I don't remember what, but I do remember that the boots were a pair of plain old rubber knee-high barn boots painted silver.

It wasn't just Halloween where her creative talents shined.  She was in charge of our church's Christmas play for several years, and she made most of the costumes for that as well.  Good old chicken wire, etc., and gold paint with some twine string and we had a set of four-foot angel wings.  The crowns for the three kings--cardboard, baling wire, and gold paint.  Mary's head scarf that would never stay on anyone's head no matter how many bobby pins were used--yep, she fixed that by wrapping the fabric several times around a wire hanger bent in a half circle that acted as a headband.  That thing would actually give you a headache if you wore it long enough.  Our shepherd's had beards, canes, and those wool vest things.

I wish I had a fraction of her talent.  The best I can do is throw on one of Captain's flannel shirts and a pair of jeans and say I'm a lumber Jack.  Or would that be a lumber Jill?  Either way, no one that I know is in a class with my mom for making costumes!

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