Another Halloween has come and gone and for me it was the most enlightening.
This was the first Halloween my son has had a more active social life than me. We have celebrated all three of my son’s Halloweens very differently. The first Halloween my son was five days old and we were in NICU. The second Halloween I wanted to make it better than the last so my husband and I took my son to a Halloween store and got him a overpriced, oversized wolf costume. Then came this Halloween…
My son is only two so he didn’t know what he wanted to be for Halloween. My first thought was he could be the same wolf as last year. I figured we could get one more year out of the overpriced wolf costume. This year it fit perfectly and I could justify the crazy price I had paid last year. But my husband was adamant no one wears the same costume two years in a row. This seemed strange to me because I remember when I was a kid, back in the 80’s, my mom had a big trunk with five or six different costumes and my siblings and I took turns rotating through them. We were a witch, clown, lumberjack or a pirate every year til we were old enough we either stopped trick or treating or started buying our own costumes. I grew up in a rural Alberta farming community so unless the local drug store brought in new Halloween items there weren’t many options and in the end my costume would probably be covered by a snowsuit anyway.
I told my husband I would alter the current wolf costume a bit so it didn’t look exactly the same as last year. My husband just looked at me and laughed, I can’t even sew a button onto pants or a shirt. When a piece of clothing enters my house it had better be built to last because I can’t fix it if something happens. But I’m a mom now so I guess I assumed that when I became a mom I must have also been given the skills needed to create amazing Halloween costumes for my son.
I did not want to touch the body or mask of the original costume because as I stated before it was overpriced and I couldn’t bring myself to cut it up. So I went to a local thrift store and purchased a cheap wolf cloak designed for an older teen. I could cut up a two dollar cloak and turn it into pants and sleeves to accent the current costume. After getting home I realized I have nothing required to sew with but I did have a hot glue gun. I decided a hot glue gun would be faster than a needle and thread and a lot easier for me. I cut the wolf cloak apart, took all the fur off and started gluing. It took close to seven hours, approximately 600 glue sticks and more burns than I care to admit but I had pants, furry feet, gloves and a t-shirt covered in fur for my son as well as a nasty blister on my trigger finger. I was pretty proud of myself because for a Halloween costume it turned out pretty good. I was excited to show my son all my hard work.
The next day I pulled out his cool new costume and he started screaming. I guess the new fur I had used was terrifying and my son wouldn’t go anywhere near it. So after all my hard work my son is still wore the same wolf costume as last year and my thoughts of becoming the Pintrest Mom have faded away. I’ve since come to the conclusion that purchasing the easy, overpriced, ready to wear costume is a much better option.
Christina Komives is sales manager for The Pipestone Flyer and writes a column for the newspaper.