After my post about Reese’s Halloween I got a few requests to see my costume-making attempts. It was a brief period, a decade ago, I lost my mind and tried to craft.

The first Halloween costumes weren’t that bad. Taryn and John were Adam and Eve. I hot glued some leaves onto long john pajamas.

Here’s Eve:

And Adam:

I don’t keep the kids in cages on Halloween anymore.

The next year was the kids were miserable. They were Peas & Carrots. Get it?

Neither did anyone else.

The next year we added my a friend to the mix and dressed them as the Three Stooges. I thought it was pretty awesome. The kids did not, mostly because they had never heard of the Stooges.

That was the end of costume-making for me. From then on it was store-bought costumes only. I’m not ashamed of it. Besides, tonight we trick-or-treated with Megan and Brooke. They made costumes. Megan made hers out of grocery bags and duct tape. Last night. I could have the rest of my life and I couldn’t make something like this.

I failed at those bag costumes last year, she showed me up then too. Click here to see it.

Brooke, who is well-known for her crafting skills, made costumes for her whole family.

It’s like they’re trying to make me feel bad about myself.

It worked. I’ll never make a costume again. Ever.

I like Halloween. I like getting the kids all dressed up in silly costumes. I like going out trick-or-treating and seeing the neighborhood decorated and kids prancing around the block. I’ve always liked it. I remember wearing plastic costumes with hard plastic masks held together by an elastic band. We walked around our small town with a pillowcase asking for candy and trying to guess who my friends were underneath their plastic masks.

I loved it.

Taryn and John indulged my lack of craft skills for years, faithfully wearing my lame attempts at cool costumes. Once I dressed him as peas and her as carrots. (Get It?) Once they were Adam & Eve, complete with a fake apple tied around her wrist. They won the contest at the mall that year. Eventually they wanted to buy costumes at the store, like the normal kids. I got them to be Peter Pan & Tinkerbell and Power Rangers before they decided they did not need to be dressed as a pair.

Reese and Jackson never suffered the indignity of my homemade costumes. Last year, at only age 5, I stopped insisting they even match.

That’s what having four kids does to you. You give up faster.

Still, I love Halloween. It’s all about fun for me. Costumes, candy, sneaking all the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Sweet Tarts out of their bags after they go to bed. Our non-traditional-to-the-point-of-almost-non-religious church has a slightly different take on Halloween. Each year, around this time they use the Sunday service as a time for remembrance of the people we’ve lost. It’s not all sad, but there are always a few tears. I’m ok with it.

I’m ok with most things the church does.

However, after the service Reese showed me a stick he had decorated with strips of fabric. He told me they had talked about remembering people who had died in their class that morning. Reese and Jackson aren’t very aware of the whole life and death thing yet. No one close to us has died recently, so we’ve not had to discuss it. But, I’m a slacker parent so I’m ok with someone else taking on that task.

Reese didn’t get the point though.

He told me they had to tie a piece of fabric on the stick and say the name of someone who had died.

He said, “I told them our cat died. I know we just gave her away. But that was a long time ago so she’s probably dead now, so it’s ok.”

I think we’re going to need to revisit this topic. I wonder if those Sunday school teachers make house calls.