Meditations on a Life of Organized Chaos: A Halloween Miracle

I'm a huge fan of Halloween ... as an observer. I love the things that go with a good Halloween holiday ... carving pumpkins, trick or treating, hot chocolate, hay rides, fun decorations ... stuff like that. I love to see the fun things that everyone does for this holiday. More than any other holiday, I feel like Halloween just brings out the creativity in everyone. It's fun.

To watch.

Unfortunately, as a Halloween participant I am a big, fat failure. Every year around July I have grand plans about how THIS YEAR will be the year that my family is ready for Halloween. We'll have matching costumes that I've constructed from scratch.

...like this family.

Or maybe I won't be so bold to plan something for the whole family. We don't have to all match. Maybe instead I'll just plan on making a super cute costume for each of the kids.

...like this.

...or this. Adorable!

It doesn't have to be something super intricate or expensive. I just want for it to be cute or clever or memorable. Something. Those are my July plans.

But every single year without fail the day arrives for the annual church trunk or treat activity (the first lead up to Halloween that requires a costume), and I have done nothing at all. A typical lead in to the trunk or treat is a day full of frantic scrambling to come up with something, anything, for the kids to wear. I can't begin to describe how much this stresses me out. A few years ago I wrote a blog post about how that day had fallen apart for me. You can check it out HERE. Most days aren't quite as bad as that one, but the stress level is comparable at least.

There was a time ... a short time in my life ... when I was reasonably good at coming up with sweet Halloween costumes. Okay, it was actually only one year. It was for Laney's first Halloween. I was staying home with her, and she was my only child, so I had tons of time on my hands ... at least tons of time compared to now. I was a new mom and super ambitious with grand plans to make every single holiday absolutely perfect for my children. I spent a few weeks putting together this costume:

I wish I could say that Laney loved this cute costume, but obviously...
it wasn't her favorite.

The legs were too long and the torso was too short, but I thought Laney was ADORABLE in it. But it turns out that that was it when it came to any Halloween magic coming out of my hands for my children. My creativity and foresight were shot, and every Blau child from that day forward was going to have to make do with something cobbed together at the last minute.

Some moms out there ... it seems like most moms out there ... are amazingly creative and can grab a ball of yarn and some construction paper and make these amazing costumes in very little time at all. I am not one of those moms. Herman is always so laid back about the whole thing. He loves to go and grab all the discount costume supplies right after Halloween, so we have this huge bucket of miscellaneous odds and ends that can be used for costume. Herman always encourages me to just grab the trunk along with maybe a roll of duct tape and go about creating a costume masterpiece, but it is a little hard for me to look at all of them and come up with fun ideas that the kids will love. Luckily, I don't think that any of my kids are that worried about having amazing costumes, so that is a tender mercy in my life. They never complain about having to wear a Stitch costume ten years after the movie was released and at least five years after anyone even knows who the characters are any more or being a fairy princess for the fourth year in a row.

Life gets a little easier when the kids are old enough to plan their own costumes. They have the vision to make it exactly what they want it to be, and they aren't super particular about it being perfect. This year Spencer has been binge watching Bob Ross painting shows. Who'd have guessed that Spencer would develop a passion for painting? Unbelievable. He was able to throw together a costume in about 15 minutes. The only snag in his plan was that Walmart only carried dark black fro wigs. If we'd thought a little ahead of time I'm sure we could have found the right color on amazon. Oh well. The costume still worked.

Dallin as a Seahawks fan,
Nathan as a hot dog,
Spencer as Bob Ross,
and Peter as Mr. Rogers.

Katie had a bit more extravagant plans for her costume. She has lately fallen in love with Audrey Hepburn movies. She decided that she wanted to dress up like Audrey Hepburn. There are so many great choices she could have made since so many Audrey Hepburn characters have such memorable costumes. Katie decided to go with Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's. There was no way that we had any of the great costumes from that movie lying around the house, so Katie was going to have to order them. Luckily, there is actually a Holly Golightly costume floating around the internet, and Katie was able to get it relatively cheaply. She used her own money to purchase exactly what she wanted, and it turned out really nice. She spent half the week doing and redoing her hair until she could get it to look exactly like Audrey Hepburn's. I thought that she looked gorgeous.

Too bad no one knew who she was.

Minsy was my easy child to get in costume. Just like last year, she wanted to be a princess. We must have a thousand princess costumes in our trunk, and since Minsy hardly grows at all, we could be using those forever. Easy peasy.

I don't know how I got through the night
without a good picture of Minsy, but
here is a very fuzzy picture of her
in her princess outfit.

Things got a bit crazy this year with Hyrum and JoJo. They always seem to get the short end of the stick when it comes to costumes. They never really get to be what they want. We always have just thrown something together. Hyrum is so sweet. In response to my apologies for making him wear such lame costumes he always gives me a big hug and says, "That's okay, Mom. I really, really love this costume." Except Hyrum has this special look he gets on his face when he is really disappointed but is trying super hard to be loving and supportive. I know that look, and it makes me a bit sad to see it on his face. This year I wanted to do better for JoJo and him.

... so why couldn't they decide to be a pirate or a baseball player, or a zombie? Something simple and easy. No. It turns out that Hyrum wanted to go as Link. My first thought when he said this was, "Hooray!" All I would need was a white t-shirt and a handful of hair grease. Perfect. Easy. ... Wrong. Turns out I wasn't thinking of the right Link. I was thinking of this guy:

But Hyrum was thinking of this guy:

I guess this Link is all the rage with the pre-teen set. He's from Legend of Zelda. A little more complicated than the Link from Hairspray. JoJo wanted to be Dark Link:

Basically the same guy, only all in black with creepy red eyes.

Since I waited until the day of the trunk or treat to get these costumes together I was going to have to make something myself. I couldn't just grab the amazon costume and have it shipped. What was I going to do? No problem. While I was standing in the craft/fabric section there at Walmart I just grabbed my phone and googled "easy diy Link costume." Surely there was some super talented parent out there who had thrown one of these together at the last minute. I would just use their experience to lessen my stress.

The first article that came up was from Pinterest. This parent had created a lovely costume for their much loved child, explaining that it was a piece of cake to create it. Perfect. And then I pulled up the instructions. According to this parent it took "no time at all," only six full weekends of intricate woodwork and sewing projects and then a few hours to assemble the thing. Really? "No time at all??????" Kudos to them for thinking six full weekends was no time at all in their schedule, but I actually have other things to do in my life. Obviously, that wasn't going to work. I looked and looked for suggestions, but it seems as if the Legend of Zelda costume crowd take their Link costume responsibilities very seriously. It has to be accurate or you might as well just call your costume Legolas. Curses to you, Pinterest!

I was on my own. I was alone in Walmart at 10 am, and I had to find some way to create a magical Link and Dark Link costume in around four hours. Adding to the time constraints was the very real fact that I am not creative at all, at least when it comes to costumes. This was going to be a disaster. But I pushed forward. Hyrum, once again, was super sweet. He kept telling me not to worry. He only needed a bunch of aluminum foil and some green paint, and he would make it work. He is such a good boy to me. There was no way that we could use foil and paint and make it look like Link, but extra points to him for being willing to give it a try.

I ended up grabbing some over-sized t-shirts from the men's section. With some creative cutting I could make them into tunics, and with a little more creativity and basic sewing I could make some sort of elfish looking hat. Adding some belts and play swords and shields we had at home, we could make something that somewhat resembled these two characters. Maybe. Hopefully.

I had to come home and de-stress for a little while before jumping into costume construction. Even shopping at Walmart for costume components is enough to put me over the edge, sadly. But after a good half hour of relaxation I was ready to roll. ... and it was super easy. It didn't end up being the type of authentic that would please die-hard Link fans, I'm sure. But it turned out okay. Hyrum and JoJo were thrilled, and ultimately that was the most important thing. I thought they at least looked like we'd spent more than ten minutes throwing something together.

What do you think?

The funny thing is that when I sent Laney a picture of them, she sent a text back saying, "Actual costumes??" It's a Halloween miracle.

I can't guarantee that this will happen again. I am sure that next year we will be scrambling to assemble something. I'm sure that Minsy will be a princess ... again. But it'll be okay. I'm super grateful that I have kids who are patient with me and don't have huge expectations when it comes to Halloween. It always ends up being a fun season for all of us. I just need to relax about it, I'm sure. Next year maybe I'll put Herman in charge of the costumes. If so, you can expect a matching family of zombies or witches or something that will utilize all that great costume stuff he's collected over the years. Maybe then I can move my stress to a different area and figure out how to actually decorate our van nicely for the trunk or treat.