This Halloween.....

I  wrote the beginning of this post last year at Halloween time.

It is time...for my annual Halloween rant.

Autumn is my favoritist favorite time of the year.  Always has been.  Wood smoke, golden leaves glowing in the sunlight and standing out vibrant against the grey, the crackle crunch of crisp walks in cheek brightening breezes. 

I am not one for the scare, the gore, the darkness of Halloween.  Instead I relish the sweet scarecrows, classic jack o lanterns, adorable animal costumes,  and candy corn crafts. Basically if your 3-5 year old enjoys it, so will I.  Otherwise I will pass.

I miss the old days, where you could roam the streets with a pillow case and come home with bunches of candy.  Actual candy - with the occasional spider ring.  I was never actually allowed to use a pillow case, and my parents kept a fairly close eye on me (something I begrudged as my friends ran  freely about with reckless abandon ) My parents also carefully screened my candy, never allowing gum, popcorn balls, unwrapped candy, apples, and other such things to be consumed. 

Truthfully we live in a nice town.  People leave bowls of candy out on their porches and trust people to take the designated amount - and for the most part it is followed.  This blows my mind after living years in city of pillage and plunder.  But there aren't that many bowls, or that many lights.

Trunk or treats are a nice concept.  Adults can visit instead of being isolated and it creates a safe environment for the children to score their sugar highs.  But they shouldn't be the only option.

I do not want my daughters dressed in cheaply made hooker costumes.  Manufactures need to remember clothing size does not correspond with age, and even if my daughter was that age, she still wouldn't be dressed like that. A rant for another day on why are teen girls now sold as sex...another time.

I do not want my son in a flimsy costume so that when he inevitably brushes against something sharp - twig, branch, porch railing, Halloween decoration, sibling - his much desired costume will be reduced to shreds forcing us to say when people ask what he is " Oh, this is after the apocalypse super dude" or "this is zombie revenge super dude" or "this is post battle with ultimate villian x super dude, where super dude was a little worse for ware but victorious"

I despise that in either gender the costumes are so thin that I have to pray for a miracle on Halloween.  It snows on Halloween people, in more states than one.  This year we almost let Snickers wear his pajama replica of super dude so that he could be warm.

It wouldn't be quite so bad if the prices weren't so high.  $52.99 for a child's Halloween costume? Are you kidding me?  You know that Christmas décor that you have displayed right next to the costume, along with the aisles you are already stocking with cheaply made plastic toys? If I am going to buy any of that, I need to NOT spend $52.99 on a costume that due to previous mentioned events, may not make it past that night.  Even if it did, two of my children grew almost three inches over the summer, and all but one has grown over five inches in the past six months.  No one is going to fit it afterwards.

So next year I will make the costumes.  If I hammer out who is being what in July, and start in August, I should be done by the last hour of trick or treating.

Now it is the afore mentioned August where I should theoretically be sewing like an animated fairy tale mouse in order to get five costumes done before the time that they must be worn.  Yeah, nope.  I have 3 storage tube - large ones where more than one child fits inside when they empty them onto the floor and use them as train cars - of costumes and dress up.  They can find something suitable in there I am fairly certain.  Or fake it.  We actually do have one costume completed, chosen by Starlet, to go as Little Red Riding Hood, due to that the role of the wolf will be played by the dog.  That is only four more costumes to go.  Though Songbird is trying to goad me into making 7 costumes for the Renaissance Festival and then 4 additional costumes for Halloween, it is not going to happen.  Unless they all want to go as skeletons.  I am pretty sure I have enough energy to cut out all the white felt bones and hot glue them to black sweat sets.  Better yet, they can cut out the bones.  Think about all those gross motor skills they will sharpen.  I will just bribe them with glow in the dark puffy paint stitch marks.  That they will also do....this just might work.