Any year now, my kid will select a costume we can buy in a store. Any year now...

Not this year though. He picked another weird one. Not scalloped hammerhead shark weird (thank god, I don't have it in me to do that twice) but still weird enough that the whole thing is custom and it was a pain in the ass to get the details right.

Anybody else have kids that do this, or am I special?

Why oh why can't LK want to be a pirate or something easy like that? :sigh: :beer:

as a 'ghoul' and 'pirate'.

Tell him that next year. :rofl:

...dess.

Don't be one of those parents who encourages their kids to fit into the "store costume" box.

Kids who buy store costumes turn into adults who want a PRE-MADE bee costume, are appalled that the premade bee costumes we have aren't slutty enough, and get even more appalled when you suggest they buy a short yellow dress with a thick black belt and a pair of bee antennae and wings CAUSE THAT'S NOT A F***ING BEE COSTUME!

No imagination... tragic. :(

OTOH, the dude who is going to wear an olive green shirt with a Forest Service hat and a dog/bear nose... HAPPY CAMPER. :)

I'll be over it in a few days.

Once I find my memory card I'll get pics up, 'cause he looks great.

Wa wa wa.

but it's nice of you to offer to hand it down.

And please, I wouldn't give you my Scott Baio persona for the world.

Dude, he taps more tang than NASA.

Actually, that thing was hella cool. And I think I owe the lady who made me one a kidney or something for doing it.

Yeah, thanks for fucking up my marriage, Darth.

for our nine-year-old granddaughter when we were on vacation in Las Vegas. For the uninitiated, Hermione is a character in "Harry Potter."
(We're so old we thought she meant Hermione Gingold, now deceased.)


Her father ordered the Halloween outfit for his daughter on the Internet and had it sent to their home. Gulp!

Warm regards from RL

One of our little film theaters in the tony NW section of Portland, OR with a rainbow over it. (Somehow, it looks like all the small theaters in Florida when I was growing up in the 1950s.)


RIP, North Miami Theater, Rosetta Theater, and the super big Olympia Theater on Flagler Street where they still did burlesque!

And by that time they're making their own costumes. My kid has two he made: Viking berserker (for the ren faire) and Mexican wrestler (for all other occasions when masks are de rigeur).

Of course, trick or treating dressed in animal skins and chain mail, and carrying a battle ax is likely to scare the neighbors, so I'm glad the Lucha Libre costume is available.

But yes, I remember the days when he insisted on being an octopus or a box of cereal. This is still my favorite store-bought one:

Last year he was a three-armed alien. That was a bit of work, lemme tell ya.

Previous to that he had been (amongst other things) a leopard, a vampire, and a black-widow spider. I've made all his costumes so far.

The most fun was a caterpillar costume I made for a friend's son.

Q from Star Trek (first prize), a little Scotsman in a kilt complete with fake bagpipes (you don't think I let him have real one do you?????!!!) (third prize), a Chinese Prade Dragon (first prize).

This year he is some Japanese anime character with white hair. That one was easy. I got an old black Chinese jacket with white collar and cuffs of my husband's, an old pair of black elephant leg pants of mine (was I really that skinny?), and made an ankle length white duster and put some arcane symbols on it. Got some white hair spray for him and he was done.

I used to really get into designing the outfits for him, but am kind of designed and sewed out these days.

(The best costumes I've ever seen were a pair of preschoolers dressed up as an ice cream sundae and an ice cream cone. They were really cuteeee!)

a Yu-Gi-Oh character. Crikey. I had to alter the shit out of a commercial costume pattern and never did find a good wig for him. Three years ago he was Neo (I swear I'll never sew pleather again) and two years ago Jack Sparrow. Sheesh.

This year, since his mom is buying the costume instead of my making it, he decided he wants to be a ninja. Now that would have been easy to sew. :crazy:

So, yeah, other kids do it.