Synonym Girl, Firefighter and Cookie Monster

I am not a fan of Halloween. In fact, I find it hard to believe when someone tells me that Halloween is their 2nd favorite holiday of the whole year. I say, "What? It beats out Thanksgiving? Easter? The 4th of July? Really?" This most likely is due to my upbringing. We didn't celebrate Halloween. I never wore a costume. During Elementary school, my mom would check us out of school before the Costume parade and class party. I never went trick or treating. I never handed out candy. We never carved pumpkins. We had a pretty good tradition, though. We'd go out to dinner or see a movie. I think we saw "Condorman" and "The Man from Snowy River" on those occasions. When our family size increased, and Dad's salary decreased, we would turn off all the lights at our house, chain our black dog to the front porch and watch videos on a rented VCR. Ah, those were the days.

Our ward had a Trunk or Treat activity on the 30th. I was seriously thinking of not going, but then a young man in our ward working on his eagle project, requested that we bring cans of food for the food bank, so that gave me an excuse to go. I bought the bulk candy from Winco and gave out as much as we got back. (We then gave out that candy on Halloween -- it's not bad to re-give halloween candy, is it?)

One thing I like about halloween is the costumes. Here is the collection of the costumes I've made for us over the years.





Spiders (1998) This was my first time making a costume. We had help from Ryan's parents in that they gave us the sweatshirts and socks to use.














Flowers (1999)

Ryan was a Black-eyed Susan,
Sabrina was a Daisy and
I was an Impatiens.





We were flowers again in 2000.





Royal Family (2001)

Ryan was King Stephan,
I was his Queen (she has no name) and
Sabrina was Sleeping Beauty.





I have no pictures from Halloween 2002. I was recovering from jaw surgery, though. Maybe we didn't celebrate that year...






Tinkerbell (2003)








Fauna (2004) We reused the tinkerbell costume and made a green cape and hat so Sabrina could be the fairy Fauna from "Sleeping Beauty." No surviving pictures.





Mary Poppins (2005) OK, so I only made the hat for this costume, but that was a lot of work, and new material to work with. Do you know what buckram is? Or what it is used for?

I bought the Penguin costume from disney.com for $8 when I was expecting in early 2003. I've used it now for both Roderic and Hyrum. Both cried while wearing it.










Sir Topham Hatt (2006)

Sabrina made herself a Rocket Ship, complete with a fuel tank hole for her candy to get put into.






Sabrina was diagnosed with Pneumonia on Halloween 2007, so we didn't go out. Instead of going to the ward party the Saturday before, we went to the Meridian Symphony concert. She was going to be Maria from "The Sound of Music", Roderic would have been a firefighter and Hyrum would have worn the penguin costume.




Cookie Monster (2008)














Pinkie Pie Pony (2008)

My neighbor buys her girls' costumes on clearance the year before, so her 3 year old should have been Blue from Blues Clues, but she didn't want to be Blue, she wanted to be a My Little Pony. I offered to make the costume for her, complete with the balloon embroidery on the backside using Stacy's machine.






M&M Cookie (2008)

Cookie Monster needed a cookie to go with him.










And if you don't know who Synonym Girl is, you'll just have to ask Sabrina!