Half Term is upon us again and this time we have Halloween in the school holiday. We always made more of Bonfire Night when I was a kid, attending an organised bonfire and firework display at the local golf club. But things have become far more Americanised in the last few years, and the shops have been filled with Halloween costumes, accessories and treats for several weeks now.
This year I will be at the Ramsbottom Craft Fair on Halloween itself, so I am thinking about adding some spooky accompaniments for my stall. In the meantime, though, my daughter is having a spooky dress up competition at her dance school, so I have had to think about a costume for her.
I don’t really like all the ready made costumes, but I’m not the best dressmaker. We have bought a couple of costumes in the past, but all the children end up in one of about three outfits! And with the issues raised by Claudia Winkleman after her daughter was badly burned, I decided it was time to use some imagination and make something a bit more individual. Plus she will need to be able to do her dance classes in the costume, so we needed something simple and effective!
We set about looking through the wardrobe and her dress-up draw, and came up with a purple tutu (a bit short), a headband with an orange witches hat, lots of plastic and rubber spiders, snakes and bats, some spider tinsel and a plastic cauldron. With that we set to work and I orders a black leotard and some purple and black stripy tights. I had lots of fun sewing spiders to the leotard as per my daughters instructions, then we added some more spiders, snakes and bats to the tutu. Finally I hung a couple of spiders from the hat and cut up the tinsel to add to the tutu.
A bit of gruesome makeup should finish it off a treat. She loves the completed effect, we just need to think about a wand or a broomstick. I did suggest her Dad took her on a walk to find some suitable sticks, maybe this could be a project for the coming week while I get my stock sorted out for the craft fair?!
Happy Halloween
x