When I was growing up, I owned only one store-bought Halloween costume—Minnie Mouse. I have no idea why I had a Minnie Mouse costume. I don’t remember selecting it or ever having any desire to be Minnie Mouse, and I have a difficult time believing my parents bought it for me since they didn’t think Halloween costumes should come from the store. I was Minnie Mouse for a couple of years, but for the rest of my Halloween career, I made my own costumes.
Our town held an annual children’s Halloween party and awarded prizes for the best costumes, and my goal every Halloween was to win one of the prizes. A couple of years I went as a witch, and I thought it was one of my best costumes; my mother, now 82, still talks about how it was the best witch costume she has ever seen, yet no prize was forthcoming at the Halloween party. Another time—you can probably guess which year—I went as one of the Beatles, complete with a homemade wig and collarless jacket and my father’s guitar. Still no prize.
Then one year, a few weeks before Halloween, my cousin and I were messing around with her mom’s sewing machine. We both loved to sew, and we often made doll clothes together. One night at one of our sleepovers, we were sewing flapper costumes for our Barbies when we decided we’d make flapper costumes for ourselves. My aunt gave us a couple of her old slips. We cut off the straps and hemmed the tops and inserted elastic. (At our age, elastic was the only thing that was going to hold up those slips.) Then we cut crepe paper fringe and sewed it in layers around and around the slips.
It wasn’t until we put them on and added long necklaces, red lipstick, high heels and feathers in our hair that we realized we had pretty good Halloween outfits. We weren’t even thinking about Halloween costumes when we created them, but that’s what they became, and that year would mark the one and only time we would win prizes at the town Halloween party. (I still have the picture of us that ran in the local paper, framed, displayed in my house.)
In my childhood, Halloween was always a homemade holiday. Our latest book, A Frightfully Frugal Halloween, by Margi L. Washburn, is chock full of money-saving, ideas, costumes, crafts and treats that can help you have an old-fashioned, homemade holiday, too.
On Tuesday, October 13, Alice and I will be demonstrating some of Margi’s craft and treat ideas on television. We’ll be appearing on Paula Sands Live, at 4:30 p.m. Central time on KWQC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Davenport, Iowa. Tune in as we show you how the second most popular holiday can be celebrated to the hilt, without spending a lot of money. Meanwhile, check out A Frightfully Frugal Halloween at www.FrugalLivingPress.com.—Carol Wiley Lorente
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