A farmer in the dell

I can't remember the last time I dressed up for Halloween. I think costumes are a lot of fun and all; but since I don't go to Halloween parties or anything, I don't really have a reason to dress up. Well, this year I decided I'd wear a costume to our infant/toddler Halloween party at work.

I had a few criteria for my costume:

• It had to be identifiable for the toddlers, but not scary.
• It had to be comfortable. When we have our Halloween party, I spend a lot of time running around moving furniture and putting up/taking down decorations. That's in addition to the usual running around that is required with toddlers.
• It couldn't be too fussy (no time to make something intricate or search for hard-to-find items) or cost a lot of money.

I finally settled on being a farmer. I found some overalls ($15) and a hat ($5) at Ragstock and borrowed a shirt from my sister. (I couldn't find the red-and-white gingham-print shirt I really wanted, but my sister had a green-and-white one that was similar.) For a couple of other little details, I put braided pig tails in my hair -- tied off with red bows -- and bought a brown eyebrow pencil at Walgreen's (about $4) to make freckles on my cheeks. So I spent about $25, but it's all stuff I could technically use again. I'm not sure about the overalls, though; they're pretty big, and I don't know when else I'd wear them. So they might go in the donation bag. And I guess I don't have a lot of need for a cowboy hat, either; but then you never know ...

We had our party this morning, and I got up really early to make myself presentable. Thankfully I'd had my sister part my hair before I went to bed last night, so I could just roll out of bed and start braiding. It took a few tries, but I was finally happy with the finished product. I also discovered that it's really hard to draw freckles on my own face while looking in the mirror. The whole left/right thing was just throwing me off. It probably didn't help that it was about 5:20 in the morning.

Anyway, the party was a hit, and the toddlers seemed to like my costume (Olivia asked me if I was a "cowboy girl"). Maybe next year I'll start planning earlier and come up with something a little more exciting. Thanks for stopping by!