Halloween costume contest

Well, it's that time of year again. Ivytech had their Halloween party (it's for the general public, and of course, since my hubby works there, we have to go!

I remember in year's past when, if we got a face mask - and maybe a flimsy outfit, we were lucky. Most of the time, it seems we made up our own costumes. In retrospect, those were the very best ones. They took imagination and creativity - and it was a heck of a lot more fun finding things we already had to use in making a costume than just picking one out at a store.

I looked at lots of costumes - Walmart, K-mart, Target... I liked maybe one or two. But the cost was unbelievable...

So this year I decided I would make her into something from what we had around the house. She had overalls that had a big hole in the knee that still fit her. She had long johns that fit her. A friend allowed me to have one of her hats - and she said I could do whatever I wanted to with it (so of course I tore it up a bit and frazzled it in places). I bought her boots and a small galvanized pail. In the pail, we stuffed a small amount of newspaper in the bottom, and then we had plastic play veggies (carrot, tomato, corn on the cob, and bell pepper) in the tub, with a red bandana (I have lots of bandanas to choose from). We had the hairclips in pretty pink and white check to put in her hair. I picked out the pink bandana to tie around her neck. I did her hair in two braids. I also put a hairclip that had a pretty flower in it on her hat. A little pencil eyeliner for the freckles, and below is the result.






They had age categories for the kids to be judged in their costumes. Kenzie was in the 4-6 year olds. All of the kids just walked across in front of the judges, with the exception of one boy who had a batman costume - which, when you pulled two strings, the wings popped out. I told Kenzie she was to walk to about the middle and greet the judges (in her best hillbilly accent). She was supposed to say "Howdy, y'all!" Instead, she jumped up and down while waving her hat in the air and shouted "Yeeehaw!" OK, that will do. She also did her "top model" walk (in which basically she wiggles her hips back and forth) and she did that very well... looking every bit the farmer's daughter, walking lazily through her chores. All this to a lot of "Awwwwww... Isn't she cute!?"

Well, the judges conferred. I was close enough to hear what was going on... there was a young man and two young women doing the judging. The young man was convinced that the batman costume was the one to win - after all, it had gadgets that opened up (leave it up to a guy to be impressed by something mechanical). The other two ladies had other ideas. I overheard them say, "But remember, one of the criteria we are judging on is originality..." and then they looked back at Kenzie again with big smiles on their faces....

It looks like the ladies were able to sway the guy over to their side. Without having to spend $30-$40 on an outfit, she won 1st place in her age group.

I just love it when imagination rules! And it helps that I have a darn cute kid as well. I have the Youtube video of the evening here...