by Karen Richardson
Tricks Only
We have a holiday tradition of attending a ‘trunk or treat’ held in our church’s parking lot. Every year I have visions of decorating our Suburban and doling out candy and every year I have to pass because I am hit by too many Junior All American football games and small children needing my attention leading up to the event. This past year, it was the dreaded ghillie suit.
What’s a ghillie suit you ask? It’s a camouflage suit covered in tree branches and the like that hunters use to hide from ducks. Then they became popular with paint ball aficionados. Now, we don’t hunt ducks or shoot paint ball guns, so I wasn’t about to buy two $70 ghillie suits for a couple of boys who thought it would be fun to dress up like that for Halloween.
I’m all for delusion in my life, so even though it’s a well known fact that I cannot sew, nor am I really too crafty – I had white flowers at my wedding because I couldn’t pick a color – I am a bargain hunter and set out to make the ghillie suits instead of purchasing them. First I went to Walmart for $15 camouflage sweat suits. Then, to Michael’s for spray on adhesive and various fake leafy plants; ivies, fronds of ferns, waxy deciduous leaves, along with a big needle and some thread. Seriously, I send my clothes to the cleaners for them to sew on a button, it’s kind of pathetic.
Literally hours later, I have one suit ready to go for Sunday’s ‘dead run’ at trunk or treat. The suit has leaves sewn all over it on the top with moss on the top and the bottom. It sheds, a lot. So it cannot come in the house. I lay it carefully in the back of the Suburban so we can transport the specimen to the Church. Once there, I carefully put my child into ghillie suit. He refuses to paint his face in camouflage to match, so most people have no idea what he is and start to call him a tree.
What are the rest of the clan? I went early to get costumes for the girls – my three year old was a cute fairy with a light up skirt. She didn’t want her hair combed or to wear shoes. She was going for that total ‘Tinkerbell lives in the forest with a bunch of orphan boys and so do I’ look, but I finally talked her into some ballet slippers. Other than that she totally looked the part of the fairy on the island of lost boys,
My one year old was to be a cute little unicorn complete with an adorable little body suit in the shape of a white hershey’s kiss with purple wings (I know unicorns don’t have wings, just go with it. It was cute.), little white hoof shaped shoe covers and a white hat with a purple horn. She DID NOT LIKE IT. I threw her little blue ballet jammies complete with frilly skirt from her grandmother and some pink sparkle shoes on her and she was good to go.
The eight year old was the ghillie monster, er, tree. The 12 year old – the cool one - was to be a mad scientist like last year, but he left the lab coat and crazy glasses at home. All he wore was a crazy hair wig, which was enough to have the middle school girls thinking he was that-kind-of-minimalist-Halloween-cool and slyly follow our group around the parking lot. (I saw you girls.)
I didn’t have the nine year old’s ghillie suit done in time so he threw on an old skeleton costume, a hockey jersey and put a treat bag on his hockey stick. Dead hockey player; excellent, CHEAP, easy,.. and he won FIRST PRIZE for scariest costume that evening. Go figure.
I threw on a few items I scrounged from the Halloween box in the garage, and went as a pirate wench, complete with a stuffed parrot! It’s amazing what we’ve accumulated in the box after 12 years of kid Halloweens!
