Hoodwinked on Halloween

I would love this to be a story about how I started asking my children what they wanted to be for Halloween in March and though they went through several iterations of "best2013Halloweencostumeeverwhoowhoo!", they finally landed on their final visions in mid-September, in time for me to order and construct in a leisurely way before the big night arrived. I would love to tell that story. And for one half my dynamic duo, this is true. One decided to be Batman (after I nixed some amazingly complicated other costumes, though that stuff never bends him out of shape anyway) and stuck to Batman. And I ordered and constructed what I needed and finished in a leisurely way. Okay, I actually finished his the day of Halloween but it never felt THAT rushed. The other one started with a koala bear, migrated through most of the animal kingdom, and ended up at Tinkerbell. Totally fine. I ordered and constructed this costume with oodles of time to spare. This was my inspiration:

and my final product ended up pretty close to this, if I do say so myself. It was somewhat labor intensive but totally worth it. We added some wings and shoes and other cute accouterments and Tinkerbell was in the house. Why do I not have a picture of the actual dress I made. Well, it doesn't look quite as nice on a hanger as this one does. Molly had a Halloween parade at school the day of Halloween and I suggested maybe her Tinkerbell costume wasn't the best to wear to school since it required some tying and shifting and I was pretty sure her lovely Kindergarten teacher was not going to have time to adjust 24 costumes. This didn't go over particularly well but it went over. Eventually. So, off to school Molly went with her ballerina costume instead and the parade was super duper cute. 

Fast forward to the evening when the time arrived to put on costumes. And guess who didn't want to be Tinkerbell anymore? Sure as hell wasn't me, I'll tell you that much. Someone loved her ballerina costume so much she decided that it was actually her costume of choice for the evening. I committed a big parenting fail and argued about it until I realized a) it was all my fault for not letting her be Tinkerbell earlier in the day and b) I wasn't going to change anyone's mind and c) it was HALLOWEEN COSTUME for the love of pete -- not a decision to start smoking crack on a whim. I'd love to say I just accepted defeat gracefully and let it go, but in reality, I gritted my teeth a few times, faked (badly) a smile, probably muttered some incredibly immature thing like "see if I care" and let her get dressed up in her ballerina costume. 

And it really didn't matter. We joined our friends, got a sugar high, melted down at the end of the night and have continued to eat Halloween candy for over a month. All things considered, I'd say it went about as close to plan as you can expect. 

Our streets were safe from crime that night with these two on the prowl.

The parade that started it all...